Down Syndrome Liverpool is a parent led charity that supports carers, families and professionals to ensure that people with Down Syndrome are given every opportunity to reach their potential.
At Kerv Consult, we take corporate responsibility seriously and believe that if you can then you should give something back by Ensuring the correct support and information is disseminated to members and professional bodies.
We were therefore delighted when our team got the chance to volunteer to help the fantastic charity Down Syndrome Liverpool (DSL).
DSL had a number of challenges that they required support with. Firstly, DSL already had a fantastic website developed by the design team at Milkyone Creative, however their website had been live for a number of years and the information on it was slowly falling out of date. Due to their lack of familiarity with the website solution, the DSL trustees were unable to confidently update it themselves and ensure the site was current.
We approached this not by starting with the solution, but by understanding the outcome that the DSL team wanted to achieve. It quickly became clear that the key requirement was not for the most complex site or set of features, but simply that the trustee team wished to be able to take control and manage their web presence themselves without having to rely on others.
In addition to this, both their membership and email solutions had some issues and so they were unable to register new members or to communicate to them effectively. This was critical at a time when the COVID pandemic meant that many people across the community required access to the support that Down Syndrome Liverpool offers. Whilst this challenge existed, the team had to manually track key information at the time which presented risk of data loss or errors.
Firstly, we were able to support DSL to identify several options and help them down select the most appropriate from those. The chosen option was to re-platform and develop a new website, with the new platform selected due to its ease of use for the trustee team, enabling them to meet their key requirement of self reliance. We supported the team to develop the new site not by creating it, but by delivering a range of training sessions and upskilling the trustee team to develop it themselves. We provided additional support for the team where they required it and we delivered more technical elements such as the integrations or implementing advanced features, however this approach ensured that the trustee team were self sufficient and able to administer the website themselves.
Next, we supported the DSL team by resolving their issues with their membership tracking tool and also ensuring that it integrated to their new website and was fully connected and working. During this time we identified that Data Privacy was a key priority for the trustee team within the charity and they took their responsibilities very seriously. Whilst not part of the original request, we were also able to provide guidance around the GDPR regulations to help them manage member data even more securely and to further reduce data privacy risk.
The new website has now launched and the team have been actively updating it since. Please check it out here, the charity does some fantastic work and so if you can please support them!
The Trustees of Down Syndrome Liverpool would like to extend our thanks to the Kerv Consult team who were excellent in helping us to address our challenges. They worked with us to consider options and find the right outcome for us as a team rather than just making assumptions and pointing us down a path. We have also been able to rely on their support at each step along the way and are delighted with the results. This new website is going to be fundamental in helping us ensure the correct support and information is disseminated to our members and professional bodies we work alongside.
The DSL team have been incredibly grateful and we knew that the solution had gone down well when one of the Trustees asked if we would be able to support them to implement a similar solution for their own business. This was the icing on the cake for us as it showed that we we able to make a genuine difference to the DSL team who selflessly give so much of their time to helping others.
In a continued effort to ensure we offer our customers the very best in knowledge and skills, Kerv has acquired Worth Digital.
