Social Impact
Measuring impact of a personal wellbeing service
Project type
Challenge Lab
Year
2023 - 2024
Team
Mu Hu, Zijie Zhu, Yucong Song, Pranali Pawar, Daneeshah Desilva
Catch22, a major probation service provider funded by the Ministry of Justice, has been helping over 20,000 people on probation since 2022. This is an essential service that helps service users rehabilitate back into society post serving their sentence. In a collaborative effort with the Royal College of Art, we received a brief from Catch 22 to design an impact measurement tool for their personal wellbeing services. As we studied their service for Personal Well-Being (PWB), we realized that rehabilitation requires skilled, relationship-based work. So, instead of just measuring changes in PWB, our approach aims to help to customize services and meanwhile build strong relationships with users.
Understanding the people, problem and purpose.
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He has to complete probation supervision following his prison sentence. He is struggling to improve his pro-social self-identity & regulate his emotions.
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She is a personal wellbeing practitioner at Catch22. She has been allocated to David for his service journey.
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He is David’s probation officer and has referred David for the Commissioned Rehabilitative Services at Catch22
Understanding the pain-points
It became imperative to spend time with the people involved in the process to trace our the journey and understand where issues start to arise. This meant spending time with service user and people who were previous on probation to understand how their experience can be made smoother and helpful.
We also conducted workshops and participatory interviews with the practitioners at Catch 22 to futher flesh out the current journey and understand how the process can be designed to be more efficient and valuable for them.
What does the current journey look like?
From our workshops and interviews with the practitioners and data analysis teams from Catch 22, we were able to grasp a holistic undersatnding of the rather tedious and long current service journey. It became apparent to us that the assessment, a crucial part of the service, itself was confusing and not reflective of the service user’s personal growth.
No perceived value for the assessment
We saw the root problems lie in insufficient and inefficient functionality, as well as non-intuitiveness in the experience.
Comprehensive measuring
The current service only measures (on a scale of 1-10) in how the service user would rate aspects of their lives. It becomes difficult to firstly, comprehend the scale and secondly, attach numbers to actions, emotions and feelings. There needs to be a more comprehensive and intuitive mode of measurement.
Space for reflection
During the course of the service (which could even be up to 10 months), with the help of the interventions, the SU has an increased sense of self-awareness. Unfortunately, none of this is documented. As a result, they score themselves lower on their end assessments, which reflects negatively on the service itself.
Humanised interaction
While the practitioners are kind and friendly to the service users, it still becomes difficult for them to open up, especially with sensitive questions. There needs to be a more humanised and empathetic service for the SU to build trust with the practitioners.
How might we design a humanized, intuitive and efficient impact measurement tool that creates value for the service users, service providers and the perception of the same to its commissioners?
What are the components?
What does the new journey look like?
Our solution is more than measurement. It revolves around evaluating through meaningful conversations. It is a mode of measurement that ensures rich data collection which in turn ensures nuanced evaluation. We introduce tools that provide foresight into the entire service journey.
The dynamic between the practitioner and SU is now changed. The tool provides space for the SU to step back and reflect at multiple points of the journey. Thereby helping SU perceive value in the service
What is the strategy?
Evaluation happens through conversation. It now accounts for growth and change throughout the service journey, giving the service user a refreshing sense of control and increased self-awareness.
Progress made visible
The toolkit has 3 main components, which are The Progress Journal for SU. 2. For the practitioner we have the Catch-up form- which records data based on the earlier infinity assessment .. And 3. the Intervention form- to record feedback data based on observations during the interventions.
The main focus is to collect process data. Our toolkit not only collects data but also aims to build relationship with the service user, increasing their self-awareness throughout the service journey.
What are the systemic pushback?
Our tool provides practitioners with guided assessment frameworks and and provide guidance for pops, such as scenario questions and emotion wheels, so that both parties can have a structured dialogue and practitioners can fully record information.
As the factors affecting re-offending rates are multifaceted, it is difficult to assert that enhancing personal wellbeing will directly reduce re-offending rates and there is a lack of evidence to support this claim. However, we remain positive and believe that through comprehensive support and guidance focused on personal wellbeing, healthier and more active lifestyles can be fostered and positive long-term behavioural change can be achieved by the pop.
What value is being created?
The tool gives our service user, David, a refreshing sense of control. The evaluation system is now relatable and intuitive. Along with this, there’s a sense of personalisation that makes the entire process all the more human. And the learnings of the same lingers beyond the end of the service. For the practitioner, it means being able to collect meaningful data points, easy and efficient data entry and handover, which in turn ensures reduced workload
How is this value being exchanged in the system?
Meaningful interactions held with the SU ensure that the pain points of the practitioner are taken care of. Meaning richer data is collected efficiently which in turn ensures that catch 22 can produce convincing results and enriched reports that are appealing to the commissioners, in this case, the MOJ
What is the impact being created?
Building shared resilience
Theory of Change
How is change being driven?
Accounting for growth
Value perception increases, and Impact lingers beyond the service Provides insight into the efficacy of the service, capturing essential data in appealing to commissioners. Provide insight into perceiving the value of Catch’s service and the impact it has on the service users
Research and Design process in a nutshell
Research and Design Journey
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Understanding the people.
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Drawing Insights.
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Re-defining the Brief.
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Prototyping and testing.
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Value proposition.
