We’re on a Digital Transformation Journey
In Autumn 2018 we undertook a Digital Review of our services to ensure that they help us to provide the best for our clients and staff both now and in the future.
The review, as part of the wider Rape Crisis England and Wales (RCEW) Weaving the Web scheme, enabled us to look at things like our technology, skills and training, data management, our online presence and phone systems. As part of this work, we invited staff, clients and colleagues to answer surveys and feed into our future developments.
Creating an Action Plan
Using the information from the surveys we completed our Digital Review and used this to identify things that we needed now and would also help us to plan for our digital future, ensuring that our service is not held back by our digital abilities. We were then able to apply for funding from RCEW which would help us to meet certain digital needs, including those which would help us to reach marginalised survivors, build our capacity for working with survivors online and increasing the number of women and girls the Rape Crisis Network supports as a whole.
Putting our plans into Action
Since receiving confirmation of funding, we have been updating and transforming things digitally. Some of these improvements have been behind the scenes, where we have replaced old equipment and bought brackets for monitors to enable our staff to work more comfortably. Other changes will be more obvious now and over the next few months. People who have recently phoned our telephone number will know that we now have an ‘options’ menu at the beginning and staff have their own extensions to help streamline the way in which people contact us. Our new digital phone system also has the benefit of being able to seamlessly grow with our service into new offices and buildings, future-proofing us for many years to come.
We are also working on several other projects, which clients and colleagues will particularly notice. One of these is the ability to provide online, face-to-face, counselling and/or support via a specialised support portal. This will enable us to provide a secure way of providing sessions to clients who prefer to communicate online or who may find it difficult to travel to one of our centres.
A second update, which will be appearing on our website over the next few weeks, is the availability of a brochure translated into the five most commonly spoken languages in our area. This brochure will outline who our service is for and how we can support people, as well as information on who people can contact if they have experienced an assault in the last seven days. The brochure can be viewed online and as a download.
Join us on our journey
We are really excited about the digital changes that are taking place in our organisation at the moment. If you would like to provide any feedback on these, Karen, our Digital Transformation Lead would really like to hear from you.
