Hello, world
We’re the digital team at Barnardo’s, and this is our blog. We’ll be using it to talk to you about the work we’re doing to transform one of the country’s oldest and largest children’s charities. We hope you’ll use it to challenge us and help us do better — whether you’re one of Barnardo’s 30,000 staff and volunteers, one of the thousands of people who cares about digital transformation, or one of the millions of people who cares about our goal of creating better outcomes for more children.
Why are we here?
In 1867, Thomas Barnardo was bold enough to ask a question others were too scared to. He saw how schools all around him were struggling to teach vulnerable children, because their curriculum was based only on what the churches felt they ought to teach. He saw it wasn’t working.
So Thomas asked: What education most helps destitute inner city children escape the cycle of poverty?
Today, Barnardo’s is asking an equally big question. We see how local governments all around us are struggling to support vulnerable children, because their expectations of success are built primarily on what they are able to measure.
So we’re asking: What really works to help today’s children escape cycles of abuse, violence and risk?
Barnardo’s believes it’s time to harness the technology, opportunity and velocity of the internet age to help tackle this challenge. We’ve written it into our ten-year strategy, and we’ve placed digital transformation (of services, not just communications or technology) right at the heart of our organisation.
More than any other part of society, children deserve to benefit from the wonderful web-woven world — so all our service design starts, and ends, with them.
What does this mean for Barnardo’s?
When the digital team arrived at Barnardo’s, we found that unlike many organisations, Barnardo’s had made its goals beautifully clear. Stronger families, safer childhoods, and positive futures for young people. And as we work to transform the care landscape, those goals are what all the digital team will be striving for.
So that we can achieve those goals, from now on, Barnardo’s will begin to:
- design services that our users need, not what anyone else assumes they need
- base decisions on data and evidence
- start small and develop iteratively towards big goals, in partnership with others on the same journey
If we get this right, Barnardo’s will work more and more efficiently, save money across the public sector, and most importantly, deliver better services to the people who need them most.
Step one: make no assumptions
How will we begin? With our users — and with a quest for data.
There are immense benefits to joining up data between the many organisations that provide care for a child. There are countless opportunities to support more children, from more backgrounds and in more ways. We know that the large majority of our service users have access to the internet, often on a smartphone that they own or have full access to, and we know that many children use the internet every day.
But there is lots of received wisdom about young people and the internet. We may imagine all children have digital fluency from birth, but we forget that all skills need to be learned. While we are sure the opportunity is huge, we can’t make any assumptions. We won’t assume that every child knows how to use online services. We won’t assume every young person will know what’s acceptable to share, especially when some of our service users have had experience of exactly the opposite.
Instead of assuming, we will test everything out in safe ways with small groups. Only when we’re confident that we’ve got it right for our early testers will we even think about scaling up.
Step two: shoot for the stars
Where will we end up? We are proud to say we don’t know yet.
The road ahead is incredibly exciting. It is a huge statement for an organisation the size of Barnardo’s to place digital at the heart of its mission. We’re humbled that we have been trusted with such an important task.
We all know that the social care system faces huge challenges to support all the children and young people who need it.
But if we get this task right, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reach out to many more children — and give them far better chances, opportunities, and futures.
Jason is Barnardo’s Chief Digital Officer, responsible for leading the organisation’s transformation. Follow this blog and @xcaplin on Twitter for updates and job opportunities in the new Barnardo’s Digital team.
