Assess: we identify areas to work on based on our research findings, feedback from service users, performance data, staff insight, and stakeholder engagement.
Implement: we co-design and implement new approaches and solutions in collaboration with service users, staff, partners, and stakeholders.
Evidence: we measure the impact of these new ways of working using both qualitative and quantitative methods, including outcome tracking and service user feedback.
Co-ordinated by our expert teams, recent project examples include:
Continuity of care - working with our prison practitioners, we co-developed and implemented new processes to improve ‘continuity of care’ for prison leavers (linking them with community-based substance misuse providers), improving take up by 19% from 23/24 to 25/26.
Trauma-informed environments – responding to feedback and working with users from our drug and alcohol service in Medway, we co-designed the refurbishment of the service hub, using a mood board to generate a nature-themed environment to make the service feel more welcoming.
Embedded into our overall approach to this work are the following principles:
Service User Involvement: as set out in our ‘Count Me In’ organisational strategy, we ensure that service user experiences and insights are central to the process of development, improvement, and innovation, including training or conducting key processes, such as running a focus group.
Accessibility, equity, and inclusion: at each stage of assessment, implementation, and evaluation, we look at age, gender, ethnicity, and disability, to ensure equity of outcome and impact, addressing under-representation or inequality where identified.
Partnership working: we work with expert partners who bring specialist knowledge and experience, from digital pioneers to organisations who represent local ethnic communities and can help us reach under-represented groups.
Our expertise includes digital innovation, where recent initiatives include:
Creating an app to facilitate 24/7 peer support and provide access to self-help tools (co-developed with Yalla Co-operative).
Development of the National Recovery Online Programme (a structured programme of comparable intensity to residential rehabilitation for people who struggle to leave home).
Constant updates to the Reach Out online chat service (friendly advice and support from volunteers with lived experience).
Use of VR headsets in prisons to facilitate mindfulness (working with Flow, an Icelandic creator of immersive environments).
If you are interested in collaborating or learning more about our initiatives, we would like to hear from you.
