Care in Practice Framework web app for the Northern Ireland Social Care Council
We partnered with the Northern Ireland Social Care Council to deliver a new digital resource for the Care in Practice Framework, which supports social care practitioners at every stage of their career journey. Collaborating closely with the NISCC team, we created a user-friendly, accessible, and visually engaging platform that clearly maps out the CiP framework.
Care in Practice in numbers
The challenge: a framework in a PDF
The Care in Practice Framework supports registered social care practitioners across Northern Ireland at every stage of their career. As a document it is thorough, and it is also a lot to hold in your head.
A practitioner wants three answers: where am I now, where could I go next, and what will get me there. Finding those in a PDF meant most people never did, and the framework only works if the workforce it was written for can actually use it.
It also has to serve people at very different points. An entrance level practitioner and an experienced manager are both in the framework, and a document that addresses them identically leaves each of them reading past most of it.
Accessibility was not negotiable either. A public body writing for an entire workforce is writing for whatever device and whatever assistive technology those people already have, so the platform had to meet the standard properly rather than approximately.
Our approach: map the career
The Care in Practice Framework is designed for registered social care practitioners across Northern Ireland, providing safe, high quality care to people of all ages and needs. The framework exists to support, develop and value that workforce.
We worked alongside the Northern Ireland Social Care Council to turn it into a platform that makes the framework intuitive to explore. It helps practitioners identify where they are, where they might go next, and what support is available along the way, whether that is qualifications, experience, training or a new role.
The route map is the part people remember. Drawing a career framework as something you can actually see, with the levels laid out and the connections between them visible, was our idea, and it became the feature the platform is known for.
With a clean, structured interface the resource presents complex information in a simplified, engaging format that is accessible and works on a phone. It is a fair demonstration of what careful digital design can do for a sector like social care.
What we built for NISCC
A framework document turned into something a practitioner can navigate in a couple of minutes.
The route map
A career framework drawn as a route map, levels laid out and the connections between them visible. Our idea, and now the feature the platform is known for.
Levels of practice
Each level gets a page setting out what it involves and what a role at that level actually looks like day to day.
Progression routes
Where somebody is now, where they could go next, and which qualifications, experience or training gets them there.
Learning and development
The support available at each stage, gathered onto the page for the level it applies to rather than listed off somewhere separate.
Built to be accessible
A public body writing for a whole workforce, so it had to work on any device and with assistive technology, properly rather than approximately.
Maintained by NISCC
The framework content is the Council’s to update, which matters a great deal for a document that will be revised.
Recognition
European Social Services Award 2025
Winner, Social Services Delivery Innovation
The Care in Practice Framework won the Social Services Delivery Innovation category at the European Social Services Awards, judged across the continent and presented in Madrid. It was recognised as a workforce reform supporting around 41,000 social care staff in Northern Ireland.
The award belongs to the Social Care Council and the sector that built the framework with them. Our part was the platform it lives on, and one idea in particular.
A career framework is a document, and documents get read once. We proposed drawing it as a transit map instead, with the levels as stops along a line, so a practitioner can see the whole journey at a glance and find themselves somewhere on it. That route map became a defining feature of how the framework is used.
The Tech-Spec
Built with Laravel and Vue.js, this bespoke web app allows users to explore the Care in Practice Framework in an interactive way - navigating career routes, discovering development opportunities, and accessing relevant resources at every step.
HTML5, SCSS, CSS3, vue.js
Laravel (MVC framework)
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Services on this project
Most of our clients use more than one.
Web applications
Software that does a job for the business rather than describing it. Members platforms, custom admin software and internal tools built around how the work actually gets done.
→ 02Bespoke websites
Designed and built from scratch around your business rather than adapted from a template. Every page and every field is there because it earns its place.
→ 03Maintenance
Updates, backups and security handled quietly in the background, so problems are dealt with before they become urgent.
→More work
A few of the other projects we have built.
