[Consider] Change Vet Center "type of care" categories

[davidmpickett]

User Story or Problem Statement

Currently, Vet Center services can be categorized using 1 of 3 different "type of care" labels:

• Counseling services
• Referral services
• Other services

How might we update the Vet Center service categories to support Veteran understanding?

Previous research

Feb 2021 usability research

Veterans continue to equate “Referral services” with “getting a doctors referral”. This may be perpetuating the notion that this is a medical clinic.

• Consider reordering services by priority vs alphabetization
  • Lead with Mental health care
  • Consider breaking up categorization.

Consider renaming “Referral services” to the actions that Veterans are trying to take like “Getting Veteran services help” or some other basic term or phrase that all Veterans can relate to but less likely to imply “medical referrals”. While “VA Connections” still created some confusion, it didn’t conjure up the idea of “medical clinic”. Veterans have also used “one stop shop” for all things VA to describe Vet Centers.

April 2021 Card sort

Name services and categories according to 1) what Veterans want help with, 2) what they are likely to search for, 3) what Vet Centers can provide, regardless of delivery mechanism. e.g. Is communicating “Referral services” important to a Veteran

41 Veterans did a free categorization of 17 services Card sort by service-Grid view.csv

Trends in categories

• Categorized by service recipient
  • Family care
  • Veteran care
  • Homeless Veterans
  • Minority Veterans
  • Unemployed Veterans
  • MST/ Survivor Support
• Mental health care synonyms
  • Behavioral Health
  • PTSD Care
  • abuse programs
  • Counseling Services
  • Trauma Services
  • Recreational Therapy
  • Wellness and Counseling
• Other types of support
  • Crisis Resources
  • Education and Training
  • Employment opportunities
  • Social Services
  • Transitional services
  • Quality of Life Care
  • Community Outreach
  • Outreach Service

Acceptance Criteria

• [ ] New category recommendation is drafted
• [ ] Recommendation is reviewed with Product
• [ ] Recommendation is reviewed with RCS stakeholders
• [ ] Recommendation is reviewed with CAIA
• [ ] Approved recommendation is implemented in Drupal

[aklausmeier]

Posting a content change consideration I added as a Figma comment here for visibility.

Consider replacing / reorganizing Recommendation and Other services to:

"Community resources" for non-VA affiliated resources and "Additional VA resources" for VA services not offered at Vet Centers

[davidmpickett]

Chatted about this with @mmiddaugh today. There are some conversations she needs to have with RCS about Vet Center services before we can make a decision here.

Possible paths forward we discussed:

• Remove categories all together and just have a single accordion group for all services (similar to VAMC facilities)
• Stick with "Counseling services" as main category and put everything else in "Other services"
• Ditch counseling services (kinda broad) and come up with topical groupings of services that reflect the Veteran experience "Education and career counseling" vs "Mental health counseling" vs "Community groups and services" etc