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Using the directory

There are several ways you can find organisations, events and services related to children and young people on the Children's Services Directory.

Simple keyword search

On most of the pages, you will find a search box, from which you can perform a simple search. Simply type in one or more keywords and click the Search button to list all the services, and service providers that meet you search criteria.

You can narrow your search by entering keywords as well as a postcode.

You can perform a search using the search box at the bottom of each page

For help with searching see the section on searches below.

Browse

If you are unsure what you are looking for, you can browse the site. It takes just three clicks to reach the listings page:

1. The first four items on the left menu of this page shows a list of zones. Click on the zone that best describes you.
2. A new page will load and on this new page, the listings will show the categories within the zone you have selected. Choose a category of interest by clicking on it.
3. When you come to the third page, there will be a list of different services and service providers within that category. Click on a service to display a listing of the service details, or click on a service provider to view the service provider details.

Directory Index

You can also browse the site using the directory index. This displays the categories of each zone in alphabetical order.

Help With Searching

Terms

A search is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

A Single Term is a single word such as Childcare or Health.

A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "Mental Health".

Multiple terms can be combined together with to form a more complex search.

Using logic in searches

Logic operators (OR AND + NOT -) allow search terms to be combined.

OR

The OR operator is the default logic for searches. This means that if there is no logic operator between two search terms, the OR operator is used.

The OR operator links two search terms and finds a match if either of the terms exists.

To search for results that contain either "Mental Health" or just "Health" use the query:

"Mental Health" Health

or

"Mental Health" OR Health

AND

The AND operator matches results where both search terms exist.

To search for documents that contain "Mental Health" and "Support" use the format:

"Mental Health" AND Support

+

The "+" operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in results.

To search for documents that must contain "After School" and may contain "Youth Club" use the query:

+"After School" "Youth Club"

NOT

The NOT operator excludes results that contain the term after NOT.

To search for results that contain "Children's Centre" but not "Nursery" use the query:

"Children's Centre" NOT Nursery

Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one search term. For example, the following search will return no results:

NOT "Children's Centre"

-

The "-" operator excludes results that contain the term after the "-" symbol.

To search for results that contain "Children's Centre" but not "Nursery" use the query:

"Children's Centre" -Nursery

Grouping

You can group search terms using parenthesis

To search for either "Youth Clubs" or "After School Clubs" and "Football" use the query:

("Youth Club" OR "After School Club") AND Football

Term Modifiers

Wildcard Searches

The ? symbol is used to look for terms that match with a single character replaced. For example, to search for "Youth Club" or "Youth Clubs" you can use the search:

Youth Club?

The * symbol can stand for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for "Child", "Children" and "Children's" you can use the search:

Child*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a word.

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Similar Spellings

Adding the "~" symbol at the end of a Single word term gives results with similar spellings. This can help if you are unsure of the exact spelling:

Lewishum~

This search would still return results for Lewisham.

Boosting a Term

Searches order results by the "relevance" of the results to the search terms supplied. To boost the importance of a term use the "^" symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.

Boosting allows you to control the relevance of result by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for "Toddler Group" and you want the term "Toddler" to be the most important term, boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type:

Toddler^4 Group

This will make results with the term Toddler appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example:

"Further Education"^4 "Learning Resources"

By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2)