What do we mean by service design at Barnardo’s?
Davie and Amy are service designers at Barnardo’s building services that create better outcomes for more children. Amy and Davie together explain how service design at Barnardo’s works and what its benefits are.
At a recent workshop I was running, I was challenged — what was I doing in a room full of people who had designed dozens of children’s services between them, while I had designed none?
Traditionally at Barnardo’s, the word ‘service’ refers to the 1000+ children’s services commissioned to protect, support and nurture the UK’s most vulnerable children and young people. That’s changing: we’re expanding the way we think of service design.
We may call it different things, but service design happens all the time at Barnardo’s. Our colleagues on the frontline — for example, social workers, service managers, volunteers — are undoubtedly best placed to spot unmet needs and opportunities to improve services. They are closest to the end user and are passionate and committed about helping children and young people.
Taking a step back, planning and objectively evaluating a service is difficult to do if you’re also the person running it every day. And, because Barnardo’s services are dispersed across the UK, those at the frontline don’t always get the opportunity to share best practice and learning.
This is where the service design team can help.
The service design team are part of the digital team at Barnardo’s, who are redesigning children’s social care across the UK in order to deliver better outcomes for more children.
In this blog post, I’m going to explain how service design is helping to improve Barnardo’s services through equipping frontline staff, joining the dots between services, and helping to identify and implement best practice across the charity.
What is a service?
A service is anything that helps someone — from children in care to Barnardo’s colleagues — do something.
At Barnardo’s, a service might help someone get support for their mental health, find somewhere to live after leaving care, or become a foster carer.
Sometimes services are delivered online, like booking an appointment, and sometimes they are delivered in person, for example, counselling.
What is service design?
Service design is how we improve existing services or create new services based on the needs of users.
When we design a service these are the things we think about:
At Barnardo’s we take a holistic approach, considering the end-to-end experience of all services, whether they are delivered online or face-to-face.
First, we try to understand:
- why the service exists
- who uses the service
- and what exactly it is that users need from the service.
Next, we design around:
- what the user of the service should experience
- which channels they will use (face to face, phone, online)
- which processes and skills will help colleagues deliver the service
- which technology and tools they need
- and how the service will develop based on feedback.
What do we do?
We want to help our colleagues create and run the best possible services and make sure that they are continually centred around the needs of children and young people today and into the future.
Crucially we do this with, not just for our colleagues in Barnardo’s. We do this in collaboration and by drawing on the experience, knowledge and skills of staff and co-designing with children and young people.
We are also starting to identify opportunities to create more consistency between services. We believe each service shares some common elements, for example; processes, tools, technology, outcomes or roles. As we understand how each service is being delivered, we hope to work with colleagues across Barnardo’s to develop common solutions which all services can benefit from.
How does it help?
Service design as a method is strategic. It looks at the user, their needs and the support they need, as well as the obstacles that are in their way, and how to remove them. It also allows us to account for and adapt to all kinds of change like shifts in user expectations, the possibilities of new technologies, and changes to funding, to name a few.
Thinking about services and service design more broadly as we become a diverse, digital, learning organisation, will allow us to improve services so that they work better for all their users.
Some of the things we’re proud of achieving so far include:
- Equipping and empowering frontline staff — from our colleagues in mental health support through to advocacy — to develop new service offers, prototype new solutions, test, and measure change.
- Identifying that technology doesn’t always enable our staff to make the most of their skills or allow them to focus on their job, we coached our technology team in conducting user research to better understand staff needs. Our findings are informing the rollout of new tools and technology across Barnardo’s.
- Collaborating with our business development team (the team who respond to tenders) to enable them to respond to requests for digital services and working together to make our commissioning process user-centred.
- Researching how children and young people prefer to communicate and improving our services and policies to match, without building anything new. We learned lots of young people missed appointments because they couldn’t easily contact their support workers, so we updated our social media policy and are rolling out smartphones to staff. That way, they can communicate with children and young people in the way that’s best for them.
By working with our colleagues — who have a wealth of experience developing our many services — to bring this new way of thinking to life, we can achieve better outcomes for more children and model best practice in Barnardo’s, in the social care sector, and beyond.
Davie and Amy are service designers in the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology team. To get the latest updates from the Barnardo’s Digital & Technology 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.
