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During the Connecting Families project - Funded by Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Response, and supported by Design agency Shift - we’ll be following a specific Design Process. This is broken into five key phases. These sprint notes will reflect on our learning from each phase. This blog is all about the 'Inception' phase.
Read MoreWith 71% of community organisations in some parts of the voluntary sector having moved to online delivery since the COVID-19 crisis began, digital exclusion has become an even bigger obstacle to engaging those most in need than it was before. This is a particularly pressing issue for Early Years services, who support many families living in financially vulnerable households without internet access. As England endures another lockdown, Dartington Service Design Lab [Dartington] is working with a number of charities and families to develop and test different ways of supporting early years services to reach digitally excluded families. Here’s how we intend to do it...t ways of supporting early years services to reach digitally excluded families. Here’s how we intend to do it...
Read MoreWe talk about evidence a lot at Dartington, and using evidence ‘in new ways’. We try to put this in practical terms without too much jargon, but we know it still sounds pretty abstract. What do we actually mean? Our new report tries to bring it all down to earth.
Read MoreAt Dartington, we have been working with Salford Council to develop a systemic Theory of Change for their Better Outcomes New Delivery (BOND) programme. In the course of the work with managers and practitioners from across the BOND programme, we discovered that family resilience was felt to be central to all the programmes – but also under-explored. What did it look like, and how could it be supported? We worked with teams to create a testable model of the dynamic causes of family resilience to underpin and inform subsequent work within the systemic theory of change for all BOND programmes. Here’s what we learnt...
Read MoreThis year, youth services faced new challenges in engaging young people, particularly young people at risk of becoming involved in violence. As the Learning Partner for the Youth Endowment Fund’s special COVID-19 Grant round, we’ve had the opportunity to understand more about how organisations – ranging from grassroots charities to Britain’s largest local authorities – have managed to adapt programmes to continue to engage young people during the pandemic. In this blog, we look at how working with parents, carers and siblings can help organisations to maintain positive relationships with young people through the rest of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreDomestic abuse charities and campaigners have long highlighted the emotional impact of domestic abuse - and in particular the impact of coercive and controlling behaviours. We've seen the results of these hard years of campaigning and raising public awareness in Parliament testimonies, mainstream media, and ultimately in law and have more understanding now more than ever, of the devastating effects it can have on victims’ mental health. The ongoing Early Action Systems Change partnership work between Dartington, Renfrewshire Council, Engage Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership and a range of voluntary services, has highlighted coercive control in relationships can start before adulthood, and that this experience might prevent victims from accessing mental health support.
Read MoreThose who know us well will know this is a departure from our area of focus: children, young people, and families. But supporting the use of evidence through co-design and rapid iteration is at the heart of our work. That is why we teamed up with Nesta, the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Macmillan Cancer Support and UCL on the ‘Reimagining Help’ guide, a toolkit for service and system leaders to design support that helps people reach the goals that matter most to them.
Read MoreAfter almost a year of directly engaging with young people from various care settings, we identified the communication needs of individuals and the system-wide needs of practitioners and carers responsible for delivering care within the council. We found that it was important to support ‘meaningful communications’ between young people, practitioners, parents, and caregivers, which formed the basis of the design stages of our work.
Read MoreThe Dartington Service Design Lab joins the Centre for Youth Impact, Research in Practice and the University of Plymouth to form the Learning Partnership for the new Youth Endowment Fund COVID-19 Grant Round. We will focus on understanding the impact of COVID-19 on young people at risk of being drawn into violent crime, and the most effective approaches to reaching, engaging and serving vulnerable young people during the pandemic.
Read MoreAcross our projects at the Dartington Service Design Lab we are seeing many Local Authorities who want to empower parents and other community members to support each other during crucial times – including during children’s early years. The role we play is to ensure that any ‘people powered’ support works in the best way it can. So far, we have learned three key lessons.
Read MoreA tool to help service planners consider and respond to risks posed to children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated control measures
Read MoreIn a time where everything feels unprecedented and many services are in crisis response mode, we ask the question, what should we prioritise under the “new normal” and what can we do to prepare our resources now? Rachel Lily explores…
Read MoreAt Dartington, and across our sector, we know that co-production is an important feature of good service design and research. But how can we practice what we preach? Chicago Beyond and their partners have been trying to meet this challenge head-on. An impact investor focused on improving young people’s life chances, they’ve called out the power imbalance that often characterises social research and taken big strides to help them and others do something about it. Here, Finlay Green explains what he learned after reaching out to them earlier this year.
Read MoreWe’re ready to generate and synthesise the knowledge that delivery organisations and commissioners need during the COVID-19 crisis. We want to hear from statutory and voluntary sector service providers and commissioners about their most important and pressing needs are. We also want to hear about what sorts of support would be most valuable in applying this evidence. Fill in our five-minute survey now.
Read MoreReflecting on the findings of the Independent Care Review: there’s a big idea at its heart that goes beyond improving outcomes for those with care experience, but are we ready for it?
Read MoreThe COVID-19 emergency is demanding radical changes in how public systems, communities and civil society organisations support those in need across the UK. Funders, Government and Civil Society are rallying in support. With so much activity taking place at an unprecedented pace, it is imperative we learn from elsewhere and each other. We’ll be working with the Collaborative to bring learning from the outside in, and learning from the inside, out. Here we provide a brief overview of how we expect this will look and evolve.
Read MoreIn 2015, the Lab joined forces with the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) National Unit to collaborate on the ‘ADAPT’ programme, the second generation of the FNP service aimed at improving outcomes for children and young parents and reducing inequalities. We set out to enhance the flexibility of the existing service and improve the efficiency of the programme. Five years after beginning the project, we are pleased to join FNP in launching the final report with all our many learnings and recommendations from the experience.
Read MoreWe wanted to update you on the steps that we at the Dartington Service Design Lab are taking in response to COVID-19.
Read MoreAt Dartington, through experience we have learnt the importance and power of a visual depiction of data to communicate meaning. Done well, this can reduce barriers to understanding the data and address any imbalance between those who hold the information or evidence and those who are interested in understanding it. Here Keira Lowther and Daniel Ellis discuss the power of visualisations and show how they can help us understand systems.
Read More‘Systems Thinking’ is decidedly in vogue - but many working in local government have been thinking in systems for decades (maybe they just didn’t know it). Now is the time to intentionally embrace this way of thinking: to make the most of the current scarce resources, but given all the political promises, to prepare for when the economic tide turns.
[This blog was first published on themj.com website December 18th, 2019]
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