How I helped Kay to improve the lives of 50+ vulnerable young people in 90 days
Read time: 2.5 minutes
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Hi Reader,
Kay Liversidge is the Youth Service Manager for Brackenridge. She leads a team providing residential support services to vulnerable young people with complex needs.
In New Zealand, the social services sector is undergoing massive transformation to ‘enable good lives’ & place the voice of the young people and their families at the centre.
The problem was that the current way of bringing people into care was causing anxiety, frustration and stress for everyone involved, particularly the young people.
Over a three month period we used the fundamentals of the DUCTRI design thinking model to reshape the experience.
Discovering and understanding the problem
The first step was to explore the problem space and gain insights into peoples perspectives and experiences.
We completed 21 interviews with young people, families, support workers, social workers and service managers.
Additionally, we followed the experience of two young people to understand the context.
Personas were developed to represent who we were designing for. The personas were present throughout the design project as a way of anchoring and making decisions.
Persona example
We created a current-state eco-system map to understand who all the stakeholders are and to understand the relationships and connections across the wider system.
Finally, we developed a current-state service blueprint to map out the customer journey, the key steps, what’s working and what’s not. This asset is central to gaining common understanding of the ‘as is’ situation.
Creating ideas
The ideation phase was about creating options to improve the core issues identified in the discovering and understanding phases.
To explore the options we held two co-creation workshops with staff to ensure that any changes included their ideas and therefore more likely to be adopted if implemented.
We mapped the needs, pain points and interactions and then ideated potential prototypes.
The selected prototypes were then prioritised using an effort/impact matrix.
Testing potential solutions
We created a future-state service blueprint to provide an aspirational anchor for our work.
Several other assets were prototyped and tested including processes, forms, visuals, metrics, guides and checklists.
Feedback was gathered from young people and other stakeholders throughout the process and from individual feedback sessions.
The assets were either eliminated, iterated or refined over the coming months.
Outcomes
The service was able to build a more robust and person-centred approach to the way of bringing young people into care.
Outcomes included:
- Increased collaboration amongst the various stakeholder professionals.
- Enabled the voices of young people, family members and staff to remain central to the support plan.
- Simple and repeatable process that provide more certainty on the support needs, risks and all around ‘care design and fit’.
- Increased customer confidence in the service.
Ultimately, it resulted in a far less traumatic experience for the young person and for the voice of the young person and families to be a the centre of conversations and decisions.
In Summary
In less than 90 days, Kay and her team were able to reduce trauma, increase stakeholder confidence while reducing risk and uncertainty for the organisation.
Kay and her team didn’t have any experience of design thinking before this project.
The catalyst was Kay’s willingness to be vulnerable and open to change.
“Opening up to others to see how you do things wasn’t easy. But, it has allowed me to do the right thing by the young person and family. Now, I embrace collaboration and design thinking.”
And, the impact on the organisation was clear, “this work has been life-changing, it is transforming our organisation.” General Manager of Service Delivery- Nick Scott.
There has never been a better time to learn and leverage design thinking. If this is achievable in just 90 days, imagine what you could do in 6 months to 1 year…Your life and business could completely change.
Currently, I’m helping startups validate their business ideas, so I only do a handful of consulting calls to help others.
Good news though, I have two options available for you:
1) The Confident Change-maker Crash Course [C4] free 7-day email course is available.
C4 is for anyone who is curious about design thinking, innovation and making change.
2) I’m building a comprehensive course on design thinking using the DUCTRI Model and I’m looking for 5 people to beta test the course. The investment will be $99.
I’ve helped 75+ startups and dozens of other organisations use the DUCTRI Model to actually implement innovation.
The course is for:
- Professionals at a career crossroads and wanting to learn advanced skills to set yourself apart
- Business owners wanting to future-proof your business and meet complex challenges head on to thrive in disruption
- Corporate change-makers or innovators wanting to energise your organisation, enhance your personal standing, and secure your career by transforming your ability to drive impactful change.
Book your spot today by clicking the button below. I will then let you know the next steps.
(Only 7 spots, so they will go on a first-come, first-served basis)
That’s all for today friends!
I hope the case study gives you confidence to adopt and apply design thinking to your complex problems.
As always, feel free to reply to this email or reach out to me on LinkedIn as I’d love to hear your feedback.
Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next week.
Vaughan
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