Family Information Directory (formerly the Parent Know How Directory - PKHD)

Creating a coherent and meaningful way of categorising family services within the Family Information Directory (formerly PKHD)

The Family Information Directory delivered by the Department for Education in partnership with local authorities and Families Information Services:

• gathers childcare and families services information across all local authorities in England
• combines this information with details of national services
• makes it available to parents and practitioners through a variety of channels including Family Information Services, DirectGov, Family Information Direct services providers and other authorised third and private sector partners who reach these audiences

The Family Information Directory vocabulary provides a:

• navigation structure suitable for web sites displaying information about services and facilities which may be of benefit to parents, prospective parents, children or young people
• subject vocabulary against which information can be tagged to improve searches by a central "aggregator" and local search engines using the information

The Family Information Directory only covers services and facilities, not publications. The target audience is parents and families.

The vocabulary is provided in spreadsheet format, as a Word document, a document containing changes from the previous version and its native Zthes XML format.

The complementary controlled lists document describes other controlled vocabularies to be used by the Family Information Directory to describe services and facilities. It draws on controlled lists maintained by the esd-toolkit and elsewhere. They are available in their native Zthes XML format: accreditation, area covered, facility, language spoken, channel, referral criteria, role, quality assurance levels and provision of positive activities.

Guidance to the use of the vocabularies and complementary controlled lists is available here.

If you would like to know more about the Family Information Directory (formerly PKHD) project or want help or support in adopting these vocabularies, please contact support.fidirectory@tribalgroup.com or phone 0845 873 0132. Information on all aspects of implementing the Directory is available from the support site at www.pkhdsupport.org.uk

The vocabulary is Crown Copyright developed by the Department for Education, Family Information Direct.