Usability testing - Oxleas Children's Integrated Therapies Website

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust asked Healthwatch Greenwich to support a review, using usability testing, of its website, ‘Children’s Integrated Therapies’. The purpose of this exercise was to inform the development of these pages and contribute to the transformation of the website to better support parents and carers of children who use Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Speech and Language Therapists - often called ‘integrated therapies’. Integrated therapies usually work with Early Years Children, School Age Children and those that attend Special Schools. Healthwatch Greenwich worked with three members of staff and 17 parents and cares for children with special educational needs between December 2022 and March 2023.

User testing found that despite their children being regular users of some or all the therapies, most parents and carers were unaware of the Children’s Integrated Therapies website. Few parents had seen the site before, and many struggled to find it - it took parents several attempts to find the correct website from a Google search with several also commenting that the site didn’t appear to be affiliated with the NHS. Similarly, most parents found the site confusing and frustrating to navigate. Key information wasn’t easy to find – such as contact details – and accessibility options, for those with additional linguistic needs or disability, were limited. Photos on the site did not represent children with disabilities.

However, after going through the website during our testing sessions, parents felt that information on the site could nonetheless be useful to them – if presented in a more condensed or accessible way, such as plainer English and less clinical language.