Contents

Aims

Building on our work to co-design the School Essentials Grant content, we’re working with local authorities and Welsh Government to:   

  • learn how we can work together and share content to meet user needs and improve service delivery   
  • reduce duplication of effort 
  • understand ways to improve Welsh language content and the value of better bilingual content  

The problem we’re solving

Free School Meals provides children who need it with a free meal a day in school, or help to pay it. 

With the rollout of Universal Primary Free School Meals (UPFSM), parents or guardians eligible for eFSM are still asked to apply for eFSM as a requirement to receive other support.

The information available to explain this is confusing for users.

Finally, Welsh speakers find the information in Welsh to be difficult to understand. 

Partners

We have worked with: 

  • Welsh Government 
  • Welsh Local Government Association

We have also been supported by: 

  • Welsh Government Policy team

On our delivery team were: 

  • Adrián Ortega, Content Designer 
  • Liam Collins, Interaction Designer 
  • Ed Cann and Jemima Monteith-Thomas, Delivery Manager 
  • Tom Brame, User Researcher  
  • Llinos Iorwerth, Translator (Ateb) 

A summary of the work

We engaged and involved members of Welsh Government, local authorities and users through workshops, consultations, and testing. 

We spent time with colleagues across the public and not-for-profit sector in Wales, and with users, to explore why people might not claim benefits or access support when they needed it.  

We spoke to: 

  • 7 people who were users of Free School Meals services in a range of local authorities 
  • 4 participants used Welsh as a first language 
  • 2 tested the content on a mobile device 

The Free School Meals content toolkit details the findings from the user research, shows the techniques we used and provides templates that you can use.

Ways of working

We worked remotely with a 30-minute regular stand-up every Monday and Friday. 

Next steps

We’re speaking to local authorities to find out more about the challenges they and their users are facing around the cost of living.  

This will help us to: 

  • understand how we can support local authorities to take a more user-centred approach 
  • make users aware of the support available to them 
  • make it easier for users to get the support 

If you’re from a local authority in Wales and are interested in working with us, email Ed Cann: ed.cann@digitalpublicservices.gov.wales