Reimagining the Adult Social Care Front Door
From fragmented contact routes to a clearer, more proactive entry point.
The Adult Social Care (ASC) Front Door was spread across multiple disconnected channels.
Residents could access the service through:
- multiple online forms
- over 12 inboxes
- several direct phone lines
- and the council website
This created a fragmented experience for both residents and staff, making it difficult to understand demand, manage enquiries, and provide timely support.
Project team: Product manager, Service designer, User researcher, UX designer, Content designer, Developer
ASC landscape
The challenges
Increased service demands:
Following the pandemic, ASC contacts at Kingston surged by 77%, with mental health referrals alone increasing by 236%.
Fragmented Entry Points:
ASC had 12+ inboxes, 5 direct phone lines, and a website causing user confusion.
Data Silos:
30,000 annual enquiries to the Contact Centre resulted in only 1,800 IAS records, with no clear tracking of the "missing" data.
Opaque front door:
Residents didn't understand the "Care Act" criteria or that social care isn't free, leading to "inappropriate" demand.
ASC frontdoor discovery
What we did?
Grounding decisions in research
We grounded the work in both user and operational insight.
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conducted interviews with residents and professionals to understand their experience of interacting with Adult Social Care
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usability tested the digital self-serve care needs assessment, iterating complex areas such as financial and eligibility questions
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worked closely with contact centre teams to understand how initial conversations with residents are handled
Turning insight into service design maps
I translated research into visual artefacts to make the service easier to understand and discuss.
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mapped end-to-end user journeys, capturing key interactions, touchpoints, and stakeholders
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mapped internal contact entry points across the service
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identified delays, dependencies, and bottlenecks across workflows
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aligned digital design with how the service operates in practice
Benchmarking across councils
To ground the work beyond the local context, we reviewed how other councils structure their Adult Social Care front doors.
This included analysing approaches from over 50 councils — spanning London boroughs and county councils. The analysis was consolidated into a shared view, capturing:
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how services are structured
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how eligibility and signposting are handled
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how different entry routes are designed
This helped to:
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validate emerging design directions
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identify alternative approaches
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ensure the solution was aligned with wider sector practices
From Alpha to Beta
Outcomes
Reframing and restructuring the front door
We shifted the role of the front door from a funnel that pulls everyone into assessment, to a filter that helps people understand their situation, self-serve where possible, or access the right support.
To support this, we created a more joined-up and consistent entry point into the service by:
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consolidating fragmented contact routes into clearer pathways
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aligning digital journeys for both residents and professionals
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improving how information is captured at the point of entry
This helped create a more structured and intentional way for people to access services, while giving teams better visibility and consistency across incoming demand.
A new front door journey
A redesigned online care assessment journey was launched on the Kingston website, including:
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an eligibility checker
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clearer guidance and signposting
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improved pathways into services
Improved demand management
The new approach enables:
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more users to self-serve
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clearer routing into appropriate support
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reduced unnecessary assessments
Increased operational efficiency
The work supported wider improvements, including:
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reducing administrative burden for staff
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improving data quality at entry
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enabling better visibility of demand
Final thoughts...
Reflection
This project reinforced that the “front door” is a critical part of how the whole service operates.
Improving it required:
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aligning multiple teams and systems
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balancing user needs with operational realities
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and designing for both clarity and flexibility
A key learning was that clarity at the front door reduces pressure across the entire service — but only when it is grounded in how the service actually works behind the scenes.