Finding settled accommodation

Redesigning Hackney Council’s benefits and housing needs service

#Strategy #servicedesign #research

Overview

The Brief

Local authorities have a statutory duty to support people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Faced with a lack of affordable housing, changes in legislation and legacy IT systems, the housing needs service at Hackney Council was under mounting pressure. This project set out to design, prototype and implement changes to the service that would support staff to go above and beyond their statutory duty.

How might we design and build a service which is easily understood, fair, accessible and beneficial to residents?

 

The solution

As the lead service designer within a blended team from FutureGov and MadeTech, the focus was on defining the service vision and prototyping ways of working.

The new service vision shows the different levels of support available based on a resident’s current situation and assets. New interventions were prototyped, including a shared plan, multidisciplinary case huddles and a new settled accommodation team. With the support and engagement from hundreds of officers, these new tools and ways of working have been embraced, enabling staff to save time and prevent homelessness.

Team

Role - Service designer and researcher, working in a multidisciplinary design and development team (FutureGov and MadeTech)

Timescale - 24 months including discovery, design, prototyping and implementation (2018-2020)

100+

officers

continue to attend fortnightly Show & Tells

£1.5m

in cost avoidance

forecast from all interventions over 3 years

Approach

Discovery

To understand how the service works and the needs of residents and staff, a range of research activities were undertaken:

  • Shadowing and interviewing all operational teams

  • In-depth contextual interviews with families living in temporary accommodation

  • Pop up conversations in the Hackney Service Centre, Citizens Advice and Job Centre Plus

  • Workshops with officers and managers from benefits, housing needs, adult social care, public health and mental health

  • SMS feedback and surveys

This qualitative research was connected with data analysis that revealed insights about volumes and cost.

This research was synthesised into:

  • user profiles to tell stories of families’ lived experiences

  • a series of six ‘as is’ maps to outline how the service works, common challenges and opportunity areas

  • key insights

Key insights

  • Resident information is spread across many different systems which makes it difficult to quickly build an understanding

  • Staff spend time working with a cohort of residents who, with the right tools and support, would be able to help themselves

  • Process, not people, dictates the information (and the amount of information) gathered at triage and assessment

  • Residents (and those supporting them) have unrealistic expectations of what support and housing options the council can provide

  • Temporary accommodation is not temporary and support to move into settled accommodation is inconsistent

  • Current tools and processes don’t give staff the freedom to work creatively or collaboratively on a case


Service VISION

Building on these insights, a new vision for the service was created. This builds on two quotes from the Head of Service:

Everything that everybody does should be geared around preventing homelessness

Identify the most vulnerable, not just vulnerable… excellent wraparound care and support for those most in need

The service vision - or ‘Hackney tube map’ - outlines three different levels of support available to residents

The three different service offers are:

  • Self-service - providing tools and resources for residents who are able to help themselves

  • Coaching and support - providing more assistance and coaching residents through the journey to find settled accommodation

  • Multidisciplinary teams - an intensive, collaborative and coordinated response for residents with the highest level of support needs

The hypothesis was that by self-service being the default journey, staff would have more time for personalised casework with residents who have multiple support needs.

Videos were created to illustrate what the self-service journey and multidisciplinary team would look and feel like in practice.

Understanding what level of support residents need

Building on the service vision in a staff workshop


PROTOTYPING

Over 18 months, a number of new tools and ways of working were prototyped that helped achieve the service vision. Three examples of these interventions are outlined below.

1 - Shared Plan

Theory of change, showing the expected outcomes from a shared plan and multidisciplinary working

The hypothesis being tested through prototyping was:

Because we think that current tools and processes limit staff’s ability to work creatively on a case, meaning issues are addressed in isolation 

We believe that working in a more collaborative way (with residents and partners) will enable us to provide more holistic, individualised support to those most in need

Different versions of the Shared Plan were tested and iterated. What started as a Google Doc evolved into a bespoke digital tool.

A new way of working was required to embed the Shared Plan across council services to make a single plan of action. These ‘case huddles’ were prototyped with live cases.

Listen to staff feedback from testing multidisciplinary shared plans in this video.

Being able to collaborate on the one single shared plan with multiple officers saves so much back and forth on emails

- Officer, Housing Supply team

The learning from prototyping enabled a set of resources and guidance to be created to support staff with multidisciplinary working.

Live prototyping a ‘case huddle’ with officers from housing and social care creating a shared plan

2 - Snapshot

The aim of Snapshot was to support officers to have better conversations with residents whilst identifying strengths and any risk factors. This could help staff intervene early and prevent residents reaching crisis.

The concept was tested in a series of live experiements using readily available tools - from paper prototypes to Google Forms and Sheets.

Learning from testing included:

  • Staff appreciate the simplicity and ease of use, but need support to build it into their day to day processes

  • Staff see the potential for this to improve the way they work with residents to resolve their situation

  • Staff who have less resident contact don’t always feel it’s appropriate to open up a discussion around wider aspects of their siutation

  • There is an opportunity to use this when residents contact customer services, not just the benefits and housing needs team

It's great because it will give officers a "head start" in their day today dealings with clients

- Benefits & Housing Needs Officer

Spending time using these tools encouraged me to text the resident about the option of making her overpayment in installments rather than waiting for the another team to contact her - I think I went beyond what I normally do!

- Benefits & Housing Needs Officer

The learning from these prototypes informed the new ‘Here to Help’ team launched in Hackney during the Covid-19 pandemic.


3 - Settled Accommodation team

Is it viable to set up a new team that supports residents to move out of temporary accommodation into a settled home?

A pilot was set up to measure outcomes and test the riskiest assumptions. Initial prototyping methods of role play and paper prototyping were combined with reflective time and empathy mapping to build staff confidence in delivering the new service.

Responses to ‘How likely do you think it is you will successfully bid for social housing?’

The Settled Accommodation Team was then tested safely in the live service with a small number of families to measure outcomes over 7 weeks.

Results from the pilot showed:

  • Families has a more realistic view of their housing options compared to a control group

  • 3 out of 11 families moved (or were moving) into settled accommodation during the pilot - resulting in real housing outcomes for families

All of the insights from testing were fed into a service blueprint for delivery.

Impact

A suite of new digital tools and ways of working has been adopted at Hackney, saving staff time and providing more opportunities to prevent homelessness. Staff continue to go above and beyond their duty to support residents in the most challenging of conditions.

A culture of working in the open and ongoing improvement work has been embedded, with 100+ officers regularly participating in fortnightly Show & Tells. The service is well recognised within the council for its ability to continually adapt and improve at pace.