Wolverhampton Council case study: gamifiying learning

About the City of Wolverhampton Council

Following on from The Children and Social Work Act 2017, City of Wolverhampton Council have a renewed responsibility for children and young people in care.

As a corporate parent the council and its partners do everything they can for the children and young people in, or leaving, the council’s care to give them all the opportunities that other children and young people get.

The challenge

City of Wolverhampton Council wanted to address the issue that resources to support young people in care were not age-appropriate and were difficult to understand. To address this, they wanted to work with the young people and create an approach that worked for them.

As a starting point they implemented Children in Care reviews. However, many young people struggled to engage with these views. City of Wolverhampton Council had been considering a different approach using games and activities to assist young people in easily accessing the information they required.

They also found it was hard for young people leaving care to get the information they needed from a reliable source. To combat this they wanted something which was accessible, quick to find and easy to share

Our solution

Following on from discussions with City of Wolverhampton Council, we decided the best approach would be to develop an interactive and engaging range of gamified courses, using Articulate Storyline. After looking at the key topic areas we split the learning into 6 titles:

• Bullying and Internet Safety
• Mental Health and Wellbeing
• Sexting and Child Sexual Exploitation
• Victims of Crime
• Safe Gaming
• Money Management

Each course consisted of a small number of learning screens and would take less than 15 minutes to complete. Where possible they included scenario-based activities, games or knowledge checks. We understood that not all young people have access to desktop computers so each course was mobile compatible and could be accessed anywhere.

A growing partnership

The project is continuously reviewed by the Young Person’s Council who have decided to provide their own voices for the content to ensure that the message reaches their target audience.

This project is the key to City of Wolverhampton Council in their drive to put the children first in every service they provide. As these courses have allowed City of Wolverhampton Council to develop the project quickly, other areas have been identified that were not in the original brief such as Black Lives Matter content that will further enhance the understanding of children and their rights.

Learning Nexus will continue to work closely with City of Wolverhampton Council to develop a roadmap of courses which will help children and young people in care going forward.

The initial 6 courses were launched in 2020 with the overall goal to work with the City of Wolverhampton Council to turn the content into a commercial offering that could be used by other children and youth services across the UK.

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