Information Guidance - Principles

York Information Guidance Summary -

Principles

The principles that we recommend are adopted very much align with TLAP’s (Think Local Act Personal) principles but are developed further to ensure we offer good quality information and advice to all residents of York.

These principles are as follows:

Principle 1

Being personalised: recognising that everyone’s needs and assets are different, and that while many people are able to research things for themselves, others need more in-depth help including advocacy.

We need to recognise and respect that people choose to receive information in different ways. Therefore, any publicity that provides the opportunity to find out more information needs to include more than one method, include a non-digital method.

Principle 2

Being preventative: giving people early advice about how to manage their own health and help them plan ahead.

Principle 3

Being asset-based and geared to promoting people’s

independence, building people’s capacity to access and use

information, and to manage their own care and support.

Principle 4

Being joined up: so information and advice provision is coherent, and people can access support easily, without being passed around the system.

Principle 5

Ensuring high quality: so people have their queries resolved well, and experience information and advice as easy to understand, accessible, timely, comprehensive, and accurate.

Principle 6

Being efficient: maximising the potential of the Internet, streamlining the processes for producing information, reducing duplication, pooling resources, and making the most of our informal assets.

Principle 7

Content review: it is essential that there is a continued recourse to ensure that the core information is reviewed and kept up to date. Where possible a consistent standard needs to be adopted across this provision.

Principle 8

• Transparency: web provision should be transparent in respect to: when content was last reviewed; where a hyperlink is navigating to; partners informed of website use through analytics.

Principle 9

• Accessibility: Healthwatch York consulted with residents regarding accessibility of information. The produced a report with their findings in June 2022 which covered 9 accessibility principles for organisations providing information:

1. Ask what helps and do something about it. Put the user first.
2. Make Accessible Information an organisational priority from the top down and ensure everyone knows why it is important. Have understanding, committed staff championing this at all levels.
3. Ensure that you ask people about their preferred format. Record this and use that information to provide information in a person’s preferred format. There is no point in having a flag on a record which is ignored.
4. Once identified, share people’s information needs across organisations. Information about people’s needs should only have to be recorded once for people to get the right format from all parts of that organisation.
5. Involve people with lived experience to help find pragmatic answers.
6. Provide choice. Don’t assume that everyone with a particular issue needs information in the same format or that everything is accessible. Digital is not the solution for everyone.
7. Each organisation should have one contact or team who works across that organisation to find solutions to accessible information needs quickly and effectively.
8. Seek and share good practice. Providing information in accessible formats isn’t always easy, but lots of organisations are trying. Share progress and challenges so that things are constantly improving.
9. Review what you’re doing.

Information published to the web must comply with the  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG) followed by 2.2 in 2023.

Principle 10

Variety: although this directly links to the personalised principle above, it is important to specifically stress this. Particularly in respect to avoiding digital only solutions.

Principle 11

Continual improvement where there are digital solutions, ensure there is development funding available to move with the changing requirements and ensure platforms are fit for the future.

Principal 12

Access to digital solutions: a range of options need to be built into information provision that recognises that there are a number of barriers to using digital solutions.

Principle 13

Impact: to demonstrate the impact in the provision of information

Principle 14

Targeted information provision: to maximise impact there sometimes needs to be a targeted response to for example an identified need. Some examples are provided below:

To ensure we maximise the opportunity to keep information up to date, it needs:

• To be stored digitally, even if this is printed into a personalised booklet; read out to someone or copied onto a flyer or into a letter.
• Any platform must have a resource allocated to it to ensure there is an easy way to update information
• To ensure there are eyes and ears across the city to update information
• To ensure there are partner groups and organisations that share the same objectives for access to information
• There is an approach of being generous in sharing information and resources, always keeping in mind the benefit to the user in doing so.
• To have a primary website for each specific information source to ensure that there is consistent information and navigation to it.
• Where this is managed by a public body it will need to comply with the 2018 Public Bodies Accessibility Regulations. To do so any public body websites need to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidance 2.1 followed by 2.2