Image from Reimagining Tools for Support Work
Case Study: All About

Reimagining Tools for Support Work

Helping support workers provide rich and personalised care

For many people, disability support services are a vital link to social connection, empowerment and dignity. But underfunded agencies and overworked support workers are struggling to deliver the support people need, leaving many people with disabilities frustrated, isolated, and vulnerable.

To help tackle this challenge, Parallel Lines worked with UTS and Northcott Innovation to prototype All About: an innovative digital tool designed to transform the way support workers access information and improve life for people with disabilities.

A phone on a table displaying a page from All About titled ‘Having Breakfast’.
Three screens from the All About app

Humanising Care

Most digital tools for disability support are designed from a managerial perspective and focus on the administration of care: budgets, targets, reports, regulations, and rosters. In contrast, All About focuses on the practice of care—centring the needs, concerns and aspirations of people with disabilities.

By recognising the expertise of support workers and their role as decision-makers in the moment, All About supports teams to build cultures of trust, respect, and autonomy. It ensures that workers can focus on the right information at the right time, so they can make informed decisions and provide high-quality support.

An illustration showing different types of critical information on the left and different types of enriching information on the right.

Information when it’s needed

Information overload is a major challenge for support workers. Essential information is often scattered across binders, spreadsheets, reports, emails, whiteboards, logbooks, shift notes, and databases. This makes it extremely challenging to grasp even the basics—let alone the nuanced details essential for providing enriching and empowering care.

All About puts this information in the pockets of support teams, clearly grouped into:

  • Critical information: such as a person’s allergies, medication, or emergency contacts.

  • Support basics: like how they communicate, eat and drink, or move around.

  • Personal information: including their interests, ambitions and concerns.

All About actively recommends information that is likely to be most relevant in the moment, based on factors such as the people present, the time and place. Users can customise these settings to complement the way they work, ensuring the app delivers the most useful information for them.

The dynamics of care

Through conversations with support workers, we learned that the interplay between people, places, and activities is a vital yet often overlooked aspect of support work. When it is documented, this information is often framed as ‘behaviours’ or ‘incidents’—which can imply that people with disabilities are the problem.

In our design for All About, we’ve developed a groundbreaking new type of information called ‘dynamics’. Dynamics proactively focus on the underlying relationships and patterns of interaction that shape wellbeing, helping support workers foster the conditions that lead to more empowering and enriching experiences.

A photo looking over a person who is using the All About app on their phone, showing information about Dynamics

Reimagining care

All About demonstrates how well-designed tools can directly support more responsive and effective care, ensuring that people receive support in a way that respects their dignity and reflects who they are as individuals. By valuing the expertise of support workers and emphasising person-centred care, it shows that thoughtful design can drive meaningful change—improving outcomes for individuals and reshaping how disability care is understood and practised.

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