Week 17
- I went on holiday and came back to news our new online service is just… working. So that’s nice.
- Now we’re starting to think about how we can start sharing this work with others.
- To rewind briefly, our new service helps people complete advance decision and advance statement forms. It is a VERY messy policy space. Unlike lasting power of attorney (LPA), the Government has not taken on service provision. This is despite the them being governed by the same law — the Mental Capacity Act. This means the provision of advance decisions has been left to the private sector, charities like us, solicitors etc…
- So there’s a gap in provision which has led to fragmentation, inconsistency and a proliferation of different forms. We’re trying to fix this.
- We think we have the best service available to help people complete advance decisions and advance statements. That’s why we’ve invested significant effort to build our new service in a way which makes it easy to replicate. That;s why we’ve built it using the GOV.UK Design System. We want this service to be that good, that it discourages others trying to re-invent the wheel.
- If an NHS organisation wants to provide their own advance decision service — our service is here for them. We’ve done the hard work to make that possible.
- We’re currently thinking through this proposition. How we talk about it, how we ‘sell’ it, and how we convince people or organisations that our service is the best — and that they should either use it, or signpost to us.
- We’re really interested in how you do this well, how do you build a community around this? Is it a software development, Github led way of open sourcing code? Or is it something else?
- I am struck by how hard this might be to do well… and slightly daunted.
