1.2 Length and amount of information

Although people liked details about what would happen and why (e.g. how long the process will take and what will happen after raising a concern) to set expectations, long documents with lots of detailed information about the Fitness to Practise process were not always helpful. For example, very detailed information about being a witness and cross-examination may not be relevant at the point of raising a concern and more simple summaries of what will happen after raising a concern are more appropriate, i.e. the right information at the right time.

Contents pages in long documents and those that linked to specific pages in the document were useful to people as were bulleted lists that summarised detailed or complex information. An example from the Northern Ireland Social Care Council can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1 A flowchart example (Note: PCC is Preliminary Proceedings Committee which is part of the investigation process).