On Monday we held our first session of the Central Bedfordshire Care Leaver’s Coproduction Project at our Care Leaver’s Hub in Houghton Regis. Members of the project include three of our Care Leavers in addition to professionals from the Leaving Care Team, Education Service, Housing, LAC Health Team and the Head of Corporate Parenting.

This session was very much an introductory session, aiming to build the foundations for strong working relationships and group dynamics as well as enabling the group to gain an understanding of service design. The session started with some introductions and ground rules. We talked about the importance of confidentiality and how everybody’s views, feelings and ideas within the group will always be valid, valued and respected.

We began by exploring some of the jargon that is often used when we talk about service design, such as ‘prototyping’. We discovered that this is a fancy word for a very simple concept – the word ‘prototyping’ just means testing out a new idea.

Everyone was able to think about a time where they have tested out their own new ideas, or ‘prototyped’, and we explored how this made us feel. Some of us felt happy, excited and proud but others felt anxious and worried about being judged.

After exploring some feelings that may be evoked from developing new ideas, we then moved on to an exercise where we created our own service. Everyone was really creative and it was great to hear everyone’s ideas! We heard everything from the reliable ‘Perfect Plumbers’, to the great service at ‘Mica’s Wheels’ to the great new haircuts you could get at  ‘Don’t Wear A Green Hat’ hairdressers! Each member of the group presented their very carefully-considered service design and the group then voted to choose two services to take forward to the next stage.

We then looked at the process of ‘blueprinting’. We talked about what this process refers to, which is looking at the service from the point of view of the people who actually use the service.

We then used the two chosen service designs, to look at the actions the customer would need to take when using the service. We then looked at what the service would need to do or have, to facilitate the customer’s actions – this included things like great customer service and great value for money, as well as material things such as an office space, parking, website and telephone. We soon realised that there are many different things to think about if we want a service to be a success.

At the end of this exercise, we recapped our progress for the day. In just one morning, we had managed to collectively design two services – using prototyping, servicizing and blueprinting! The services we designed were a rather fantastic looking clothes shop ‘Unique’ and a delicious sounding takeaway food shop ‘Global Tastes’.

I asked the group for feedback on how they felt the first session had gone, which overall was very positive. Members of the group commented on how they enjoyed the interactive group exercises and how they enjoyed meeting and working with people from a range of different agencies.

Areas that could be improved for the next session include providing the group with information hand-outs.

We ended the workshop by sharing lunch together; this was a great chance to sit around the table and just chat. I certainly enjoyed getting to know everyone in such an informal, friendly environment!

I look forward to seeing you all on Monday and it would be great to see some of your comments and reflections from our first session underneath.

Laura