Open Government action plan 2021 to 2025 - commitment 2: health and social care

Progress to October 2023

Commitment 2: health and social care

Milestone:

Develop and deliver a first iteration of the ‘design school’ model in key health and social care areas, such as the delivery of the National Care Service.

Progress and next steps

The 'Design School' is the name given to the wrap around support and training that is offered to people with lived experience, stakeholder organisations and policy teams to work together on policy and service change.

Design school support is currently being delivered in two key areas in health and social care:

• the National Care Service (NCS) programme, which has committed to design with the people who access and deliver social care support and other relevant services
• the Getting It Right For Everyone (GIRFE) Pathfinder Project, in which Health and Social Care Partnership Teams have committed to co-design an adult practice model for health and social care by working with their service users as well as practitioners and staff

The NCS design school

Progress

The NCS Programme’s approach to engaging with people with lived experience of accessing or delivering community health and social care services has been supported through the summer period by a series of regional and online forums. A total number of 606 attendees joined nine regional events across Scotland and six online events. These took place from June to August.

Training and support was developed to make sure the conditions were in place for meaningful participation at this stage of the co-design process, which was largely focused on working together to sense check insights and fill any gaps, then coming up with ideas for change. Support included:

• scoping and planning the work to ensure the thematic areas and co-design opportunities were accessible to people taking part
• bringing together a co-design champions group across policy areas to align ways of working, collaborate and share learning
• running training events in a variety of topics, including ethics, safety and wellbeing, trauma-informed practice, user research and co-design, accessibility and inclusion, and practical note-taking sessions
• providing drop-in sessions for participants on the Lived Experience Experts Panel to provide information on the co-design workshops, and to make sure people had what they needed to feel comfortable and safe taking part

Next steps

• feedback has been gathered from participants who took part in the regional events. This is currently being analysed and a report will be produced to make sure lessons learned are integrated into future co-design sessions
• training materials and guidance produced are being reviewed and updated in line with feedback
• planning is underway for the next stage of the co-design process for the NCS, so new training and coaching opportunities will be developed as required. In particular we will be developing the approach to delivering co-design through partnering with organisations that represent communities under-represented in the work so far

The GIRFE design school

Progress

There are currently 8 GIRFE place-based pathfinders, representing 8 Health and Social Care Partnerships. Pathfinder teams, made up of health professionals and management across the locality, as well as third sector partners, have been tasked with co-designing what ‘GIRFE’ actually means and co-designing ideas and solutions which help us implement GIRFE across Scotland’s health and social care system.

The Office of the Chief Designer has created a design school to upskill and coach teams on co-design methods.

Having received 5 full days of training, the pathfinder teams are currently working through the co-design process and applying techniques such as desk research, ethics and engagement planning, running inclusive and accessible sessions, generating insights and collaborative sense-making. They reached the halfway point in July, producing 140 person-centred journey maps through co-design sessions with people with lived experience. Key cross-cutting insights were developed and priority areas identified for the next phase of work.

The design school model includes collaborative learning events and knowledge sharing, with weekly sessions, to ensure learning is shared across teams and policy areas in Scottish Government, given our limited resources and focus on reuse.

In September, a number of open days were held to encourage new pathfinder teams to join the programme to make sure a diverse range of people have the opportunity to take part in the GIRFE co-design process, and to give organisations an opportunity to build capability in co-design. These sessions included an activity to assess readiness for engaging people meaningfully in the design of the GIRFE practice model. Applications are currently open and follow up conversations are taking place.

Next steps

• training and coaching support will continue for the pathfinders as they move into the next phase, which is another round of engagements with people to come up with ideas. This will be reviewed at a sense-making event in November, before taking forward prototyping and testing early next year
• the partner model will be rolled out, in which new health and social care partnership teams will be offered design school support to work with people in their communities to test and evaluate prototypes
• all material and learning is being consolidated into central guidance for re-use in future programmes of work. This will be made available, along with the first iteration of the national GIRFE toolkit, when the current cohort of pathfinders have completed the full co-design process

Status

On schedule

Milestone:

Support the newly established Lived Experience Expert Panel and Stakeholder Register to meaningfully participate in decision-making within health and social care.

Progress and next steps

Progress

The Lived Experience Experts Panel (LEEP) is the main route to take part in the co-design of the NCS.

The NCS regional forum events through summer were open to anyone to attend and promoted specifically to members of LEEP. Participants were supported to take part in face to face and online events, with materials produced in a range of accessible formats, written in plain English and available in EasyRead formats, with a palantypist and British Sign Language interpreter provided at an online drop-in session.

Next steps

• recommendations from initial welcome sessions are being embedded into new ways of working and the support model (this ranges from accessibility requirements to recognising and addressing issues around power and influence). Process improvements will be put in place following lessons learned from the regional forums
• LEEP remains open for new applicants and discussions are underway to explore opportunities to open this up to further policy exploration areas. These are dependent on resourcing and staff being available to manage the process and provide the required level of support for participants

Status

On schedule

Milestone:

Develop and agree an approach to assessing impact and learning from co-design activities across health and social care

Progress and next steps

Progress

The co-design maturity matrix is being developed to support teams to consider what good looks like for co-design, covering key criteria such as capacity and capability for co-design, senior sponsorship, and implementation of design decisions. This will form the basis of the evaluation frameworks to support teams to measure and improve their co-design activities.

The co-design maturity matrix is in the final stages of development, following feedback from the civil society group at the April meeting, as well as sessions with design and policy colleagues. This has been developed into a tool which includes a range of prompts to support teams to improve their practice in co-design and to support effective implementation of design decisions.

An evaluation framework is also being developed that will capture feedback from specific co-design projects.

Next steps

• the latest version of the co-design maturity matrix and the evaluation framework will be shared with the civil society group for feedback. The evaluation framework will also be shared with Analytical Services colleagues in Scottish Government

Status

On schedule

Milestone:

Continue to develop the remit and role of the civil society group to play an active and ongoing role as a critical friend, supporting the development and progress of co-design activity across health and social care

Progress and next steps

Progress

Limited progress has been made in agreeing the remit and role of the civil society group during this reporting period as the focus has been on developing training and support for co-design delivery throughout the summer. However there is an opportunity to reflect on the programme of training and guidance and associated outputs produced to support co-design on NCS and GIRFE.

Next steps

• updating the current terms of reference (TOR) and reviewing the membership of the group will be a key focus for the next period. The civil society co-lead will work in partnership with the Office of the Chief Designer to agree next steps and will report at the next meeting

Status

In progress