CAPS Hauraki — Website Sitemap (Option B: Simplified)

Alternative information architecture, modelled on the client's reference site · July 2026

Prepared by Publica
For client discussion alongside the original recommended draft · Rev 1

Why this version exists: the client has asked to see something very simple, closer to the nav pattern on ttto.org.nz (Home, Who are we, Our work, Referral, Contact us, plus a persistent "Make a referral" button). This draft applies that shape to CAPS Hauraki's content. Publica's recommendation remains the original three-tier draft: this option trades away some visibility (see the risk box at the bottom) to get to a five-item nav. It is workable, but it is a trade-off, not a free upgrade.
Primary page
Child / sub page
IA / design note
Trade-off / risk note
Home
Persistent header CTA (not a nav item)
Tier 1 · Persistent header element — on every page, outside the nav bar, same role as the "Make A Referral" button on the reference site (which sits alongside its own Tohutoro Referral nav link)
Get help / make a referral
Still the single most important homepage action (Q2). High-contrast button in the header, crisis phone number, present on every page — unchanged from the original draft.
Entry point chooser
Support for myself/whānau · education programme · professional referral · urgent help · not sure · phone/printable form
One-stop referral form
9-stage progressive disclosure form
FormPriority
Immediate risk & urgency check
New: explicit "is there immediate risk" flag plus a response-urgency choice (immediate / within 24 hours / standard) inside the reason-for-referral stage
Worth adopting either way
Phone numbers & confidentiality statement
What to expect when you call
Printable / fillable PDF form
Retained as an alternative
Form
Design tension unchanged: this element must be maximally visible sitewide, while a quick-exit function needs minimal visible trace. Both are agreed requirements — needs deliberate UX resolution.
Tier 2 · Primary navigation — Home + 5 items, matching the shape the client asked for, with resources kept in as agreed
HOME
WHO WE ARE
HOW WE HELP
RESOURCE HUB
GET IN TOUCH
MAKE A REFERRAL
Homepage
Calm, uncluttered, small number of clear choices. Distinguishes immediate danger, urgent support and routine enquiry before anything else — Q1.
IA note: no staff or counsellor photography anywhere on the homepage or site (privacy of contracted ACC counsellors, small-community recognition risk).
How we help tiles module
Direct links to the five need-state pages, shown as tiles so nothing is hidden behind the extra click
Confidentiality & "what happens next" reassurance module
Named gap in current site — Q1
Testimonial content block
Reusable module (not a page); anonymised, outcome-focused
Latest resources module
Who we are
Currently absent from the site entirely — adds credibility and mana per discovery notes. Reference site's Ko Wai Au page (legacy, vision, outcomes, board and leadership) is a reasonable content model to follow.
Our purpose
Our values
Love/hope/energy, relationship, integrity, children first, biculturalism (wording under review)
Pending
Our people
Governance board and executive leadership only, named — no frontline counsellor photos, consistent with the original rule and with how the reference site itself handles this (board/exec only, no programme staff pictured)
Our funders and partners
Oranga Tamariki, Ministry of Education, MSD, ACC, Trust Waikato, Lottery Grants Board
Vacancies
Get involved / support us
Awareness-oriented, not a hard donation ask
How we help
Landing page with five plain-language tiles below. This is the main structural change from the original draft: the five need states move from primary nav tabs to one level down, inside this hub — same pattern as the reference site's "Our Work" page.
Important difference from the reference site: each tile below must lead with the plain need ("sexual harm support") not the internal programme name. The reference site's own Our Work page still titles service blocks with contract names first (e.g. "Te Korowai Tauawhi | Family Start") — that's the exact pattern Q3/Q7 told us to avoid. Programme names can appear as detail once someone is already on the page, never as the heading or the entry point.
Sexual harm support
Context before any service list, adults 18+, children & young people, crisis counselling cross-link, tip sheets cross-link, make a referral
Family violence support
Adult/child safety programmes, non-violence programmes, whānau resilience, crisis counselling cross-link, make a referral
Quick-exit priority
Family, parenting & whānau support
Education programmes (BabySpace, Growing Great Children, Incredible Years, PlaySpace, Tiaki Mō te Pēpe), parenting education, primary prevention of CSA tip sheets, enrol/refer
Priority
Youth support
Attendance support, youth justice mentoring, education/employment/training pathways, make a referral
High traffic
Counselling & mental wellbeing
Cross-cutting, not siloed (Jo, discovery notes): how counselling works, for adults, for children/young people, make a referral
Resource hub
Centralised, searchable and filterable — named success measure for the rebuild, Q8. Kept as a top-level item as agreed, even though the reference site has no equivalent at all.
Priority
Primary prevention tip sheets
Give particular prominence — Q8
Referral & programme forms
Printable/fillable, quick access for field staff who already know the form they need
Form
Videos
Animated testimonial (in production); rights check needed for external embeds
New
For schools & early childhood services
Cross-link to referral guidance for professionals
Each resource needs an owner and review date; outdated material updated or archived — named success measure, Q8.
Get in touch
Pollen Street, Thames
The only fully staffed, front-facing, drop-in reception office
Priority
Appointment-only offices
Second Thames office, Paeroa, Coromandel, Morrinsville — clearly labelled as not walk-in
General enquiry (non-urgent)
Form
Make a referral
Same destination as the persistent header button — listing it here too mirrors the reference site's own pattern (it has both a "Tohutoro Referral" nav link and a separate "Make A Referral" button). Nothing is lost by doing both.
Entry point chooser
Support for myself/whānau · education programme · professional referral · urgent help · not sure · phone/printable form
One-stop referral form
FormPriority
For schools, agencies & professionals
Practical referral guidance, folded in here rather than given its own destination — see risk box below
Trade-off: this drops professional referrer guidance one level further than the original draft, where it had its own utility-bar slot. Q4 named this as a distinct need. Recommend a quick tree-test with a few referrer contacts before finalising, now more important than in the original draft, not less.
Phone numbers & confidentiality statement
Printable / fillable PDF form
Form

Footer navigation (smallest links)

Quick exit / leave this site safely
Privacy statement
Confidentiality statement
Website terms & conditions
Accessibility statement
Feedback / complaints
For schools
For agencies

Key decisions and rationale

Collapsed the five need-state destinations (sexual harm support, family violence support, family/parenting/whānau support, youth support, counselling & mental wellbeing) from primary nav tabs into sub-pages under one "How we help" hub. This is the change that gets nav down to the client's requested shape, and it directly mirrors the "Our Work" page pattern on the reference site.
Resource hub kept as its own top-level item, per your steer, even though the reference site has no resource hub at all. This is a deliberate departure from the reference, not an inconsistency, because Q8 named it as a distinct success measure.
Professional referrer guidance moved from a utility-bar destination (original draft) to a footer link plus an entry-point-chooser option nested inside Make a referral. This compounds a trade-off already flagged once; recommend testing it rather than assuming it's fine.
"Make a referral" now appears both as the persistent header element and as a primary nav tab landing on the same page. This isn't redundant by accident: it's the exact pattern the client's own reference site uses (Tohutoro Referral in the nav, Make A Referral as a separate always-visible button).
Added an explicit immediate-risk flag and response-urgency triage (immediate / within 24 hours / standard) to the one-stop form. This is a genuine improvement the reference site's newer referral form has that the old KFST form and the original CAPS draft form did not specify in this much detail — worth adopting regardless of which sitemap option you choose.
No staff or counsellor photography, testimonials as a reusable content block rather than a nav item, and content governance/sign-off rules are all unchanged from the original draft. These are safety and privacy requirements, not nav-complexity decisions, so simplifying the nav doesn't simplify these away.
Still provisional against the final, leadership-confirmed services list and the unfinalised service-grouping advice.

What you're trading away versus the original draft

Sexual harm support and family violence support are no longer named directly in the primary nav. They're one click away via How we help tiles on the homepage, so nothing is technically hidden, but a person scanning the nav bar for their exact situation no longer sees it spelled out immediately. This may also be a discretion benefit for someone on a shared device — worth validating with Jo rather than assuming either way.
Professional referrer guidance loses its dedicated nav slot for the second time (first demoted from primary nav to utility bar, now demoted again to footer/entry-point option). If referral volume from schools and agencies matters operationally, this is the item most worth pressure-testing with real referrers before sign-off.
A calmer five-item nav is easier to scan, which does help a distressed first-time visitor get oriented faster — this is the genuine upside, not just a concession to the client's preference.
Recommendation: present both options to the client side by side, with this trade-off list attached, rather than defaulting to the simplified version because it looks cleaner. Simpler is not automatically safer for this audience.

Information architecture notes

Navigation principles

  • Primary nav is Home plus 5 items, at the simple end of the 5–7 item guidance for scannable navigation.
  • "Get help / make a referral" lives outside the nav bar as a persistent, high-contrast header element, and is echoed as the final nav tab, matching the reference site's own pattern.
  • Plain language only in navigation and page titles — no CAPS contract, programme or funder terminology, including on How we help tiles (Q3, Q7).

Audience pathways

  • People in crisis: persistent header CTA → phone number & confidentiality reassurance, or homepage How we help tiles → relevant need-state page — no need to enter deep navigation.
  • People needing support: Home → How we help → relevant need-state page → resources/info → optional referral.
  • Schools & professional referrers: Make a referral → for schools, agencies & professionals → practical referral guidance → professional referral entry point. Flagged above as needing validation.
  • Stakeholders, funders & community: Who we are → funders & partners, with testimonial content woven through rather than housed in a dedicated section.

Safety, privacy and content governance

  • Quick-exit / safe browsing required sitewide; placement and mechanism still need proper specification.
  • Content ownership: Jane (primary admin) and Namita publish routine content directly; service leads verify specialist content; GM sign-off required for crisis/safety/privacy content, values or positioning, testimonials, and major structural changes (Q6).
  • Treated as a fresh content build, not a migration (Q5).
  • Analytics to be implemented from launch; no current data exists to validate audience assumptions (discovery notes).