LOTI launched the Local Authority Sandbox in Adult Social Care this month with an in-person immersive day. Our overall aim is to make participants feel energised and inspired to take action collaboratively in solving thorny, decade-long systemic challenges.

The LOTI Sandbox Adult Social Care Immersive Day brought together those that worked across the adult social care sytem, including frontline workers in local authorities, health organisations, tech suppliers, hospital discharge teams, care homes, etc. Through live performances, we were able to bring the dimension of human emotion, immersing the audience with the stories and journeys two individuals as they navigate the health and care system in London.

Throughout the event, after each of the performances, the participants also took part in thematic breakout rooms which involved in discussing and unpicking issues, exploring opportunities and challenges together. Here are the key themes that emerged from the day:

Rehumanising the system

We designed the immersive event intentionally differently to any other local government event or workshop we’ve been part of, by incorporating real time storytelling, and looking at the whole health and care system, rather than just the role of boroughs in it.

A surprising insight from the day was that performing the stories as opposed to just reading persona stories helped to reveal how the system is designed around teams, services, or departments rather than the people with a need for care. It was interesting and quite obvious that the language we use to describe the services also reflected this.

We were pleased with the overwhelming positive response from participants which was that the stories resonated with them and in some cases they had personal experience with similar situations. This deep empathy of the audience was evident throughout the event, particularly when discussions opportunities for solutions. In fact, one participant said it best when they said: “We need to rehumanise the system”.

Community support

Another key theme from the day was that of the role of community support in supporting and enabling people to remain healthy at home for as long as possible. In both of the user stories that were performed on the day, it was clear that community support could’ve prevented escalation of needs and also provide help in navigating growing caring needs.  For this reason, one of the prototypes will be looking at in the design sprints will be the minimum viable model for community support.

Previously, we’ve tested the role of informal community care as part of our Piloting a home care cooperative in Clapton project.

Tech and data 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, tech and data solutions were identified as opportunities for solving some of the challenges across the health and care sector. The potential of emerging technologies like AI (Articifial Intelligence), Internet of Things (IoT) devices and Assistive Technologies in supporting people to manage complex medical conditions, reduce social isolation and prevent hospital admissions is undeniable. What was more pleasing, was hearing about the need to complement these tech advances with new ways of working, enhancing our own skills and capabilities to better understand and prescribe suitable tech solutions, share data responsibly and ethically across the system.

Participants also made an important point about data sharing across the system as an enabler to the system acting as one, compared to the current fragmented picture.

In summary, so far we’ve learned that grounding any radical innovation or change in the human journey, provokes a completely different conversation as does the holistic, systemic view of the challenges and opportunities.

What’s next?

In my previous blog, I explained our intention of prototyping the LOTI Local Authority Sandbox concept in a minimum viable approach. This helps us learn about what works and test our assumptions on whether an approach of this type would work in real life.

As such, this is a timeboxed and rapid process that involves creating rough prototypes. There are three phases we’re working through as part of this:

1. Identifying opportunities via an immersive event
2. Designing prototype solutions
3. Showcasing prototype solutions

As we have completed the immersive event, the four ideas we’re taking forward to the design sprints, expressed as ‘How Might We’ statements:

1. How might we use community interventions to support people live well, independently?
2. How might we improve transfer of care processes to better support patients and staff?
3. How might we make the local authority needs and financial care assessments more responsive and accessible?
4. How might we improve the triaging of messages in local authorities to help social workers provide a responsive service?

If you have any suggestions or would like to join one of the design sprints, please get in touch.