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Options UK works with health and social care organisations including public health agencies, local authorities, government departments and third sector agencies
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Training Northumberland’s Safeguarding Adults team in co-design methods
Northumberland Safeguarding Adult’s Board invited designers from Options UK to facilitate a training event in which service users, service providers and carers from key organisations including the Department for Work and Pensions, Trading Standards and the Police were brought together to discuss and develop new interventions to protect vulnerable adults
Options UK led the delegates through a four-stage process designed to define the main issues, develop ideas to overcome these issues, select one idea for implementation and to develop that idea for implementation. Stakeholders left the training event with an in-depth understanding of the issues they needed to address, experience of applying engagement tools and a detailed action plan for change.
The teams are currently implementing their ideas and will present their achievements to a panel of commissioners and counsellors in July 2011. Click here to read more about the project.
Public Services by Design
In March 2011 Options UK concluded the Supporting Independent Living Project on behalf of the North East Improvement and Efficiency Partnership. The project was one of 13 national projects supported by the Design Council to demonstrate the value design thinking can bring to transforming the way health and social care services are designed and delivered.
Options UK’s role in the wider project was to conduct a qualitative study with current users, providers and potential users of four best-practice independent living services in the region. The purpose of this was to identify what those services did differently to make them especially successful, and to quantify this for use by other similar services in the region. The research progressed into a co-design phase during which stakeholders worked together to design potential new service improvements. A vast array of new ideas were generated, from small interventions such as advertising free computer courses in local newspapers, to larger scale interventions such as giving pensioners one-to-one support in their homes to get online.
Several ideas were trialled through low-cost and rapid prototyping across five local authorities. Prototyping was used to give a real-time insight into which ideas were best at supporting change and improving performance. This evidence was then incorporated into a compelling case for change and shared across the North East.
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