Sam Villis

Problem

Social Care Wales were planning to set up a Community of Practice (CoP) around the use of evidence in social care practice. As part of the preparations for this the team had pulled together a long list of people who they felt may be involved in that community or were adjacent to that work. This was a long list, and it wasn’t clear who were possible partners or stakeholders, and who might be community members.

Approach

I used the definition of CoPs as defined by Wenger-Traynor and Emily Webber’s subsequent work to outline a workshop that would help to embed the definition and purpose of communities while also supporting the team to understand more about the goals they hoped to achieve for their own CoP.

The workshop board was designed to hold participants attention by using steps that would take participants through the definition of how a CoP should be made up. This was supported by facilitation to help participants move cards.

Alongside this, facilitators captured notes about individuals who were discussed. These were later affinity mapped and supported understanding of language being used amongst the project team

Outcome: The client team developed an understanding of how their community of practice should be structured and the kinds of people who would be well placed to further the objectives of the work. This work also formed the first step in understanding language and approaches that would support the development of a community vision statement and communications