About the service
Support for social workers is an information service featuring guidance and resources for child and family social workers. It includes information to help social workers explore career stages, develop their career and meet standards.
The original name of the site was Develop your career in child and family social work.
Why we needed a new name
The team recognised that the site had outgrown the original name, especially as we were about to publish a new collection of content. We needed a name that:
- better summarised the information on the website
- future-proofed the website for what was coming up on the roadmap
- represented more than just one part of the social work journey
Running an ideation workshop
We held an internal ideation workshop. We split the workshop into 3 sections where we asked the team to list and:
- discuss all the things that are currently on the site and the things users would need in the future
- discuss the search terms users use - we included research we’d done using tools like answer the public and screaming frog
- dot vote on ideas for a new name using the guidance from the service manual on naming your service
The most popular name after the dot vote was Social work matters. However, a quick search found that a similar service in a local authority used this name. We also had concerns about the strength of the name for search engine optimisation (SEO).
Creating a shortlist of new names
Desk research of search terms and other external sites helped narrow the ideas to 3 possible names:
- Help for social workers
- Support for social workers
- Support and develop the social work workforce
Testing the names with users
Using Figma, we created a prototype of the homepage using the 3 shortlisted names. We tested these names with a small number of users:
- Help for social workers – users found the word ‘help’ patronising, suggesting they needed the help
- Support and develop the social work workforce – users were confused by the use of the word ‘workforce’
- Support for social workers – users reacted positively to the use of ‘support’ and they felt it summarised the information on the site
Releasing the new name
Support for social workers was received positively by users and our stakeholders. The user-centred design (UCD) team worked closely with the technical team to ensure a smooth transition to the new name.
We released the new service name on the same day we published a new collection of content on employer standards and agency resources for social workers.
Next steps
The new name means we're now able to:
- be clearer about the information that is available to our different user groups
- use the service as a starting point for future social work services
- explore improvements to the homepage and information architecture to improve the user experience
We regularly monitor feedback and respond to new and emerging needs from our users.
We continue to:
- monitor the site’s overall purpose for the different user groups, for example those changing careers and those considering a specialised area within social work
- consider the language used across local authorities to describe different career stages and guide users to find the resources aimed to support them