Reflecting on Innovation Lab’s first year, Part 1
This post has been written collaboratively by Sohila Sawhney and Tom Norman
Establishing a team during a pandemic
The Barnardo’s Innovation Lab Team is 1 year old! Last year felt like a rollercoaster ride through a rapidly changing yet strangely static world for many people. For us in the Innovation Lab team at Barnardo’s it was no different, particularly as our team came into existence literally around the first Lockdown in March. Coming up on almost a year of working exclusively from our homes, we thought it timely to share our reflections and learnings of the last year.
Moving into Children’s Services — a change of dynamics
Our team was re-configured from what was Barnardo’s Digital Team to bring our work practices and methodologies closer to the Development and Innovation department, with a focus on Children’s Services, the beating heart of the organisation. The decision was made to create a team that could bring service design, research and product development methodologies to support wider Barnardo’s teams and existing children’s services in the crucial work they do to support vulnerable children, young people and families.
Our stated mission is to uncover, test and develop innovative ideas and practices so Barnardo’s can meet the challenges of modern society and create better outcomes for more children today and into the future.
The Innovation Lab Team’s work is focused on solving tangible problems in the social care space, and is positioned to be as close to the front line as possible, whilst investigating and understanding how to integrate the systems around it. Our aim is to ensure everything we do is sustainable and scalable, with the ultimate goal of positive systemic change.
Our relationship with the rest of the organisation has developed in a very positive way. Previously as part of the Digital Team, it had sometimes been difficult to get the level of engagement with our working methods, such as human-centred design or iterative approaches we would have wanted within the rest of the organisation. With our new home in Children’s Services, we’ve found that it has been the perfect springboard to get the kind of engagement we feel is necessary to bring about a positive change in the way that the organisation does things.
How we adapted our working practices
The inception of the Innovation Lab coincided with the first Covid 19 Lockdown in 2020. Like many other teams, we had to adapt our team very quickly to our new reality of all working completely remotely. Luckily we were already well-geared up to do this from a technology point of view, but had to adapt our interactions to make them more meaningful and supportive of each other. We realised that anxiety levels within the team were likely to rise and that it was important that support for the team was consistent and not necessarily confined to twice-weekly 1 to 1 meetings. We also made sure that our team meetings were regular and accessible to all in the team, without being compulsory.
Encouraging team members to take breaks during the day, take time off and to switch off at the end of the working day. Having a small team with a flat structure made it easier for us to engage at this level to understand that everyone was affected differently by the pandemic and to be able to create a supportive environment for the team. Our small team was also an advantage as it allowed team members to step up into wider roles, make suggestions and start initiatives. This is an ongoing process and there are so many things that we wished we’d done and still want to do (such as more team socials, gardening challenges and adapting our professional development framework) to add to the necessary support needed to make a happy and productive team. We are so lucky to have such self-motivated, dedicated and talented team members.
Adapting a 150 year old charity for remote delivery
At the start of the pandemic hundreds of services scrambled to continue to offer support to children, young people and families by changing their methods of communicating and meeting, as well as trying to meet their basic needs. We had previously been piloting the use of WhatsApp with a service in Hampshire, so we were able to draw on the work we had done there to enable workers to upscale this to many other services. This of course wasn’t without its delays and hiccups, mainly due to underwriting safeguarding and data policies that come with the territory of working with children and young people.
A significant number of new digital interventions and engagements were funded and planned, including Barnardo’s Family Space, Boloh Helpline and Barnardo’s Education Community. Our team helped to formulate approaches that would allow these teams to work in an iterative and evidence-based way. Something for us to consider moving forward, is how to marry up our iterative and agile ways of working with the charity’s need for certainty and long term planning. Also finding ways to reconcile the requirements and inherent constraints of funding with the ability to get to the right problem in a user-centred and evidenced-based way is an ongoing challenge.
The following section was written by Sohila Sawhney
The power of race equality safe spaces in the workplace
On personal levels and as an organisation we were at once rocked by the killing of George Floyd and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. We tend to talk about race and inequality when it is in the headlines, so it is worth remembering how many of us are fighting this battle every day. We simply cannot ignore the power of race equality in different parts of our lives, and our working environments are no exception. Barnardo’s has an established Equality, Diversity and Inclusion work-stream, staffed with colleagues and led by organisational ‘champions’. Our Race Equality Network is part of this, and we took the bold step to announce Barnardo’s as an anti-racist organisation. As a non-white colleague in a predominantly ethnically white organisation, I was impressed by the power of race equality safe spaces in the workplace. It gave me and other black and brown colleagues a chance to connect, express, grieve and share. Huge credit to those who made these virtual ‘safe spaces’ a reality as well as all our allies who have stood by our side. Our team has also made a commitment to help develop and support more people from ethnically non-white backgrounds to thrive in our profession. We believe this has to change if we are to better reflect and honour the diversity in our society long after the headlines have faded.
Sharing our learning and experience beyond Barnardo’s
As well as developing new relationships within the Barnardo’s family, we also got to know many other charities in a similar situation as us through publishing some Catalyst recipes (see below for the list and direct links) and getting involved in public webinars hosted by Digishift. Some of these we attended and others we were speaking on the panel. The main learning that we took from this was how valuable communities of practice are in this challenging time. It’s so useful to discuss and exchange ideas with those outside your organisation, but also who are experiencing many similar issues. It’s also great to be able to help others to shift and get a boost from the foundation work that we’d already done, especially in harnessing WhatsApp to enhance one on one communication between young people and service workers.
The last year has been a challenging and sometimes devastating time for the children, young people and families that Barnardo’s supports. It has also been an extremely tough year for all charities, large and small. Our aim within Barnardo’s is to enable it as an organisation to develop its digital and blended service offerings and improve capability, so that we can continue to deliver the crucial support that so many need. In our next team post reflecting on the last year, we’ll be describing some of the specific work we’ve done throughout 2020 and into early 2021.
Catalyst recipes:
• Deciding to pilot a new tool in a service with a vulnerable group
• Working alongside young people to help them deliver peer-to-peer support
