FEATURE DESIGN THINKING

DESIGNING BETTER
CHILDREN’S SERVICES
The Design in the Public Sector programme is helping councils and partners find new ways of
delivering effective children’s services using design methods. Jo Stephenson investigates 

T
Councils participate in the Design in the Public Sector Programme alongside other authorities, enabling them to share their learning and provide feedback on ideas

ight budgets and increasing
demand mean children’s
services are under pressure to
deliver more for less.
One approach gaining
traction in the quest to find
new ways of working more
efficiently and effectively is the use of design
processes and methods.
For the past few years, the Design in the
Public Sector Programme, a partnership
between the Design Council and Local
Government Association (LGA), has been
helping councils and their partners take a fresh
look at some of their most complex challenges.
Unsurprisingly a significant number have
centred on services for children and young
people with councils keen to revamp their
approach to tackling everything from childhood
obesity to teenage pregnancy and services for
disabled children and those in care.
Since being taken on by the LGA in 2015 the
programme has supported more than 60
projects. In the last couple of years it has honed
in on public health and prevention with a total of
14 projects involving 18 councils chosen to take
part in 2018/19.
These include schemes to improve support for
young parents in Surrey, enhance mental health
provision for schoolchildren in Maldon, reduce
smoking during pregnancy in Derbyshire and
boost physical activity among teenagers in
Birmingham and Solihull.
Design thinking
So what is “design thinking” all about? And how
does it compare with the way councils more
usually approach a problem?
One of the key principles is collaboration and
the importance of bringing together people with
different perspectives to explore a shared issue.
“The more diversity you have, the more likely
you are to come up with something original,”
says Ellie Runcie, director for growth and
innovation at the Design Council.
Teams taking part in the Design in the Public
Sector Programme must be multi-disciplinary
or multi-agency.
“In children’s services there are ever more
complex issues such as knife crime,” says
Runcie. “It isn’t just down to one agency or the
local authority to try to tackle the problem, you
need to work with multiple partners.”
The process also promotes a “people-centred”
approach where listening to service users or
“customers” is key. After all – why would you
design a product no one wants to use?
As part of this, councils and partners are
introduced to various design research methods
such as journey mapping, semi-structured
interviews and diaries.
“It shows public sector managers they can
engage in a much more meaningful way with

24 Children & Young People Now June 2019 www.cypnow.co.uk

 WESTMINSTER DESIGN PROCESS HELPS RESHAPE SERVICES FOR CHILDREN WITH SEND
Managers wanted to re-design services for
children with special educational needs and
disabilities (SEND) in Westminster and
brought this complex challenge to the Design
in the Public Sector process in 2016/17.
In trying to deliver a more effective service
and make cost savings, the authority faced a
number of challenges, explains Steve
Comber, head of SEND local offer and SEN
outreach for bi-borough children’s services,
spanning Westminster and Kensington
and Chelsea.
While there were pockets of good practice
across the borough, the service was
fragmented with a range of providers
delivering services “in quite traditional
ways” in set locations. There was “often
duplication of effort or inconsistent advice
and support” and the authority was aware it
was not consistently picking up children
with additional needs early enough.
It was conscious there would be a huge
amount of interest from parents about
potential changes to services so it was
important the multi-disciplinary team taking
part in the design programme included a
parent representative.
For Comber the process had a profound
effect. “It has informed the way I think about
the public sector full stop,” he says. “We
design services for people and it’s those
people who should be telling you how well
those services work and what their needs are
because ultimately they’re the people who’ll
be using the product.”
Research with families provided
their residents rather than simply
understanding how a community feels about
something through a town hall conversation,
focus group, survey or letter,” says Runcie.
These more traditional methods still have a
place, she says. “But we feel the people-centred
design methods the teams use give them
hundreds of insights they wouldn’t have
otherwise had.”
Another key principle is to test early to find
out if an idea has potential. The public sector is
familiar with piloting, but often pilots involve
hundreds, if not thousands, of participants.
The design programme encourages councils
to start small before leaping into larger-scale
trials, thus reducing the risk of wasting time and
money on something that is a non-starter.
The fact councils complete the programme
alongside other authorities is important as they
share learning and provide constructive
feedback on each other’s ideas. Teams are
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OLESIA BILKEI/ADOBE STOCK
Families provided valuable insights on services
illuminating insights. While much of the
local offer centred on providing activities for
children, parents were actually using services
to seek out professional advice and help.
Tracy Beard, bi-borough head of service for
short breaks and resources, was tasked with
implementing what became the Perfect
Pathways project starting with setting up a
new keyworker service to support families
from the point of diagnosis – something
parents wanted.
The authority also introduced a system,
which launched in September, which means
it is notified of an SEND diagnosis by health
partners. “We actively go out and seek the
parent rather than waiting for them to come
and find us,” says Beard.
One of the biggest asks from parents was a
new one-stop centre for SEND children. By
looking at things differently the team was
encouraged to communicate visually – a great
way of getting ideas across quickly.
There is growing interest in the approach,
with applications from about 40 local
authorities in 2018/19, up 25 per cent on the
previous year.
Shortlisted teams are invited to pitch to a
selection panel. Crucially, participation in the
scheme must be supported at the highest level.
“We require chief executive sign-off and senior
leaders to be involved as project sponsors,” says
programme manager Jessie Johnson.
The programme typically spans four months
and consists of a series of workshops and
coaching sessions with design experts.
Going somewhere new and working with
people you don’t normally work with in itself
“shakes things up” with workshops designed to
be hands on and “pull people out of their
comfort zones”, says Johnson.
These include five full-day workshops based
able to make this happen using the savings
from bringing a previously commissioned
after-school, weekend and holiday play
service in-house.
“For the same money we have brought that
service in-house but it will be opening seven
days a week now and offering more activities
including training for parents,” says Beard.
The centre, which is being refurbished,
should be fully up and running by July.
Savings have also been made by providing
holiday activities for families in the south of
the borough closer to home – helping reduce
what was a £70,000 a year transport bill with
money ploughed back into services.
All agree the authority now has a more
positive relationship with parents and
families. Meanwhile, the hope is identifying
and supporting children much earlier on will
lead to better outcomes down the line.
“We’re confident this is the right approach
to enable us to achieve positive outcomes for
those young people,” says Justine May, head
of transformation and innovation at
bi-borough children’s services.
According to her, design thinking has
had an impact across the two boroughs
where “increasingly we see the language
of co-production built into everything”.
Further work with the Design Council will
include a training programme for
bi-borough frontline managers,
commissioners and transformation leads.
Starting this summer the bi-borough team
will also be working with the body on a large-
scale review of 0 to 5 public health services.
on the Design Council’s “double diamond”
framework for innovation which is in turn based
on research that set out to explore why some
projects and solutions are better than others.
Instead of moving in a straight line from
problem to solution, this encourages authorities
to take a step back and ask: “Is this the right
problem to be solving in the first place?”
Teams are expected to carry out research with
local families and users of services to really get to
the bottom of key challenges. Often the insights
generated can lead them in a new direction.
A survey of participants in the 2017/18 scheme
found 88 per cent said it had helped them
“transform the focus of their challenge and
move forward”.
Johnson cites the example of Portsmouth
where partners where keen to tackle high levels
of air pollution in one part of the city.
One obvious solution would be to encourage
people to use cars less. However, research with »
June 2019 Children & Young People Now 25
FEATURE DESIGN THINKING
Schools in Huntingdonshire have begun to trial the Daily Mile initiative as part of efforts to tackle obesity
local families revealed a key reason children
were ferried to school by car – despite the fact
most schools were in walking distance – was
down to lack of time.
“So the whole project focused on supporting
young families with children to get ready for
school in the morning in good time and how you
might involve children in that process and make
it fun and engaging for them,” says Johnson.
At the end of the programme teams will be at
different stages. Some may be ready to think
about piloting but for others the process may
have raised further questions that need to be
explored before they can move on.
“At the point at which they leave us they will
have a number of really well-explored
opportunity areas which they can then take
forward as a team,” says Johnson.
One aim of the programme is to give
managers the skills and confidence to apply the
design process to other challenges and share the
learning with colleagues.
Design expertise
Another hoped-for outcome on the part of the
Design Council is that councils may be more
likely to draw on the expertise of design
professionals. Runcie is keen to stress that
design can work hand-in-hand with other
approaches to informing service development
including systems leadership, data science and
understanding behavioural change.
Design thinking can be useful in all areas of
the public sector maintains Johnson but if you’re
talking issues like public health, prevention and
early intervention then where better place to
start than children’s services.
“One would hope that if more people look at
and tackle children’s services and early years
services in this way then later down the line
26 Children & Young People Now June 2019
we’re going to have a much healthier
population,” she says.
The latest collection of projects includes one
in Liverpool looking at the first 1,001 days of life.
“The point services currently engage is when
someone realises they are pregnant and presents
themself to the service,” says Johnson.
But research revealed the first port of call for
information was often family and friends so
“already habits have been shaped and formed”.
One of the key questions for this team has
been how to reach expectant mums and their
partners before their first scan.
According to the Local Government
Association, cuts in government funding to
councils – equivalent to the loss of 60p from
every £1 since 2010 – mean all local authorities
have had to find new ways to deliver services. By
focusing on residents young or old, councils are
more likely to develop systems and services that
work, suggests a spokesman.
For Justine May, head of transformation and
innovation for bi-borough children’s services,
this makes sense.
“I don’t really think we can afford not to be
thinking like this,” she says. “To achieve any
significant change we need to find ways to think
differently about more than just how we
reconfigure our services but essentially what we
are here to do and the value we exist to provide.
“That’s one of the things design thinking
helps you to do. It’s not just about how I might
reconfigure my children’s centre, it’s about ‘How
do people use it? What do they want?’ and it is
those fundamental questions that are really
going to guide us.” n
l Applications for Design in the Public Sector
2019/20 open this summer.
www.designcouncil.org.uk/DiPS
HUNTINGDONSHIRE
TACKLING CHILD OBESITY
For Huntingdonshire District Council the
Design in the Public Sector programme’s
recent focus on public health offered the
chance to explore ways to tackle the complex
issue of childhood obesity.
“On the surface it looks as if our
childhood obesity is okay,” says head of
leisure and health Jayne Wisely. “But there is
disparity right the way across the district
and some areas with significantly worse
levels of obesity than others.”
There were particularly high levels of
childhood obesity in the town of Ramsey so
the Huntingdonshire team – which
included a colleague from Cambridgeshire
County Council’s public health team and
input from the local clinical commissioning
group – attempted to dig deeper using the
programme’s design research methods.
This included getting Ramsey families to
log what they got up to in a day, which
provided valuable insight into the pressures
they face when it came to providing healthy
meals and getting out to do activities.
After completing the programme in May
2018, the authority set up a local project
team, which included community groups
and people working in family settings.
They explored a number of avenues
including sessions on food and healthy
cooking and an outdoor activity session.
Neither were a particular success in terms of
numbers and attracting “the right type of
people”, explains business analyst
Lauren Wilby.
A breakthrough came when Wisely
attended a conference where one of the
speakers was Elaine Wyllie, founder of the
Daily Mile initiative to get primary pupils
jogging a mile every day.
A local junior and primary school agreed
to trial the scheme, which got under way in
April. The hope is this will be a success.
Huntingdonshire is still finding its way,
but one of the biggest lessons from the
design process has been about not rushing
into solutions and having the confidence to
say “we’re just not there yet”, says Wisely.
The authority is using many of the design
tools and techniques it picked up as part of a
major transformation programme that got
under way about 18 months ago, helping
ensure “we really capture the voice of the
customer and understand what they need”,
says Wilby.
It is also planning to use design principles
in a new project to look at ways of improving
life chances in an area with high levels of
deprivation.
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 STAFFORDSHIRE COMMUNITY AND COUNCIL SECURE FUTURE FOR FAMILY CENTRE
Staffordshire County Council had taken the
difficult decision to close a number of
children’s centres across the county,
including two in the town of Burntwood
where local mums set up a campaign group
and went on to form a community interest
company (CIC) to run the settings.
It was this passion that Wayne Mortiboys,
now strategic delivery manager for Lichfield
and East Staffordshire, was keen to harness
when the authority embarked on the Design
in the Public Sector programme in 2016 in an
effort to find a sustainable future for the
Spark Burntwood project.
Director of Spark Burntwood CIC Esther
Allen, who was part of the team, admits she
did not know what to expect but “was
interested in any sort of partnership
working”.
At first the authority and community
group appeared to be coming from slightly
different angles but the collaborative design
approach helped them identify common
goals, explains Mortiboys.
“The thing we definitely agreed on was we
wanted to improve outcomes for vulnerable
children in Burntwood,” he says. “In addition
to that, Spark had a desire to make
themselves more commercially viable and
the county council was keen to support that.”
In particular the council wanted to adopt a
more proactive approach to identifying and
supporting young children at risk of social
services intervention. When the authority
applied to the programme in February 2016
under-fives made up around a fifth of the
0 to 19 population across Staffordshire but
the number on child protection plans was
disproportionately higher at between 40 to
45 per cent.
“We were conscious that as a local
authority we did not have much contact with
this age group,” explains Mortiboys. “People
register births and then – until they need a
primary school place – don’t really come
back to us unless it’s in a time of crisis or we
are directed to them.”
The team went on to develop an incentive
scheme where Spark Burntwood was paid
extra for each child who attended sessions
and was deemed likely to be vulnerable.
“They were generally charging £2 a
session. We paid them £3 a session for every
child that met the criteria we agreed so there
was an incentive for them to find those
families,” explains Mortiboys.
This move away from grant-giving to a
more transactional way of working offered a
win-win situation. “It helped them
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Spark Burntwood found the design process helped it get the most out of its children’s centre facilities
commercially but also helped us make sure
we were getting the most bang for our buck
by targeting those children,” says Mortiboys.
“Families that may not have come to a
children’s centre because it was run by the
county council were now coming to a
community-managed facility which maybe
had less stigma attached.”
The programme helped the team look at
how to get the most out of their facilities and
maximise income by being open all week,
available for hire and offering a wider range
of activities for all ages.
“They do a lot more customer engagement
now and learn from what is working well
rather than just putting things on,” says
Mortiboys.
Above all he believes the collaborative
design-led approach enabled the council to
respond in a different way to the opportunity
presented by Spark.
“The difference here was that we really
took the time to understand what the
community was trying to achieve rather than
automatically going into ‘Why you can’t do
that’,” he says. “We were able to take that
passion and channel it in a positive way
rather than it becoming a battle of them
and us.”
One of the decisions taken after
completing the programme was to
concentrate efforts on a single site. Spark
Burntwood is now on a sustainable footing
and going from strength to strength with
funding to employ Allen as a part-time
volunteer co-ordinator.
“It is a really strong force in the local
community, has a huge Facebook following
and almost everybody in the town knows
about Spark and what it does,” says
Mortiboys.
Meanwhile the authority has seen an
increase in the percentage of children from
wards in the Burntwood area starting school
with a good level of development.
Allen, who welcomed the creative
approach to problem-solving and time for
reflection, agrees the design process helped
put Spark “on a firmer foundation” and
boosted understanding between Spark and
the authority.
“I started Spark as a mum and a teacher
and had little knowledge of how local
authorities and early years children’s services
operated,” she says. “We were very
inexperienced and it opened our eyes to new
possibilities, especially through hearing
about innovation by other organisations
across the country.”
Mortiboys has gone on to deploy design
methods elsewhere including a new scheme
in the town of Burton to boost take-up of free
childcare places for two-year-olds.
Again this has involved working closely
with the local voluntary sector to create an
incentive scheme to encourage childcare
providers to actively identify families that
would benefit.
For him taking part in the programme was
a real “lightbulb moment” and he’d
recommend the design approach to other
councils “without hesitation”.
“If you do what you have always done you
will get what you have always got,” he says.
“On the first day every question was: Why? If
you keep asking yourself why, you can get
back to what you’re trying to fix and start
looking at the problem in a different light.”
June 2019 Children & Young People Now 27