Case study: Organisational change in social care
This multi-faceted research and engagement process enabled a comprehensive understanding of needs, priorities and best practice – informing the client’s community platform and operating model.
Task
Social Care Wales Research, Data and Innovation team team have a remit to improve the use of research and evidence in social care practice. They had a number of ideas about how to achieve this, but a team who were new to user-centred design and agile approaches. I supported the team to prioritise and refine scope towards the aspects most impactful in advancing the goal of enhancing the use of research and evidence in social care practice.
Working closely with the 8-member client team, I was able to support their understanding of service design and agile methods, and build a case for incorporation of Communities of Practice into the operating model to enable the client to better understand the evolving needs of the sector.
Action
Using agile I was able to iterate and adapt the methodology to incorporate emerging needs and to deliver an approach which would support lasting organisational change.
- Tacit interviews with team
- Stakeholder identification and strategy
- Survey with a small sample of social workers
- Secondary research into Communities of practice
- Organisation mapping
- Platform rewuirements gathering and selection
- Co-design of community vision with stakeholder group
- Secondary research in to Community Manager role description
- Development of bespoke Community Manager job specification
Result
The team were able to hone in on the benefits of a Community of Practice approach and articulate how this would help them in their understanding of the needs of the sector.
This work enabled the team to procure a platform provider and gain additional funding from the Welsh Government which enabled them to hire 4 full time Community Managers and launch 4 new communities using the resources I had developed.
The client described the ways of working as ‘enjoyable agile’ and praised the approach to coaching the team through human centred design practices, and also described this project as a ‘step change’ in how they saw themselves as stewards of the sector.
Read more
Reshaping Communities of Practice for Social Workers (Social Finance Blog)
Defining the role of Community Manager for Social Care Wales (Social Finance Blog)
Sam Villis 