Parenting Research Centre

Designing an online support program for parents and carers of children with disabilities.

Problem 

The Parenting Research Centre (PRC) is a government-funded organisation in Australia dedicated to supporting parents in raising children. PRC manages a number of programs that support different aspects of parenting. Their MyTime program offers a parenting support group to parents and carers of children with a disability or complex health condition.

These support groups were originally hosted in person by a trained facilitator. The group would meet weekly to share experiences, ask questions and access resources. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns in Australia, the MyTime groups adapted and meet online via Zoom instead.

Once the dust had settled on the pandemic, PRC decided to explore developing a completely online MyTime program. They reached out to Portable for their help researching and developing this virtual program.

Solution 

I was the lead content strategist on this project and I worked alongside design strategists and visual designers. We started off by researching the current MyTime experience. We ran a workshop with MyTime facilitators, sent a survey to facilitators and MyTime members and interviewed parents and carers 1-on-1.

From that, we learned that facilitators already had a wealth of knowledge and resources to help parents and carers with the parenting side of things. What they needed in order to facilitate an online MyTime group were tools to help parents and carers to connect and share with each other in a virtual environment.

So we decided to develop an activities pack with different activities that facilitators could run with their group members based on the aim of the meeting. For example, there were ice breakers, group learning, feedback, problem-solving and light-hearted activities.

We also created a digital technology guide for facilitators so that they could increase their digital confidence and ability to use digital features and tools that could make the online meetings more accessible.

We then tested these tools over 2 rounds of user testing directly with facilitators and parents and carers in a virtual MyTime group. After each weekly meeting, the participants were surveyed or interviewed and the insights discovered were used to improve the tools we had created.

Impact 

The tools we created empower MyTime facilitators to run online meetings for parents and carers of children no matter where they live in Australia. They enable facilitators to build a connection with the group in a safe and inclusive online environment.

But our work on this project was only the beginning. PRC plans to take the tools we have developed forward in order to launch the first version of the virtual MyTime program. They are also committed to iterating, improving and expanding the virtual MyTime program tools based on live feedback from groups across Australia.