North Somerset Council commissioned us to develop an engaging website to promote and support healthy lifestyles in the county. The website features a health and wellbeing self-assessment integrated with our Theseus health improvement system platform.
North Somerset Council is a Unitary Authority with responsibilities for the health and wellbeing of over 200,000 citizens, including residents in the large coastal towns of Weston-super-Mare, Portishead, Clevedon and Nailsea.
The Council offers a wide range of wellbeing services to citizens under the ‘Better Health North Somerset’ brand. The services include Stop Smoking, Sexual Health, Get Active and Mental Wellbeing.
Following a competitive tender process, we were delighted to be awarded with the contract for a healthy improvement system.
The ‘Platform’ encompasses a health and wellbeing engagement website with direct referrals into our Theseus integrated health and wellbeing case management system.
A key objective was to maximise engagement with North Somerset residents to inspire them to engage with their health and wellbeing and we laid the foundations by starting the project with a thorough UXD process to understand user journeys, from the perspective of citizens as well as professional stakeholders.
We worked in close collaboration with the various health and wellbeing service teams to refine the website offer and to ensure the new website would be effective at motivating and inspiring individuals and families to engage with their health and wellbeing.
A unique aspect of our offer to organisations delivering health and wellbeing interventions is our ability to deliver superb engagement websites to front these services, integrated with caseload and referrals management. An essential element of an effective engagement website is the quality of the design, its tactile qualities and illustration to increase people’s understanding and to motivate and inspire behaviour change.
Our team carefully crafted a bespoke set of bright and vibrant design assets featuring illustrations of people out and about enjoying activities. The design assets created are non-judgmental and inclusive, whilst at the same time incorporating a sense of positive energy and fun.
We also iterated a colourful set of icons to illustrate the various services within Better Health North Somerset’s offer. As well as helping to draw people in and to engage with citizens, these icons also help those with English as a second language.
We never neglect the importance of accessibility in our work, essential for compliance with the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations that mandate ‘AA’ standards.
We carefully curated the new design to ensure high contrast and appropriately-sized text, plus compatibility with screen-readers and users using keyboard navigation. Following this a full round of browser, device and accessibility testing using a comprehensive test plan and tools such as the SiteImprove Accessibility Checker.
We also provided a content population service with refinement, import and structuring of content to reduce the Council’s editorial burden. The result is an ‘AA-compliant’ website that’s attractive and engaging in its design with clear copy and a search-engine friendly semantic structure.
People’s expectations of being able to self-serve online have rapidly developed in recent years, and particularly so following the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic. A popular option is to now front our Theseus caseload management system with integrated health and wellbeing questionnaires (or ‘MoTs’) that can be accessed on a service website.
These present appropriate self-help resources, reading suggestions and self-referral recommendations that citizens (or their carers) can immediately action.
Our new website for Better Health North Somerset has an area dedicated to supporting health practitioners and other professionals. The same design attention to detail carries over into the Practitioners’ Area and the section makes it easy for professionals such as GPs and Health Advisors to access resources on topics such as physical activity, managing weight and eating well.
Health and Wellbeing leads can use the Practitioners’ Area to register their organisation’s interest in joining the Healthy Workplace Programme which helps employers (as well as their staff) to find practical ways to be healthy at work. There’s also a professional referral facility for practitioner referrals into the Better Health North Somerset service on behalf of citizens.
Self-referrals and professional referrals seamlessly integrate with our Theseus: Integrated Health and Wellbeing caseload system that was implemented as part of the project. Theseus empowers delivery teams to efficiently accept new referrals onto caseload and effectively manage episodes of specialist support provided to North Somerset residents.
The inherent flexibility of Theseus enabled us to readily support the episodic workflow and form needs of the various service offers, including those of external providers.
We worked closely with stakeholders to configure Theseus to accommodate bespoke data collection and reporting for the services. In addition, Theseus enables the Council to easily action the Stop Smoking Services Quarterly Monitoring Returns and OHID returns for Adult Tier 2 Behavioural Weight Management Services Data. As part of the deployment we provided a data migration service from outgoing systems using our comprehensive suite of data migration tools. Over 2,000 quit attempts were migrated into Theseus, as well as all active Healthy Lifestyles clients engaged with the service.
North Somerset Council now has a highly engaging shop window providing practical advice and resources for residents on a broad range of health and wellbeing issues, paired with easy access to additional support from specialist teams.
The commitment and innovative approach of the Council to its residents’ health and wellbeing has already been recognised by two national award nominations in the Municipal Journal and the Local Government Chronicle.
We are really pleased to be working with the Council to build on its success, particularly because the project calls upon the full-breadth of our skillset, from engaging design through to professional case management.
There’s more to come too, with a roadmap in place to deploy onward referral functionality between health and wellbeing teams, additional bespoke dashboards for deeper data insights and a client portal to sustain ongoing resident engagement with their health and wellbeing.
“Whether you’re looking to get more active, eat a healthier diet, want help to quit smoking or are looking for information about other health matters, the new Better Health North Somerset website is a great place to start.”
Councillor Mike Bell, Deputy Leader of the Council and Executive Member for Public Health
