// Overview // The Challenge // Methodology // The Team // Research Approach // Tools // Process // Impact // Outcomes // Key Learnings // Testimonials //

The Challenge

This project was conceived by Camden Council’s Family Early Help Service in November 2020, recognising that COVID had deeply affected family life and would continue doing so even long after the pandemic is over, and that the supports and services that families need will also need to change. Therefore, the department decided to work directly with a representative group of local parents and family members to understand what help families might need and want after COVID.

Camden Council then partnered with UAL London College of Communication and Public Collaboration Lab to create Camden Family Changemakers, a co-design project that brings together Camden parents and LCC’s Service Design masters’ students to co-create a design vision for good help for families after COVID.

The project used 3 guiding co-design principles:

The Team

This project was co-produced by a wide range of collaborators, none of which played a passive role, leading to its success as a truly co-designed endeavour. Our organising team consisted of the Head of Service for Camden Council’s Early Family Help, Becca Dove, two service designers, Laura Leahy and myself, Camden administrative support, Elaine Crouch, and LCC’s MA Service Design Course Leader, Silvia Grimaldi, bringing expertise from social work to higher academia. Together, we shaped the 3 month program in which our expert parent group met bi-weekly to share experiences and build a design vision for better family help. 

Research Approach

The expert parent group of 18 resident family members came from 12 Camden wards, represented 11 different ethnicities, and had children ranging from newborn baby to young adult. The underlying belief driving this project was that Camden families know their communities best. They know the impacts of COVID, and the storms that might be brewing. Therefore, they should have power to influence decision-making and local services that provide this help to families post-COVID. 

As a co-design project, my role as a service designer was to create the proper environment to share and reflect on the parents’ experiences in a fruitful manner. Working closely with my colleague, Laura, we created each workshop and supporting boards on Miro, an online blackboard tool. Building from the project plan, we fleshed out exercises and questions that would be more engaging and accessible for the parents to discuss together. We conducted each session twice to accommodate different families’ schedules.

After each workshop, we would go through and synthesize the data into key insights to share with the student cohort. These insights would directly inform the students’ design concepts on how they could bring the parents’ voices and ideas to life while they also conducted their own research simultaneously. Progress from both the students and the parents was shared consistently to create a positive feedback loop in which each group’s work could build upon and learn from one another. 

Tools

After several sessions of solely screen sharing, I held a separate miro-training session with those who were interested to learn how to use the platform. Having conducted several workshops virtually, I’ve honed in on my skills to lead a chaotic but fun Miro learning experience. After parents had their first experience actually working on Miro, we provided a link to the Miro board during ensuing workshop for those who wanted to add their notes and ideas themselves. This was an added benefit for the parents, who were able to include their engagement and this new learned skill onto their resumes and job experiences. 

Process

While we began with a loose project plan of what we wanted to achieve in each workshop with the parents, we held regular retrospectives to make sure that each session didn’t feel like a separate endeavour from the last, but that we were building onto the findings to create a larger, cohesive narrative and vision. To do this, we included regular re-caps of what we had achieved so far, what we were hoping to end up with, and gave room for any suggestions on how we could do things differently. Here are some of the findings that we were able to create within this short period of time.

The first meeting was all about creating safe spaces, building trust and learning about each other. The Group moved at their own pace and we all listened generously. We talked about what makes Camden special, and how much pride the group has for our borough.  

Next, we began to explore what we were sensing and noticing about family life in Camden during the pandemic.  

Pulling inspiration from social work, we built a Community Tree of Life together, a collective narrative practice that helps tell our stories in ways that makes us stronger. The Tree showed us the strengths, gifts and wisdom already in Camden’s communities, and gave us a foundation to think about good help after COVID. 

Next, we explored our stories. Using Camden Lock bridge as a metaphor, we explored ‘The Bridge of Good Help’. Together, the group shared stories of times when they sought help, what worked, what could have been better, and what made the difference.  Our vision of good help began to emerge. Through synthesis, we found similar themes in which to categorize the parents’ stories.

Throughout this process, the students and parents found creative ways to connect and co-create virtually.

Each week, key insights from the parent sessions were sent to the students, who used the insights to inform their design concepts and bring the parents’ vision and voices to life. The students then met one on one with the parents to further explore and refine their concepts. Further sessions were also held between Becca, the students, and myself to further dissect and understand the sensitive nature of the brief and how to best communicate with the parents.

In meeting 4, the expert parent group built upon previous meetings to start imagining what good help should feel like, creating a set of good and bad help value statements. At the same time, we began to share our work with others through a show-and-tell with others in the area who were interested in what we were doing.

Building off our value statements, we created the building blocks of good help for families  - beyond how good help should feel, but also what good help should be. We used Who, what, when, where, how, and how is this help unique to Camden, to put together our ideas. 

In our last meeting, the parent group checked in on our final set of values and principles for good family help. We used design justice tools to critique our work to make sure no Camden family was left out. We explored our work’s legacy, drawing on the empty chair for future generations. Finally, we celebrated our time together around a virtual kitchen table, what we would have loved to do in person if COVID allowed it. 

Impact

Throughout the project, there was a lot of interest from different stakeholders for how the project was going and what could come out of it. Few projects, especially when connected to local governance, are so collaborative and bring so much of the users’ voices into the process. Hopefully, it may become a leading example for more projects like this to happen between government, different stakeholders, and end users. 

It was also touching to hear the impact the program had had on the parents themselves, some of which is collected in our reflective session below. The project couldn’t have come at a better time during this third lockdown, just when parents were feeling isolated, disheartened, and disconnected from their local communities because of the lockdown, and became an event that many, including myself, looked forward to every other Thursday, to speak with other adults and share their experiences. 

Outcomes

On the 28th of April, 2021, the Camden Family Changemakers expert parent group and service design students presented the outcomes and calls to action of Camden Family Changemakers project to over 100 leading decision makers in Camden’s family services, including Camden Councillors, local community organisations, and even directors of national charities that work in family support. 

In three months’ time, there will also be an opportunity to regroup with Camden’s leaders and organisations to see how they are implementing the parents’ voices into their work, services, and policies - a chance to watch action unfold and to be accountable to the work that’s been done. 

Key Learnings

What is Co-Design?

“Love and co-design go hand in hand... co-design changes us and we must let it" - Kelly Anagram

This project taught me so much in truly being given the opportunity to co-design with users and not simply to design for them. Not often do we have the budget, access or the time to work so closely with users, but in this case, parents were paid for their time and for their experience and not only thanked for offering their insights, and they were involved each step of the way. In doing so, each of us offered our own strengths to the table but didn’t overpower one another’s voice, something that is unfortunately rare in design. 

Building Trust

With the entire project being conducted online, I worried that we would not be able to connect enough as a group without being face-to-face, especially while working with such sensitive and vulnerable topics. However, we took our time to build trust and partook in lots of generous listening, connected exercises to our shared love for Camden, and were inspired by how much the parents were willing to share with us and one another over a short 10 week period.

Facilitator mindset

This was a very different project as well because of the specific role that I commissioned to do. Because my role was primarily to facilitate and synthesize the data collected from the sessions, I was able to experience the workshops with a different lens. Unlike when you are the designer, where it is too easy to want to validate assumptions, to test concepts and to steer conversation in a particular way, my role was to delve deeper to create a richer set of data, while also taking an academic teaching lens, thinking about how the students may understand and use the research. In data analysis, it was also interesting to note intriguing insights, but without trying to jump to solutions or designs. In this way, my role as the facilitator was neutral yet expansive, a collector and conductor of data to the student designers.

Designing for vulnerable and or sensitive contexts

After each session, I would be left deeply inspired by the wisdom that had been shared and by the resilience of the parents’ shown through their stories and experiences. I felt grateful to share space with each one of the participants and my organising team, and to further hone in on my skills of active listening, empathy, and mindfulness when designing for sensitive topics. Facilitating these sessions was a humbling experience, and I learned plenty from both my co-facilitators and the expert parents group. We engaged in often difficult, personal, and sometimes triggering conversations. Therefore, it was even more important to be empathetic and mindful of the questions we might ask, and to often and gently remind the parents that they were welcome to share only what they felt comfortable with. This was an additional element to balance amongst the traditional facilitating challenges, such as staying on track of an agenda, and making sure that no one is over dominating the space. 

Building Accountability into Implementation

In order for a project to be implementable, we must think beyond vision and guidelines and into dialogue and tangible actions. It’s particularly rewarding to know that decision makers will listen to the work that the parents have done and that they will hopefully take this opportunity to benchmark their existing services against this vision for better family help. Not only is there an opportunity to present the findings, the fact that there is already a plan to meet again in three months’ time adds an additional layer of accountability. While I can’t predict what will happen in three months, we can hope that there will be some new actions to report from these organisations. 

Testimonials

‘It’s not just about participating but the community we are building’. Inspiring to read the hopes & commitments of parents and staff work together to ensure all families have the support they need in Camden.  ‘The care, love and wisdom that went into this work by families & design students to develop a manifesto for family support post Covid is extraordinary. This is how services should be designed, by those who use them. As parents put it ‘those receiving help can also give help’. - Georgia Gould, Leader of Camden Council

“I've learnt how important it is that people have a voice about how help works so they can feel part of it rather than it being something separate that is 'done to' them” - Parent Changemaker

“Grateful for this opportunity that the project gave us to feel safe emotionally to talk about stuff, to express ourselves, and to come together to work out decisions, I would like this to be a legacy for the future for parents to work together on issues, so there are more projects like this.” - Parent Changemaker

“It was fabulous to hear all the work and ideas created from experience, the deep felt desire to get things right with and for people and straight from the [heart]. Thank you for having me, it was a privilege.” - Jodi Pilling, Camden Community Leader