Counselling in the Community: a bespoke booking and member platform for a King's Award charity

The bottleneck

A community counselling charity was running on a site that didn\'t reflect the depth of the actual service. A structured intake (brief assessment call → start sessions), multiple hub locations, a volunteer programme, donation flows, staff coordination, an authenticated area for active clients, and the King\'s Award credibility anchor, all flattened into a generic three-page brochure.

The off-the-shelf option for charity sites assumes one button (donate) and a couple of about pages. CITC operates as a structured service with multiple audiences (new clients, active clients, staff, volunteers, donors), and a website that doesn\'t separate those journeys forces every visitor through the same funnel and loses most of them.

What I built

A bespoke Next.js site with discrete surfaces for each audience:

• Public marketing pages. About, our hubs, King\'s Award, staff, kings-award honour surfaced on every page as a credibility anchor.
• Structured intake flow. Three explicit steps: Get in touch (initial enquiry capture), Brief assessment call (triages need and matches counselling pathway), Start your sessions (onboarded into ongoing service). Each step is its own surface; visitors are routed rather than left to navigate.
• Authenticated member area. Active clients log in to access content and communication relevant to their counselling relationship. Supabase handles auth and role-scoped access.
• Volunteer and giving flows. Their own paths, with copy and CTAs tuned to each audience rather than competing for attention on the homepage.
• SMS qualification agent "Sarah". When a visitor submits the contact form, a Postgres AFTER INSERT trigger fires the sms-start edge function, which sends the first message from Sarah (Twilio +447380698199) within seconds, regardless of whether anyone is at a desk. Sarah conducts a two-way qualification conversation over plain SMS: Claude Sonnet 4.6 generates each contextually aware reply, maintaining the full conversation history as memory. When the conversation reaches a defined endpoint, Claude Haiku extracts an 11-point qualification checklist: what the person needs, which counselling pathway fits, urgency, relevant constraints, into structured JSON stored in sms_conversations.qualification. Staff open the enquiry in the /staff/enquiries dashboard and see the completed checklist alongside the full transcript, before they have made any contact themselves. A person in need hears from the charity within seconds, not days.
• Staff coordination tools. Behind auth, distinct from the public surface.

What changed

A site that matches the operational complexity of the charity rather than flattening it. Visitors are routed by need at the front door (help-to-help vs. give vs. volunteer) and each journey is its own designed surface. The King\'s Award sits on every page as the dominant trust signal, a visitor who needs counselling sees recognised standing before they\'re asked to share anything personal.