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How one small charity is using tech to innovate service delivery in the face of COVID-19
05 Jun 2020by Aidan Paterson
We examine how a small charity used digital to continue to offer their exceptional services to young people living with brain injury during COVID-19.
Who are they?
Matrix Neurological is an innovative, small, local charity based in Middlesbrough, that works to provide practical help and support to children and young people who are living with the effects of childhood acquired brain injury, as well as to provide resources to help their families cope.
Their mission is to remove inequalities for children and young people affected by acquired brain injury and to provide effective support to their families.
What do they do?
They provide high-quality and fully integrated support services to brain-injured children, young people and their families and carers. The practical support they provide includes:
- Improving coordination and facilitating access to appropriate joined-up services
- Providing innovative one-to-one rehabilitation and education support
- Providing peer mentoring and practical support to their families and carers
MATRIX Neurological works with children and young people who have sustained an acquired brain injury, before the age of 19, to provide immediate access upon discharge to high quality community-based services and support that is tailored specifically to their needs. This support is currently not available nationally. Service users will continue to have access to support services from MATRIX Neurological until they are 25.
The charitable therapy and support services that they provide to children and young people are not delivered by any charity or public sector body nationally. In fact, the needs of those they work with are not even recognised or acknowledged as being a disability or in need of therapy or support. Similar services may be available in the private sector but many of the service users that they work with come from families with limited funds that cannot consider paying for private therapy or support.
How have they been affected by COVID-19?
Like many charities that work directly to provide face-to-face support to service users, MATRIX Neurological were faced with the challenge of rapidly moving service delivery online. This was complicated by the nature of their work, and the importance of helping to support families whose lives and routines had suddenly and dramatically changed.
It was vital to keep service delivery running as smoothly as possible so that their service users were not without support when they needed it most.
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What were the biggest challenges?
As a very small charity, the challenges for us have been around our own dated technology and trying to meet the different communication needs of a range of families; combined with unstable internet connections, poor quality Wi-Fi signals, and a lack of good quality internet access in people’s homes.
- Jan Rock, MATRIX Neurological
The biggest areas of change were service delivery and fundraising. Due to COVID-19 they were no longer able to deliver face-to-face support sessions to brain-injured children and young people. They therefore had to find an alternative way to continue to provide services to them using video platforms.
The charity also encountered issues in implementing remote working. IT equipment and stable internet access had to be provided to all employees.
Like many small charities, the available tech was an issue. Their charity mobiles are an older model of iPhone, which meant that they were unable to download some apps because the software versions are no longer being updated.
Fundraising was another area of concern, as much of their revenue came from physical donations. This included a number of collection boxes in a range of community venues – which were of course affected by COVID-19 – as well as an annual charity fundraising night that had to be cancelled. For many smaller charities, the loss of such events can be devastating. In total, MATRIX Neurological have so far lost about £2,500 in unrestricted funding towards core running costs.
How did they use digital to respond to the challenges of COVID-19?
MATRIX Neurological’s response was fast and comprehensive. By March 24th they had announced on their website that they were offering services digitally, with staff working from home.
The charity had to quickly adapt to delivering digital services with remote staff. One of the first things that they did was to create a secure VPN for network access. This is something that may intimidate a lot of smaller charities but provides a higher level of data security that is of paramount importance when working with vulnerable young people.
The most important thing was to move direct sessions with service users online. They did so using a variety of platforms, including Skype, Facetime, WhatsApp, Whereby and Microsoft Teams. Using a wider array of platforms meant that they were able to work with service users on platforms that they were already used to and felt comfortable with. It also helped to provide a redundancy to avoid relying on a single platform that may be temporarily unavailable.
In our experience children and young people engage much better when they can see you. It feels more like a shared experience than being alone talking to a faceless voice at the end of the telephone.
- Jan Rock, MATRIX Neurological
The charity also used Typeform to create new digital forms. They found it to be a great tool and they plan to use it more moving forward in order to offer a wider array of services.
What did they learn from this experience?
Be creative and think outside the box. Just make sure parents or another responsible adult is present to support the child or young person.
Also, ensure your families are happy with this approach first. If you are suggesting using a particular platform it is important to still consider security, data protection and safeguarding. We now have lots of different ideas of how to best serve the children and young people we work with, but quality is always the priority for us.
- Jan Rock, MATRIX Neurological
Without the digital platforms they have been using, it would have been impossible for MATRIX Neurological to continue working with children and young people. These much-needed services would have had to be suspended. COVID-19 has forced them to be more creative and think outside the box: encouraging them to look at alternative and more efficient ways of doing things
Post-COVID-19, they will review what worked and what didn’t for both their own team and their service users. They will assess how to adapt moving forward without negatively impacting the quality of services they deliver. They already have a survey prepared for their service users to see how they are enjoying their virtual therapy sessions.
In many ways, MATRIX Neurological and digital are a great fit.
One of the key things the charity does is work to fully understand the problem so they can find the right solution. They are already looking at ways to use digital to extend their reach, expand the services they offer and improve productivity through virtual services.
Using digital platforms and technology has been a very steep learning curve for us. It has been challenging during COVID-19 but being able to continue to help and support the kids we work with is priceless.
- Jan Rock, MATRIX Neurological
Aidan Paterson
Aidan Paterson
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