CORE Support Services: a website that shows the people, not just the services

Situation

CORE Support Services is a supportive living and learning facility serving approximately 215 adults and youth. Their programs support clients with diverse abilities, both at the Centre and in the community. Their vision is “Meaningful lives. Inclusive communities.”

At the time they were Kings Regional Rehabilitation Centre. The site had been built and maintained by internal IT staff, and it was being kept up. The problem was that it sat on a framework that had aged out from under it, and the person keeping it running could no longer give it the time it needed. The site was not neglected. It had been outgrown, and they had known it for a while. Both its appearance and its technology were behind where the organization had got to.

Here is what that looked like by 2022. The homepage headline was the word “Homepage.” Seven items in the main menu, every one of them a dropdown. Two news posts on the front page: one announcing the Centre was open with cautionary measures still in place, and under it a 2020 post about joining Facebook. A large COVID thank-you graphic held the middle of the page. Job postings were not going to the site at all, which for an organization hiring continuously is a missed front door.

None of it was broken. It just made an organization of more than 600 staff look like it had stopped.

One section made the case on its own. A band across the middle of the page headed “We care about our clients” set its text over a busy photograph, and the result was hard to read for anyone. On a site for an organization supporting people with a range of abilities, the paragraph about caring for clients was one of the harder things on the page to actually read.

They wanted two things from a new site, and both were about people rather than programs.

The first they named before anyone had to raise it: It had to work for their clients and their clients’ families. An organization whose vision is inclusive communities cannot have a website that some of the people it serves are locked out of. Most organizations arrive at that thought late, if at all. CORE started there.

The second, in their own words:

“We wanted the new website to reflect not only the services we provide, but also the people and the sense of community that are at the heart of CORE.”

A list of services does not show what a place is actually like.

What changed

A full rebuild in 2022, followed by a care plan that has run since 2023.

Accessibility was not a pass at the end of the project. It set how the site was built, including a plain-language summary in the footer so the content is usable by people who find dense web copy hard going. For an organization supporting adults and youth with diverse abilities, that is not a nice extra. It is the whole point of having a website at all.

The rebuild also had to work around something that was already there and working. The same IT staff member runs the organization’s intranet on a version of the domain. We built with him rather than over him, so his side kept running and nothing he maintains got disturbed.

That is worth naming, because in an organization with an internal technical person, bringing in an outside web partner can land as a verdict on them. It was not one here, and it was not handled as one. The website needed a specialist’s time that a busy internal IT role could not spare. Those are different jobs.

The care plan is the part that has done the most work since. Every website request goes to a support desk instead of landing on a staff member’s desk. Job postings go up and come down on schedule. Board changes get made. Program pages get updated as the province rolls out changes to the sector.

And the photographs stay current. That matters more here than it would elsewhere, because the pictures are the part carrying the joy and the community the site was rebuilt to show. A site like this goes stale the moment its photos do, so keeping them fresh is not housekeeping. It is the point.

“The Clarity web team has provided excellent support throughout the process, making it easy for us to keep our information and photos current.”

In 2025 the organization rebranded from Kings Regional Rehabilitation Centre to CORE Support Services. The rebrand went through the site without a rebuild. New name, new domain, same site, no second project.

Not every request turns into an invoice. When a new program came along in 2026 and the team asked about a custom page and application form, our recommendation was to hold off. The program was still a pilot, and a full build for something still finding its shape would not have been a good use of their money. The information went on the existing pages instead.

Results

• A website that works for the clients and families CORE exists to serve, which was the requirement from day one
• A site that shows the people and the community, not only the list of services
• A site that reads as active, from an organization of more than 600 staff that had been looking dormant
• The internal IT lead’s intranet left intact, with the rebuild built around his work rather than through it
• 4 years as a client, 3 of them on a care plan, with no internal technical capacity required
• A full organizational rebrand carried through the site without a rebuild
• Website requests handled by a support desk, so no staff member has to own the site
• Recruitment postings, program information and photographs stay current as things change
• Recommendations that sometimes cost Clarity money, because stewardship of a funded budget is the point

Status

Four years on, CORE is still on a care plan, and the website is still not anybody’s job internally.

“We had been unhappy with our old website for some time. Both its visual appearance and its technology were outdated and no longer met our needs. We have been very pleased with the look and functionality of the new website, and we feel it provides a much better reflection of who we are as an organization and the vibrant community we are proud to support.”

Cathy Walsh, Executive Assistant, CORE Support Services

Most organizations come to me because something on the website stopped working and nobody internal could pick it up. If that sounds familiar, a Clarity Call is a short conversation about what’s going on with yours.