WORKSHOP 3: SHARE AND PLAN

In the 3rd and last workshop we have taken the tools and methods produced in the 2nd workshop one step further, to make them more useful and usable for day to day practice. Find the results of the workshop below - for each group we have posted the new tool format, a general explanation, and specific examples of use.

Tool 1: Engaging 50-65 years old through social marketing

by Sherihan, Barbara and Valeria (supported by Rachel)

Download HERE the diagram with explanation
Download HERE the profile and service templates

Tool 2: Engaging older people online

by Denise, Dee, Niam, Maggie, Kevin, Matt (support by Gavin)


What is it for?
For guiding the development of work and initiatives around the engagement of older people online.


Instructions

1. Understand your target group
2. Locate the relevant segments on the USER SEGMENTATION sheet
3. Key advice for each segments is in each quadrant
4. Each quadrant also points you to relevant suggestion example sheets. Using these prompts, design programmes and websites relevant to your own organisation and specific target users.

Download HERE the segmentation sheet and explanation, including:

• reasons to engage
• ways to communicate
• knowledge exchange oportunities
• making it easy online

See also Older people, technology and community: the potential of technology to help older people renew or develop social contacts and to actively engage in their communities, a report by Independent Age, May 2010.

Tool 3: A rough diamond; map to design WITH older people

by Paul, Daksha and Tim (support by Jonas)

Download HERE the 'Rough diamond' map to design services with older people


10 Principles:
Engage with others as you wish to be engaged yourself

1. Keep involvement open
2. Base policy on evidence or examples
3. Be transparant and honest
4. Be aware of political considerations
5. Ensure sustainability (for the life of the project)
6. Join up consultation
7. Work with people who reflect a wider group (not just themselves)
8. Encourage people to take responsability
9. Work iterative and test
10. Make decisions with all people involved
    

Tool 4: Landscape of engagement

by Barry, Noreen, June (support from Joseph)

Download HERE the landscape of engagement diagram
Download HERE the profile prompt sheet

WORKSHOP 2: MAKE

In the second workshop, we used the shared experience in the room to create tools for our daily practice. We focused on areas of work identified on the 1st workshop. Find a presentation and explanation of the tools created below.

Tool 1: Engaging 50-65 years old through social marketing

by Barbara, Bridget, Charlie, Sherihan, Kristen

This exercise followed on from the premise that ‘older people’ is not a homogenous group but a complex mix of needs: for engagement to be effective, older people as a demographic must be segmented to get a better understand differing needs.

As a group we chose to focus on the 50-65 age group – a group that is often unengaged and disengaged with public services. They present a good opportunity for targeted engagement to promote positive and active ageing, empowering older people to take control of the ageing process.

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Tool A: Service map

Title: Map of targeted services for 50-65 year olds
What is it for: to map services that 50-65 year olds need and the methods through which they are accessed/provided
What is it: an analysis of mainstream services that are accessed by 50-65 year, how these services are currently accessed/provided and how they could be accessed/provided.

How it works: we have listed a range of typical services that our target group will need and used post-it notes to analyse how information is currently conveyed (orange post-it notes) and new ways information could be conveyed (green post-it). The visual depiction of new and existing methods of access/provision enabled us to see both where more engagement is needed and where greater innovation is needed.

As well as mapping services, we have also identified barriers to developing new innovative ways of service provision – namely organisational culture; silo working, risk aversion in the public sector. Based on this we then identified the key messages about ageing and accessing services that we wanted our target group to adopt. To develop this further we used Tool B.

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Tool B: Persona

Title: User persona of a 50-65 year old
What is it for: to better understand the aspirations, behaviour patterns and attitudes of our target group.
What is it: a profile of a 50 – 65 year old

How it works: the user persona helps gives an insight into the lifestyle of a 50 – 65 year old to help generate more effective, bespoke methods of engaging them. By using a persona a more personal dimension is created that assists is better understanding needs/wants/fears and aspirations. It focuses on the needs of the target group rather than organisational needs/structures/cultures and helps to avoid using conventional ‘one size fits all’ methods of engagement.

Tool 2: Online engagement

by Kevin, Maggie, Christine, Niam (and Valeria for part of the session)

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Tool A: Segmentation

Title: Segmentation of older people for online engagement
What it's for: to break down our audience in order to better identify opportunities and challenges for engaging them online.
What it is: a breakdown of older people based on two criteria:
* ability to use IT
* motivation to act online
How does it work: For each segment (or group of people) we created a list of things to keep in mind when trying to engage them online.

Segments:
1. Motivated - Have IT skills
- they are a resource, could become mentors / volunteers
- can help to develop websites or online forums
- this group can be used to engage the other 3 'segments'

2. Motivated - No IT skills
- important to ensure opportunities to learn skills that are relevant to their needs
- increase their confidence
- ensure access to IT facilities
(this segment is illustrated with Personas in the Tool B, below)

3. Not motivated - No IT skills
- use other media to engage
- offer rewards
(this is the most challenging group)

4. Not motivated but have IT skills
- make online communications more attractive / easy to use
- offer information relevant to the individual
- offer rewards for taking part

See also Ofcom report Accessing the internet at home

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Tool B: Personas

Title: Personas (in segment 2; Motivated - No IT skills)
What it's for: to better understand the aspirations, behaviour patterns and attitudes of older people who are motivated to go online but lack IT skills
What it is: a series of fictional profiles of people, based on older people we know.
How it works: As a group, these personas represent a segment of people with different attitudes, needs and reasons to engage online. The individual personas support practical thinking. Run ideas past personas and imagine how your idea might work for them.

More about this tool:
In these profiles we included barriers to online engagement, listed earlier in the workshop (see photo) as well as interests, motivations, level of skill, ability for learning, and attitudes towards technology.

Two examples:
a) Jack and Jill, are an active couple in their 70s.
- They are politically and environmentally involved and highly motivated to engage online
- Increasingly, they are relying on their middle aged children to do things online for them
- Not currently able to join online conversations
- Slow to retain learning
Possible hook: online discussion forum about elections
They want: time for ongoing learning & enduring support

b) Safina is recently widowed and lives on her own.
- Goes out but in danger of becoming more isolated
- Never paid her own bills, but will have to
- Children live in another city so can’t help as much as they’d like
- Basic IT skills, first language isn’t English
Possible hooks: online banking & chat in her language
Safina wants: access to a resource nearby (worker/ community centre) for support in her 1st language

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Tool C: System overview

by Saul

Title: System drawing
What it's for: To find out new ways of encouraging online participation among older people

What it is: an attempt to represent systems level process and structures through Lego™ ... it reminds me of a map to participation. It helped to reveal some priorities and problem.
How it works: first I built the more generic structures of our local community
- An imposing Council head office
- a local health service
- the beginnings of a interactive Camden government website
- a mobile library service (as I’m a Librarian)
- a single dwelling for an active and engaged older volunteer
- an ESOL ‘defined’ older couple
- a local medium size Library with IT facilities
- a couple of skilled support staff/trainers
- a social care facility with old fragile and/or disabled residents

Then I placed a Ladder of Participation in the middle of the ‘community’. The ladder shows the levels of participation we need to authentically engage older people in our planning of service provision. (swap youth for adult)

Beyond this I started to indicate that distinct groups of individual older people will increasingly need private and council services to work together.

We’re facing substantive public services cuts, so cross cutting measures will ameliorate some of this. For instance Libraries in Camden could support older people to fill council housing applications and report repairs online.

Fine tuning of our service delivery needs to be done at every level of the planning process, as the ladder shows.

 How effectively can we work together for our interdependent services? For a successful migration of service delivery and customer feedback from face-to-face to online, our ageing community must be sufficiently skilled and supported.

Tool 3: Working WITH older people

by Paul, Daksha and Denise

Title: Involving Customers in the Design and Management of Services
What is it for: Guiding people through the process of involving customers in the design of services, and the management of performance.
What is it: A rough diamond.

How does it work: Perfect models for involving customers generally only work in theory. As none of us work there, we thought we'd try designing something for the real world instead.

To use this tool, you should follow the process for involving customers, and other stakeholders, mapped out by the (darker) green arrows from left to right.

There are also some lighter green arrows which are issues that you should keep in mind (such as local politics) through out the process.

As you follow this path, you should aspire to achieve along the way the 'Heaven' of best practice (blue Post-It notes) and avoid the 'Hell' of worst practice (orange Post-It notes).

Given the reality of most people's situations, we expect that people will generally experience aspects of the two extremes, although we obviously hope that they stay mostly in the blue.

If the future's bright, then it's not orange.

Tool 4: Map to participation

by Alex, Barry, June, Noreen, Daksha

Title: Map to participation
What it's for: to get hard to reach groups to participate more actively in the work we do
What it is: this is a planning tool for an engagement process, showing methods and building blocks on different levels of participation and the barriers to cirumvent
How it works: we want to move a specific hard to reach group (orange post-it) towards active participation (center of the map). On each level, you pick out building blocks (green) and methods (yellow) to help doing that. On each level you also identify barriers (pink) and look at ways to circumvent them before you get to them.

More about this tool:
For each specific group there are a number of steps or building blocks (green post-its). For example, on the first level something has to be going on to make sure we know what they want.

But there are also barriers (pink post-its) that could hit and cause people to fall back. A group might have a transition problem so they don't understand what we're telling them.

On a higher level, we can use building blocks such as incentivising or linking them with other groups. A barrier on that level might be that we have to high expectations of them they might want to stop there.

Some of the methods (yellow post-its) are good examples of our own work, e.g. making sure not to use branding of the council if that puts people off with a trust issue.

WORKSHOP 1: IDENTIFY

In the first workshop, we indentified areas of day-to-day work that we wanted to improve, develop or do differently.

Introduction presentation workshop 1: 'Identify'

Download Jo's slides about public service design and the structure of the workshops supporting the learning network here. (this download is available until 31st March 2010)

Mapping our capabilities

In the first exercise of the day we split into groups to answer the following question; we wrote the answers on capability maps

What do we do (or would like to do) to engage older people in the design and delivery of services?

Capability maps (1)

Noreen, Commisioning Development Manager, Ealing Council
Daksha, PCT user & Carer co-ordinator for older people, Ealing
Charlie, Healthier Communities Officer Older People, NHS Kingston
Erika, Advise and Support Worker, Training Link

Capability maps (2)

Barry, Third Age Centre, Southampton City Council
Maggie, Community Worker, Marchmont Community Centre
Amal, Somali Integration Team
Kristen, Dignify Residential Volunteer, Toynbee Hall

Capability maps (3)

Alex, Transport Planner, West Sussex County Council
Paul, Customer Engagement Officer, London Borough of Hillingdon
Mass, Project Manager, Redbridge Council

Capability maps (4)

Bridget, Community Partnerships Manager, Colchester Borough Council
Saul, Learning Tutor Librarian, Camden Library
Niam, Engagement & Research Manager Adult Social Care, Camden Council

Specifications of tools to develop: Reaching a wider group of older people

by Barry, Noreen, Mass and Alex

Key issues:
- Exchange of information (around age, ethnicity and demographics) given constraints of data protection
- Targeting people appropriately - Do people want to be contacted?
- Can communications be branded effectively to get more people engaged?

Stakeholders:
- PCT
- Adult Social Care
- Social workers
- Mobile library
- Age UK
- Community centres
- Community groups
- Payment and benefits

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1.
What is the problem?

• Specific information (including interests and health?) sharing - how can we demonstrate the value of it?
• 'Secure' information sharing database
• Reaching majority (all) older people, including the ones we don't know about
  

What are the desired outcomes?
To get older people engaged in service development

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Publicity - community events
• Specific targeting
  

Specifications of tools to develop: Design WITH older people

by Daksha, Erika, Amal, Kristen and Paul

Key issues:

1. Transparency in consultation process > feedback
2. Shared responsibility between service providers and users
3. Better communication, better explanation of complex policies and procedures
4. Support for people using new services, training in how to use internet tools
5. Inclusion as exclusion (narrow the groups of the people taking part in consultations and be clear about it)
6. When does generic service need to be specialised (tailoring consultation / services)?(language / culture, mobility, health, location)
5. Responsibility

• Managing expectations of users as council resources are finite
  
• transparency in consultation process (feedback / concrete actions)
• shared responsibility between service users and provider

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1.
What is the problem?
Lack of shared responsibility between service users and providers. Unrealistic expectations and lack of feedback leads to dissatisfaction on both sides.

What are the desired outcomes?

• Manage expectations (council resources are finite)- transparency in consultation process
• Provide feedback and take concrete steps

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Need a mechanism, for accountability if you want people to take responsibility
• Raise awareness among people who want to take part in consultations
• Support instead of sanctions for accountability. If people are afraid for their jobs funding they won't be honest about negative feedback
• Feedback a requirement
  

Specifications of tools to develop: Digital online

by Niam and Maggie

Key issues:
1. Demonstrate value of blogs / online communication to older people
2. Using blogs / online columns as a forum of research and engagement with older people
3. What forum or blog?
- blog as feedback
- blog as experiential storytelling style
accessibility of site

Stakeholders:
- social media pilotworker (LBC)
- Engagement and research team
- Digital Online, LBC lead
- VCS
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1.

What is the problem?
To communicate the value of online engagement to older people

What are the desired outcomes?
Increase in older people using online engagement processes to influence services - more older people giving their views. More staff using this process to engage older people.

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Access to older people
• Clear publicity and ,messengers
• Easy to use website design / DDA accessible too
• Themes . topics of interest to older people
• Partnership working
• Trainers or blue type of skilled support
  

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2.

What is the problem?
Using online engagement process
Money (older people purchasing computers / polder people accessing computers if they do not have to).

What are the desired outcomes?

• Older people increasingly using online engagement process
• Move older people influencing services
  

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Attractive ad an easy process to use (good design)
• Publicity
• Training and support in using on line processes
• Working in pwartnership
  

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3.

What is the problem?
To demonstrate the value of online communication as a form of engagement to older people, including blogs / feedback forms

What are the desired outcomes?
Older people understanding that in time engagement is a key way of influencing services

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Good publicity
• Access to computers and support for those who need it to use them
• Accessibility of software and enable people with sensory needs and disabled older people to use computers.
  

Specifications of tools to develop: Useful segmentation of older people

by Bridget and Charlie
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1.
What is the problem?
Develop a service map that meets needs of 50-65 years old
(This would need separate mapping exercise for each organisation providing services to this age group).

What are the desired outcomes?
Organisation understands / awareness of when and how 50-65 year olds need / access the service.

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Develop template for all services provided including location, times, etc.
• Identify where partners deliver those services
• Identify where / how this service
• Engage with this age group to promote this service
• Engage with this age groups to understand how best to disseminate this information i.e. IT, paper, 1-2-1.
  

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2.
What is the problem?
Developing a personal map of sources of information and advice that meets my needs as a 50-65 year old. This would need separate mapping exercise for 65-75 and 75+ age groups.

What are the desired outcomes?
People between 50-65 can make more informed, positive choices to improve their quality of later life.

What are the requirements (process, time, people, skills)?

• Develop local template for relevant services / sources of info
• Identifying partners that deliver those services
• Identifying partners that deliverthis service
• Engage with this age group to promote this service
• Engage with this age group to understand how bets to disseminate this information, i.e. IT, paper, 1-2-1.