Group Members-Minhee, Mugdha, Prapti, Dewi, Chengyao, Chenying
Timeline- 4 Sept-6 Oct
Role-Research,Service Design,Business Strategy
Client-Bromley-by-bow
Mentor- Richard Atkinson
How we got to the outcome?
Research & Analysis
- Background Exploration, stakeholder engagement
- Micro Analysis: Conducting research, interviews, and observations to uncover specific issues.
Insights Synthesis
- Insights Relationship Map-Identifying patterns and relationships among challenges.
- How Might We (HMW)-Formulated actionable questions to guide solution development.
Challenges identification
- Macro Analysis: Examining sector-wide challenges and aligning them with BBBC's context.
- Why BBBC’s Social Prescribing Model was successful?
Strategy Development
About BBBC
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What does BBBC Do?
1.Social Prescribing-Pioneer
What is Social Prescribing?
Connects people to non-clinical support to enhance their health and well being
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2.Activities to improve social wellbeing
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Challenges faced by BBBC
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Observations based on Field Research & Interviews
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Insights-Relationship Mapping
Focusing on relationship-Connections between insights
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Finding Patterns
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Looking at Other Centres
Similar Problems everywhere
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We reframed our observations into problem statement and developed various how might we questions
How Might We?
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But we also pondered what sets BBBC apart in the realm of social prescribing, even if the challenges faced by each center are similar?
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We noticed that the BBBC model was successful because they had everything in one place .This played an important role in avoiding dropouts and motivating users.Also the link workers were able to track users across the centre due to this structure.
Thus we decided to learn more about sector issue in Social Prescribing.
Sector issue- Social Prescribing
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We divided this 3 themes on the basis of Feasible,actionable and Impactful and decided to choose the theme which would tackle issues at a sector level.
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We decided to proceed with Future of Social Prescribing where our main strategy focuses on the future of social prescribing and different ways to improve social prescribing model.
1.Self Referral
Why?
More than 95% of social prescribing referrals come from primary care settings. Given that the NHS is already overburdened, we saw an opportunity to increase self-referrals.The biggest deterrent was lack of awareness, so our first strategy is to help more people know what social prescribing even is create awareness so that more people know about it.
How to increase self referrals or proactive social prescribing?
Initial Assumption
Social Prescribing referrals occur through GP referrals only.
Primary Research
95% of referrals come from primary health care.Only 5% is through self-referral.
Creating Awareness about Social Prescribing
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1.Collaborate with real-estate developers
For example, there is an abandoned gasworks factory in Bromley-by-bow which is being redesigned to create homes and a new centre, similar to the Battersea power station.If BBBC were to partner with BBB Gasworks then they could combine their resources to bring the community together.
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2.Knowledge Sharing Workshops
Collaborate with schools and offices where they can educate children and adults about social prescribing.
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3.Updating website and social media frequently
Users can see exactly what the services can do and how it can impact them.
2.Engagement
Why?
Another issue we noticed is that users often get frustrated because of the long waiting times and often don't have enough motivation to stick to the activities.In fact, the link worker’s actually call and follow up to get the users to participate. So we decided to optimise this waiting gap
How to motivate users to take part in prescribed activities?
Taking Advantage of Gap between Sessions
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1.Creating a buddy system
where the link worker would pair two users with similar needs. They would keep each other accountable and help in peer support as well.
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2.Giving Care packages
To engage users while they were waiting and for those who couldn’t make it to the centre, we decided to make care packages. Tailored to each need, these could include art supplies for those looking for connection or flyers with basic advice on things like energy and debt.
3.Integration
Why?
While trying to understand the user journey, we realized that the process of social prescribing was actually very complicated and the users finally have to go to one centre to visit the gp, go to SP centre to meet the link workers and go to another location to get the services.
How to make the best use of these resources?
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Co-location of all resources similar to BBBC by creating integrated community or health centres where the whole social prescribing journey is in one place or in close proximity.
Finally we wanted to create a blue sky vision for the future of social prescribing.
Learnings
1.Know when to stop researching- there was a lot of information and data available but we need to avoid falling into the research hole.
2.Look at the big picture- we learnt how to zoom out and look at the system as a whole and find connections between different insights.
3.Desk research and reality are different- Our research showed BBBC was a high deprived neighbourhood, but according to the field research, we noticed a lot of new fancy developments.
4.Publicity doesn’t mean success: although BBBC has a lot of publicity . The research shows it still struggles.