Designing the Waltham Forest Opportunity Bank

How we’re bringing policy, service design and (most importantly) our young people together to build a tool to improve life chances

This is a story about how the policy and service design teams at Waltham Forest are working with our young people to help them better navigate the world; to help them access the opportunities that they need to flourish, to fulfil their talents and aspirations.

It’s a new approach for Waltham Forest Council, the kind that we committed to in our Creating Futures corporate strategy: a new way of working, building new relationships, focused on our people.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll give honest insight into what we’re doing and the approach we’re taking, so that others can learn from our lessons — where we fail and where we (hopefully) succeed.

But before that, let me explain what we’re doing: we’re building a bank.

A bank you say?

Last year we received the recommendations of our Life Chances Commission, compiled based on the testimony of local experts and young people. Those young people told the Commission that they found it difficult to access the opportunities they knew were out there, be that work experience, employment or training opportunities. And they wanted more advice on the options available to them. For example:

“We get a lot of advice about being a lawyer or doctor, but I don’t know who to talk to about what being an Estate Agent is like”

As part of the Life Chances Commission’s work, we met young people in schools and at events and asked them about their aspirations and the challenges they face

Young people told us that the Council and it’s partners should look to create a place where such opportunities could meaningfully be shared with young people. The Commission agreed. They recommended an Opportunity Bank.

And if you build it, they will come. Right?

So we are going to build an ‘Opportunity Bank’. a place where young people can find out about and access the opportunities they need to succeed.

The interesting thing is how we are building it.

Our approach to tackling life chances is a mix of the 'whats' — traditional interventions with associated metrics and outcomes — and 'hows’— which in this case is a firm commitment to a new way of working that puts our young people at the heart of decision making.

So we’re being deliberately open-minded about what the Opportunity Bank actually is. This needs to come through the design work.

The Opportunity Bank will only work if young people use it. Young people will only use it, if it is useful.

The world is littered with fantastically designed public-sector tools that lay dormant because they’ve not be designed and developed with the user in mind. We do not want to add to the list.

Listening and learning from our young residents

And so before we rush to build, we are going to find out what young people really want from this bank and how they will use it.

For example:

• What are the ‘opportunities’ they are interested in and want access to? Are they volunteering? Training? Jobs? Mentoring? Leisure activities? Space to be creative?
• What does the ‘bank’ look like and how would young people access it? Is it an online platform, or a physical thing?

We can’t answer these questions alone. We’re doing so through two new relationships that we’re really excited about.

Our Life Chances Youth Task Force: (Left to right) Katy, Roni, Felix, Jason and Gulcin

Firstly, we’ve established a ‘Life Chances Youth Task Force’ to help facilitate discussions with as wide a group of young people as possible. We’ve had an excellent group of Young Advisors for a long time — talented young residents that advise the council across a range of projects.

But the Youth Task Force, led by 19 year-old resident Roni Weir, is taking this a step further by leading discussions with other young people across the borough — those that the council doesn’t normally talk to, in schools and colleges, and across council service areas where there are young people most in need. You’ll hear from Roni directly over the coming weeks.

Work is underway. Post-its are spawning. ©Comuzi

And secondly, we’ve partnered with Comuzi and Polar Insight’s James Tattersfield to help us research, design and prototype the Bank, and work with the Youth Task Force on user insight.

Both organisations bring energy and expertise in working with young people to design solutions, including experience of working with the BBC to pilot digital story formats with greater reach for young people. We’ve barely started the work, but already our workspace is a blur of post-its.

Where next?

We are only at the start of this journey.

Over the coming weeks, we will learn from our young people and begin to prototype the Opportunity Bank. And then as we move from design to delivery, we will continue to listen to their needs, to help us build something that works for them.

Over the coming months, we will refine and improve the approaches we are taking. We will look to embed youth participation and mainstream it across the council’s work, through a series of pilot projects beyond the Bank.

It won’t be easy. We will make mistakes, but we will learn from them. We will keep an open mind to where this journey takes us. There is just one commitment we make: to focus on listening to and learning from our young residents, and doing everything we can to improve outcomes for them.