Research in Practice

Research in Practice required a new microsite as part of the Tackling Child Exploitation (TCE) project, a funded programme designed to support strategic leaders tackling extra-familial forms of child exploitation.

Who are TCE/Research in Practice?

Tackling Child Exploitation is a consortium-led programme in association with Research in Practice, University of Bedfordshire and The Children’s Society.

The goal of the TCE microsite is to help organisations to access, understand and apply evidence through an organised asset library with an aim to offer a different way of thinking to traditional approaches.

TCE had unique ideas about how they wanted their website users to find and access resources but needed guidance with putting those ideas into practice digitally.

We helped translate TCE’s ideas into a user-friendly digital experience, one that felt intuitive and accessible to the people the site was built for.

A Commitment to Care

What stood out to TCE wasn’t a flashy pitch, it was a shared commitment to the outcomes. From the start, we focused on building something useful, accessible, and genuinely impactful.

Our experience working with multi-agency projects allowed us to balance stakeholder priorities while staying focused on clarity, usability, and inclusive access.

Nurturing A Vision

The Research in Practice team had a strong vision. Our job was to help bring that to life online by translating big ideas into a site that felt simple, clear and usable to a wide audience.

Our first objective was to translate what the client wanted into a working prototype for review – offering maximum interaction for minimum time commitment.

Then we worked through phased milestones of stakeholder review and testing to ensure an outcome that worked for the majority. 

This was an exciting project for the team to get their teeth into. We’re proud to continue supporting the site, ensuring it stays technically robust and accessible as the programme develops.

Stakeholder input was key, but we also pushed for simplicity, clarity and accessibility in every iteration. This wasn’t about flashy visuals. It was about making it easier for people to find and use important guidance in stressful or urgent moments.

The Solution

With our experience in high-level project management, we developed a unique digital resource library. The microsite we created organises multiple assets and media types using filters and tools in the way the client had envisioned.

As part of our design and build process, we ensured the microsite met WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.

That meant everything from colour contrast checks to keyboard navigation, alt text, clear content hierarchy, and responsive layouts that work across devices.

The aim wasn’t just compliance, it was usability. We wanted the site to be genuinely accessible to social workers, local leaders, and families alike, regardless of ability or device.

Anna Racher, the Partnership Manager summarised the project:

“In creating the microsite for the Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme we knew we wanted something different. One of the issues we are trying to support strategic leaders through is the complexity of the Child Exploitation landscape, and we didn’t want to mirror this is the site.”

“We approached Vu with a clear request to challenge many existing ways of categorising, searching for and presenting information on a website. We have an ethos of ‘constructive disruption’ that we wanted to model in our design – which is much easier to ask for in principle than to design in practice.”

“The team at Vu were curious, patient and incredibly supportive in helping us get there and the site has had a great response.”

The new site has received positive feedback from users navigating on mobile, in low-bandwidth environments, and with screen readers – proof that inclusive design improves experiences for everyone.