On paper, Merton Council’s Children’s Centres offered everything a family in difficulty could need: parenting courses, domestic safety programmes, crisis resources and direct links to local authority support. The services existed, as did the digital pathways to access them. What didn’t exist was a reliable, trustworthy way for parents to actually use them.
For many families visiting the Centres, the internet was something they used with trepidation – on ageing shared devices, in public spaces, always with a nagging anxiety about what data they might be leaving for someone else to access. Logging into a support service on a communal computer meant trusting that the next person to use it wouldn’t find their browser history, their account details, or evidence of circumstances they were trying to change.
That anxiety was enough to keep people away. It was a real problem that most of us take for granted, but Merton endeavoured to solve.
What was the challenge with inherited devices?
Merton’s Children’s Centres had inherited a stock of old Windows devices, which were slow to boot up, tough to secure and demanding of constant attention from an IT team who were already stretched thin. Every device was a potential security incident waiting to happen.
Without a locked-down environment, many parents opted out of using the public devices at all, put off by the lack of privacy. Meanwhile, IT staff found themselves in an endless loop of manual patching and reactive maintenance for terminals that sat in high-risk, high-footfall locations. It was an ‘unsustainable situation dressed up as a solution.’
Merton didn’t need a better, more expensive version of the same thing. They needed a different approach entirely.
How can public devices still be privacy-first?
The vision that emerged was deliberately human-centric. Rather than asking parents to adapt to technology, Merton wanted a solution that got out of the way – a device that felt less like a PC and more like a service window. Something a parent could use with confidence and walk away knowing they had left nothing behind.
Working with Getech, Merton developed a Proof of Concept built around the Lenovo 300e Yoga Chromebook, purpose-built for durability and flexibility, plus a 360-degree hinge that adapts to how the user prefers to work with a laptop.
The real transformation came through configuration using ChromeOS’ Managed Guest Session feature. This allowed for digital sterilisation, meaning the moment a user logs out, the device wipes itself of any residual data. No history, no cookies, no downloaded files.
For parents accessing Merton’s Freedom Programme – a resource designed for those navigating domestic abuse – this meant the difference between using the service and not.
“Automatic data deletion wasn’t a feature. It was the whole point.”
When can limiting access be a powerful move?
The team made a deliberate decision to constrain access. Rather than offering open internet browsing, which had created distractions and management headaches in the past, the Chromebooks were configured with a strict whitelist of four curated services:
- Triple P Parenting – for family health and stress management.
- The Freedom Programme – online courses supporting domestic safety.
- OnePlusOne – a portal for registering with parent support resources.
- Merton Council website – for direct local authority information and services.
These constraints weren’t to limit parents, but to honour their time and protect the mission of the Centres. Each service on the list was chosen because it could make a material difference to a family’s life.
How did a structured pilot support success?
The results of the pilot launched at Acacia’s Children’s Centre reframed what Merton thought was possible. On the user side, the response was immediate and engagement with the Freedom Programme and Triple P resources increased. On the IT side, ChromeOS’ automatic updates meant Merton’s team didn’t need to visit individual terminals to apply updates manually. Security compliance became structural rather than procedural.
Three intensive onsite training sessions provided by Getech gave Merton’s IT staff full mastery of the Google Admin Console, which, for the first time, provided the team with genuine visibility over device health, usage and compliance status all in one place, manageable from anywhere.
The pilot proved that a thoughtfully designed cloud-first solution can dramatically outperform more expensive, more complex alternatives. The total cost of the project made the case that digital inclusion doesn’t require huge investment – just the right choices.
How is Merton’s success a blueprint for other local authorities?
Merton now has the knowledge, the admin capability and the confidence to extend this model to its other Children’s Centres. More than that, they have demonstrated something that matters beyond their borders: that local authorities everywhere can use Chromebooks as a genuine act of service that puts privacy, dignity and access at the centre of any digital inclusion strategy.
For the families who walk in to find a clean screen, a focused interface and the quiet assurance that nothing they do will follow them home, the technology is invisible. Which is exactly how it should be.
“The best public technology disappears. What remains is the service, the trust and the family who finally got the help they needed.”
