Organisation / ACT Government – Community Services Directorate
Project Name / Co-Design Project – Integrated service system for vulnerable families
Project Sponsor / David Matthews
Senior Directorate, ACT Government
Project Lead / Jesper Christiansen
Project Lead, Concept Development, ThinkPlace Pty Ltd
Date / 3 May 2012
Design Leader / Nina Terrey
Partner, ThinkPlace Pty Ltd
From ThinkPlace Pty Ltd ACN 116 993 170 | Trading as ThinkPlace Trust ABN 34 280 130 162
Mezzanine 55 Wentworth Avenue Kingston | PO Box 5249 Kingston ACT 2604
p +61 2 6282 8852 f +61 2 6282 8832
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Section 1: Intent and Co-design research design
Purpose of Protocol
Intent of Co-Design Research
Section 2: How to conduct research
Who are we interested in?
A networked approach
Research teams
Reflection and skill building
Guiding principles
What will we gather in the field?
Recording the interview
Interviewer Safety & Comfort
Ethical issues
Section 3: Interview Process
Introduction – First 5 mins
General demographics - 15 mins
QUESTIONS
Activities after interview
Guiding framework for research and analysis
Section 4: Post-Field
Section 1:
Intent and Co-design research design
1
Purpose of Protocol
The purpose of this document is to:
- ensure there is a clear understanding of the project amongst team members
- provide clear guidance about the research method including
- Why we are doing this research?
- Which research questions we want to answer?
- What kind of information we need to answer these questions?
- Where we can find the information?
- What are the contact persons who are responsible for each stage in the co-design research?
Intent of Co-Design Research
Context
The ACT Government recognises a group of individuals and families in the ACT experiencing poor outcomes against a range of indicators, which in turn can trigger or maintain cycles of disadvantage. The project focuses on improving responses for individuals and families that cannot, or choose not to, access the support they require to meet their full range of needs and to mitigate against any adverse outcomes that may result, including:
- Poor outcomes for one or more individuals, including children, compared with other community members at a local and/or population level
- Reduced personal well-being and social connectedness
- Reduced economic participation leading to a loss of economic activity
- Risk taking and anti-social behaviours which impact negatively on themselves or other citizens
- Prolonged involvement with services without achieving progress resulting in inefficient and ineffective use of resources
- Migration to higher cost services and interventions
There is a broad agreement that the public service system is failing to address the problems and needs experienced by vulnerable families. Therefore, there is a need for a better understanding of the experiences of vulnerable families in the complex service system that they are interacting with.
Drivers for change
We are currently dealing with a service system that grew in a largely reactive manner without considering the user experience. This results in increased service complexity and duplication. As a consequences, families with multiple (breadth) and/or intensive (depth) support needs are experiencing barriers in accessing the support they need and want. This results in at least the following drivers for change:
- Political awareness and recognition that a group of individuals/families are experiencing complexity in receiving the support they need and want, resulting in poor service outcomes and ineffective use of public resources
- The desire to work as ‘one government’ (Hawke Report) – better collaboration between governmental organisations, community-based work and citizens to create a cohesive service system for citizens.
- Reversing service resistance – the system becomes an additional risk factor for the families and a barrier (rather than driver of) to change
- Reversing the turf war – taking shared responsibility for creating better outcomes for vulnerable families
- Introducing a co-design approach – great interest in co-design approaches, concepts and tools to improve outcomes for citizens and the effectiveness for government service delivery
Goals of the research engagement
To deliver on our intent, we need tounderstandhow vulnerable families currently experience and engage with the service system as well as explore future collaborative approaches for developing and co-producing services that creates better outcomes for vulnerable families in ACT.
The research aims to give illustrative descriptions of the journey of families in the service system with a specific focus on their experiences in significant situations and critical points of interaction. This will illuminate the problems and challenges that prevent desired outcomes.It will reflect a ‘holistic’ view on their service journey and the functioning of the service system as well as in-depth perspectives on its implications for the citizens.
The research will give a better understanding of:
-The needs as well as the assets and desires of vulnerable families
-The experiences of vulnerable families seen from their perspectiveas well as their journeys through the service system
-The interconnections in the service system and the potential effectiveness of a more collaborative approach
-How the current service delivery does not fit into the citizens’ life and their needs
Desired outcomes for research
-Outcome 1: The research will give (new) insights into how to engage and retain people in meaningful, person-centred service environments.
-Outcome 2:The research will inform the basis of outcomes-focused decision making by showing the potential of working as ‘one system’, regardless of provider and funding source.
-Outcome 3: The research will reframe current service delivery by introducing a co-design approach in the ACT government andshow the potential of co-designing and co-producing services with communities and citizens.
Output
- Six citizen/family service journey maps that will show key experiences, significant situations and critical points of interaction. This will highlight problems experienced by vulnerable families involved in dealing with the service system.
- The Citizen Journey Diagnostic Tool will be applied to the maps to draw out principles, insights and ideas for new opportunities that the ACT government can pursue in creating better outcomes for vulnerable families (i.e.Personas, critical touch or transition points, problem statements, etc.). These principles, insights, ideas and their application will be presented in the final report.
Design considerations
- What is our understanding of a vulnerable family and what implications does it have for this project and beyond?
- What work has been done so far in integrating services? How do we build on it in a productive way?
- How do we create a cohesive care for citizens and manage the interdependency of needs within highly specialized and separate fields of expertise?
- How do we create collective accountability in order to meet needs of the families in an integrated way and address their needs as a whole family?
- How can we initiate process for cultural and sustainable change within the organisation that can support a new approach to dealing with vulnerable families in ACT?
- What will be our approach to prototyping with users in terms of tools and techniques chosen.
- How will we ensure the research and service design demonstrates visible benefit to the client.
Section 2:
How to conduct research
Who are we interested in?
It is very difficult to define and quantify what characterizes vulnerable families.Given the focus on person-centred outcomes provided by ‘one system’, we need to look beyond the formal programme and policy areas in order to understand the experience and service journey of vulnerable families.
This point is reinforced by the fact that the number of vulnerable families varies according to who you ask. ‘Vulnerable families’ are usually identified through certain family level barriers. These barriers include:
Low or limited incomes / debt; sole or young parenthood; culturally or linguistically diverse; disability; unstable housing or homelessness; domestic violence; drug or alcohol abuse; physical or mental health issues; lack of social support; lack of private transport; low literacy; unemployment; large family size; lack of social stability; inability to live desired lifestyle; day-to-day stress
The service need matrix is a helpful tool to classify citizens and families by the intensity and number of services they require. Given the intention of the project, we are particularly interested in families and citizens that are located primarily in the ‘Intensive’ service need area (top right)and secondly in the ‘Assisted’ (top left) and ‘Managed’ service need area (bottom right).
In order to have a reasonable mix of families and to ensure that we apply useful criteria for engaging with the families, we have developed a table of family criteria that can be used as a framework for selecting and representing the families. The table is divided into three parts – Household type, family characteristics and service relationship (and contains to examples of families within our scope).
Table 1 – Family criteria
Family criteria / FamilyA / Family
B / Family
C
Household type
Household with children? / Yes / Yes / …
Household type – single, couple, multi-generation / Single / Couple / …
Family characteristics
Australian citizen / resident? / Yes / No / …
Cultural background? –
indigenous, western, other / Western / Other / …
Health issues in the household –
both, mental, physical, none / Mental / Physical / …
Disability in the household –
both, mental, physical, none / None / None / …
Income –
none, low, medium, high / None / Low / …
Currently employed? / No / No / …
Homeless / experiencing unstable housing? / Yes / Yes / …
Household members involved in justice system? / Yes / No / …
Socially connected? –
disconnected, somewhat connected, well connected / Disconnected / Somewhat connected / …
Access to personal transport (i.e. car)? / No / Yes / …
Service relationship
Engaged by which service provider? – both, only government, only community service, none / Both / Only community service / …
Crisis level – low, medium, high / high / Medium / …
Statutory involvement? / Yes / Yes / …
A networked approach
As part of the research, we are engaging with particular vulnerable families. For this reason, the selection and involvement of these families has to be carried out in close collaboration withservice providers and frontline staff working. These are people who work with the families in practice and we see their in-depth understanding of the situations and experiences of vulnerable families as a value in itself that has to be utilized.
The project will adopt the co-design approach involving engagement with existing service users and learning networks including government and community practitioners. In this way, the family service journeys will be supplemented by service provider/frontline staff perspectives to clarify or further describe their experience, context and circumstance. This is an approach that relies on the voluntary participation of all people involved and uses the ‘natural connections’ in the system, building on people’s existing engagement and desire to be involved.
Concretely, we are going to develop eight family service journey maps from which we are going to gather insights and ideas. These journey maps will be developed from approximately three interviews per map with people within and around the family (two main interviews with family representatives and frontline staff and one ‘follow up’ interview for clarification, reflection and ideation). This will be a total of 24 interviews – some of which will be formal and structured; others will be semi-structured (see Figure 2).
Engaging families
The primary approach for engaging the families will be through the community organisations and their case workers:
-Step 1: Dialogue or informal interview with frontline worker / community organisation / case worker
-Step2: Establishing contact and meeting the family + interview sessions with family
-Step 3: Reflection-interview with community organisations or frontline workers from concrete experience with family (either as research or as fieldshop activity)
-Step 4: Revisiting family with follow up questions(either as research or as fieldshop activity)
Steps 3 and 4 are dependent on the willingness and ability of the family to participate further.
Other possiblefieldwork activities
-Observation with frontline workers
-Observation in the homes of families or alongside them in a regular day of activity
Research teams
ThinkPlace is responsible for scheduling the main activities in the research phase, but relies on the collaboration and resources of the ACT government and community organisations for carrying out the research. The research will be conducted in teams with people from ACT government, the community organisations and ThinkPlace. This process will be organised and monitored as possibilities for engaging the families emerge (see Table 2).
Table 2 – research and interview process (example)
Reflection and skill building
A part of the intent for this project was to use it as a process for learning about and reflection on the knowledge, methodology and tools involved in a co-design approach. For this reason, weekly reflection sessions will put the research and co-design process into focus by looking at the practical experiences and challenges as well as their implication for methodology and process design. These sessions will also provide some skill building on relevant methodology, techniques and approaches as the project runs its course (see Table 3).
Table 3 – Reflection sessions
Reflection Session / Date / Time and Location / Reflection Focus: / Skill Building Topic:1 / 11th May /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Early observations’
- Applying research protocol initial week of fieldwork
2 / 18th May /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Emerging knowledge from the field’
- Understanding how to apply co-design research methods
3 / 25th May /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Telling the narrative’
- Analysis and synthesis – Service journeys
4 / 1st June /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Insights generation’
- Developing insights using diagnostic
5 / 8th June /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Co-designing possibilities for service improvement’
- Understanding codesign with families, government and service delivery organisations (e.g. frontline staff)
6 / 15th June /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Turning possibilities to practical application’
- Developing service integration/improvement
7 / 22th June /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Sustaining cultural changes’
- Embracing co-design as a way of going forward
8 / 29th June /
- 10-12.00noon
- ThinkPlace 55 Wentworth Ave, Kingston
- Reflection – ‘Backcast – where did we start? How did we progress? And when did we end up?’
- ‘Futurecast’ - What’s next?
Guiding principles
What we want to find out by being in field?
- Enables us to think about our own strategies and ask:
b)How might our ideas integrate with the user’s everyday setting?
c)Is this idea even relevant for the users?
d)Are we building on false preconceptions about this field or topic?
e)How might we collaborate with communities and citizens in better ways?
Principles
- Tell me, but if you can, show me
- Understand the language of the user
- Find out the “system in use” in situ
- Keep enquiry simple, understandable and relatable
- Maintain privacy and ethical standard at all times
What will we gather in the field?
The idea is that we want to collect as many different types of material from engaging with citizens and frontline staff – that way we can generate rich journey map stories and get as close to their experience as possible. The materials we will gather include:
-Written interview notes
-Observation notes (story like descriptions) about the citizens’ everyday life or context which might prove insightful about their world and relevant to the project
-Photographs (with similar intent to observation notes)
-Audio / visual recordings of the interviews(to capture insightful quotes and full-length stories)
Recording the interview
Three methods: written, taped and videotaped. The current facilities will mean written notes will be the main method. To facilitate notes please use the interview note pad (based on the questions below) and consider noting:
- Exact quotes
- Use pseudonyms or unique identities e.g. number to ensure anonymity
- Record date, time, place on all notes (use interview scribe pad)
- Record the flow or any process that falls from the conversation
Generate Narratives
Another really powerful method is to generate a narrative of each of your interviewees. This will help create Personas that help us understand the customer’s journey. Generate these as rapidly as you can in field to speed up the write-up process.
Research with your eyes
Make observations of unspoken behaviours.
For example:
- Did you notice that the customer was reluctant to elaborate on a particular point?
- Did they provide any background information that might shed light on their current situation?
- How was their environment organised or structured? Are there any photographs, pictures, pamphlets, fridge magnets that give an insight into their life?
Interviewer Safety & Comfort
Please be aware that if at any time you as the Interviewer feel uncomfortable or threatened, you have a right to stop the session and leave the premises. The interview process should be comfortable for both parties.