The Barnardo’s Service Design team and the road ahead
The #FutureBarnardos movement is in full swing, bringing together 90 people across digital, data, design and technology to transform how we work, learn and deliver products and services for the children and young people of the UK.
Our role has been and always will be to help design the next generation of children’s social care. In pursuit of that goal, we always design our products and services with our colleagues and the children and young people we support.
With over 1000 developing and operating services across the country, we are a lighthouse for consciously designed, evidence-informed and digitally-enabled products and services
As we mature as a team and prove our value, we start to bring a stronger focus of defining design as changemaking into our remit. This brings forward our views on how design–as a way of thinking, creating and approaching problems–can add further value to our mission at Barnardo’s. This allows us to more consciously help to shape the conditions for success in a digital organisation and enhance how we take a systemic view of social care from policy right down to the smallest touchpoint.
We’re focussing on three key needs of children and young people this year:
- Out-of-hours and self-service support
From children using messaging services to contact their support worker outside their regular face-to-face appointment to the way we help children and young people access information that’s both relevant for them and suitable to their age and needs — these steps will help them triage themselves into further care if required. - Transitions
The children’s social care cliff is real. Across the board, we see concerning gaps in how our young people move from children’s social care services to adult services. Young people are often forced into services and types of support that they don’t have good information about and are not ready for yet. We’re looking across leaving care, mental health and other areas to see how we can address this gap. - Peer-to-Peer support
Our friends are often our most trusted confidants, so how can we help enable young people to feel ready to start conversations about how they’re feeling? We want to ensure that we’re reducing stigma and making visible existing support networks so that friends and confidants feel more empowered to respond appropriately. Young people want to be supported and surrounded by ‘people like me’ who’ve experienced the challenges they have, such as being a young carer, and we’re trialling ways to bring this into services.
Across all of this, we’re thinking about how we address complex needs in personalised ways. Instead of reducing children and young people into single issues for which there are single services, we are allowing for cross-over and integrated support, that can be personalised to suit their unique requirements.
The responsibility for these needs will sit predominantly within our three corporate strategic areas of Mental Health and Wellbeing, Child Sexual Abuse and Children In and Leaving Care.
What are our goals for the year in the service design team?
We’re ready to deliver visible change.
- Turn research into positive change
From changes to the way we think about and provide services, to how we frame particular challenges and the way the organisation works. We’re ready to deliver visible change. - Lead and democratise design and systems change capability
We cannot and do not sit as the team from which all services are created, but we can demonstrate what good looks like and help build organisational capability around design and systems change. - Connect and share
We’ve come so far, we’ve learnt a lot and it’s time for us to share more both within Barnardo’s and across the social care sector. We’re busy building relationships across boundaries, and we’re ready to be brave with sharing what we think.
It’s an exciting time to be in Barnardo’s, a huge ambition to shape children’s social care sector around children’s needs and we are ready for the challenge. Onwards!
Melanie Rayment is the Head of Service Design in the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology team. To get the latest updates from the Barnardo’s Digital team, subscribe to blog.barnar.do on Medium, and follow #FutureBarnardos on Twitter.
We’re hiring! Read more about the team we’re building and our current roles available.
