Building a Safeguarding-First Fostering Platform for UK Local Authorities and Agencies

Client: KinMatch - https://kinmatch.co.uk/
Sector: Children’s Services / Fostering / GovTech
Engagement: Concept to live product

The Challenge

Fostering is a highly sensitive, highly regulated environment.

Local authorities and fostering agencies need to match children with appropriate carers quickly and carefully, while managing some of the most sensitive personal data imaginable.

Yet many existing systems remain difficult to use, expensive to scale and heavily dependent on manual administration.

Common challenges include:

• per-seat software pricing
• limited data portability
• manual matching processes
• compliance managed through spreadsheets
• fragmented communication between authorities and agencies

Alongside those operational challenges sits a much more important requirement:

safeguarding.

Any digital platform operating within fostering needs to consider UK GDPR, Ofsted scrutiny, children’s data, multi-agency working and human oversight from the very beginning.

The challenge was therefore not simply to build matching software.

It was to create a secure, explainable and commercially viable platform capable of supporting local authorities and fostering agencies without compromising safeguarding or data protection.

Our Approach

We approached KinMatch as a complete product, architecture, security and go-to-market project.

The platform needed to solve two problems simultaneously:

• help authorities and agencies find appropriate placements more efficiently
• create a marketplace that could grow despite the natural cold-start challenge of a two-sided platform

Every major decision was therefore considered through four lenses:

• safeguarding
• data security
• usability
• commercial scalability

This resulted in a platform where security and compliance are part of the architecture rather than features added after development.

Services Delivered

This project required a combination of product strategy, software engineering, security architecture and digital go-to-market planning.

Solutions Architecture
Designing a secure multi-tenant platform capable of supporting local authorities, fostering agencies, referrals and placement workflows

SaaS Platform Development
Building the private matching platform, operator tools, billing infrastructure and public recruitment experience

Safeguarding & Security Design
Embedding privacy, access controls and safeguarding rules directly into application logic

AI-Assisted Matching
Developing explainable matching tools designed to support qualified professionals rather than replace human decision-making

Compliance & Data Protection Foundations
Supporting the platform with DPIA documentation, privacy information, subprocessor records, consent-first tracking and security policies

Go-to-Market & Digital Strategy
Creating the public-facing recruitment funnel, outreach tools and digital foundations needed to support adoption

Safeguarding by Design

Safeguarding was treated as a fundamental architectural requirement.

Children are stored within the platform using initials rather than full names.

This is enforced within the application itself rather than relying solely on internal policy or staff behaviour.

The system was designed around the principle of collecting and exposing only the information necessary to support a placement decision.

This reduces unnecessary exposure of sensitive information while helping professionals work with the data they genuinely need.

Strict Multi-Tenant Data Isolation

KinMatch operates across multiple organisations.

That creates a critical security requirement:

one authority or agency must never be able to access another organisation’s private data.

Tenant isolation is enforced throughout the platform.

Referrals are not automatically exposed across the network. Information is shared deliberately through defined workflows and permissions.

This architecture ensures that collaboration can take place without weakening organisational boundaries.

This reflects our wider approach to solutions architecture for secure, multi-organisation digital platforms.

Explainable AI, Not Black-Box Decision Making

AI supports parts of the KinMatch workflow, but it was deliberately designed not to become the final decision-maker.

The matching engine evaluates factors such as:

• location
• age
• needs
• sibling requirements
• household capacity

Potential matches are accompanied by clear reasons explaining why they have been suggested.

A qualified professional remains responsible for the final placement decision.

The AI does not train on user data.

This human-led approach creates a more transparent and accountable use of AI within a highly sensitive environment.

AI-Assisted Referral Intake

Referral information can be complex and time-consuming to process.

KinMatch uses AI to help structure incoming referral information into a consistent format.

However, the process includes a human verification stage before information becomes part of the active matching workflow.

This combination of automation and human oversight reduces administration without removing professional judgement.

Real-World Organisation Verification

Trust is critical within a platform dealing with fostering agencies and public bodies.

KinMatch therefore includes real-world verification processes using authoritative sources such as:

• the Ofsted register
• Companies House

This helps confirm that organisations participating within the ecosystem genuinely exist and meet the expected organisational criteria.

Security as a First-Class Deliverable

Security was not treated as something to review after the product had been completed.

Before launch, we conducted a systematic multi-tenant security audit across the platform.

This identified and resolved issues involving:

• cross-tenant access
• injection risks
• data-handling behaviour
• permission boundaries

The platform was strengthened using fail-closed defaults and defence-in-depth principles.

An automated test suite was also used to help protect these boundaries as the product continues to evolve.

The objective was simple:

if the system is uncertain whether access should be granted, access should be denied.

That principle is particularly important when dealing with safeguarding and sensitive personal information.

Compliance from the Beginning

The platform was developed with data-protection requirements considered from the outset.

This included work around:

• Data Protection Impact Assessment
• privacy documentation
• subprocessor records
• consent-first cookies
• Content Security Policy
• data minimisation

Rather than attempting to retrofit compliance after launch, these considerations influenced product and architecture decisions throughout development.

We have deliberately not positioned KinMatch as holding certifications or registrations that are not yet complete.

Public Recruitment & Adoption Funnel

A strong platform still needs users.

Alongside the private application, we created a public-facing recruitment and acquisition experience designed around KinMatch’s commercial model.

The platform supports a success-fee approach rather than relying solely on conventional per-seat SaaS pricing.

This lowers the barrier to adoption while aligning the commercial model more closely with successful outcomes.

The public site is designed to explain the proposition clearly to:

• local authorities
• fostering agencies
• sector professionals

and create a structured route into the platform.

Operator Console

KinMatch also includes a dedicated operator environment.

This provides the platform team with the tools required to manage and oversee the wider ecosystem without relying on direct database intervention.

Operational tools support areas such as:

• organisation management
• referrals
• verification
• platform oversight
• billing

This creates a stronger foundation for operating the product at scale.

Stripe Billing

Stripe was integrated to support the platform’s commercial model.

Billing functionality is embedded within the wider workflow, enabling secure management of transactions without creating unnecessary manual administration.

This provides a scalable payment foundation as the platform moves from launch into wider adoption.

Targeted Outreach Engine

Solving the technology challenge alone would not solve the marketplace challenge.

A two-sided fostering platform needs both referral demand and agency supply.

KinMatch therefore includes targeted outreach capability designed to support the acquisition of relevant organisations and help build network density.

This was treated as part of the product strategy rather than a separate marketing exercise.

Human-Led AI on Modern UK Infrastructure

The platform uses a modern web application architecture with secure UK-hosted data infrastructure.

The technology stack was chosen to support:

• secure multi-tenant access
• scalable growth
• strong auditability
• modern user experience
• integration with external services

The more important principle, however, is that automation supports professional decision-making rather than replacing it.

Technology accelerates the workflow.

People remain accountable for the decisions.

Results & Impact

KinMatch has been delivered as a launch-ready platform with the core technical, safeguarding and data-protection foundations already in place.

Confirmed outcomes include:

• live secure platform on UK infrastructure
• strict tenant isolation
• safeguarding-first data handling
• explainable AI-assisted matching
• human-reviewed referral processing
• organisation verification
• Stripe billing
• public recruitment funnel
• operator management tools
• security testing and automated safeguards
• go-to-market foundations

The next stage is focused on adoption and real-world performance.

Future case-study metrics should include:

• founding authorities or agencies onboarded
• referrals processed
• successful matches
• placement outcomes
• time saved during matching

No figures should be added until they can be verified from live platform usage.

What This Demonstrates

The KinMatch project demonstrates The DM Lab’s ability to take a complex, regulated digital product from concept through to a secure, launch-ready platform.

The project combines:

• Product Strategy
• Solutions Architecture
• SaaS Development
• Security Engineering
• Safeguarding by Design
• AI Integration
• Compliance Foundations
• Stripe Integration
• Go-to-Market Strategy

within one connected delivery team.

What Comes Next

The platform has been designed to evolve as adoption increases.

Future development can include:

• wider onboarding across authorities and agencies
• enhanced placement analytics
• additional workflow automation
• deeper integration with sector systems
• further security and compliance maturity

The emphasis will remain the same:

improve efficiency without weakening professional oversight, safeguarding or trust.

Final Thought

KinMatch demonstrates that building software for sensitive sectors requires more than technical capability.

It requires judgement.

Security, safeguarding, privacy, usability, commercial viability and human accountability all need to work together from the beginning.

By combining product thinking, engineering, security, compliance and go-to-market strategy, we created a platform designed to help professionals make better-informed fostering decisions without losing sight of the people those decisions affect.

For organisations working in regulated or trust-critical environments, this is exactly where digital transformation and solutions architecture need to meet.