Weeknotes S01 E01

This past week we officially kicked off the start of a piece discovery/alpha work. Our focus is to improve the Local Offer for children, young people and families with special education needs and disabilities (SEND). The goal is to create a joint commissioned Local Offer that better supports families in Essex.

Keelan’s session to unpack the project scope

Things we did this week:

• The start of the week saw us engaging with our stakeholders. The group is made up of those within education, health, social care, the interest group who is made up of SEND groups and organisations such as SNAP, PACT and the Essex Family Forum.
• Spent time with our sponsor for the work to better understand the stakeholder landscape. This helped us understand where the sensitive areas were and how to navigate this. Having an open and frank conversation was really helpful.
• Keelan ran a session unpacking what we know, what we want to find out, what could go wrong and what is out of scope. We wrote statements about what we saw a good discovery delivering.
• Got together as a team to unpack our ways of working. Ed ran a fun ice-breaker about the best and worst ice creams. We’ve got a few service designers on the project so I’m doing my best to be a support to our new senior service designer Kay and not get in the way.
• Other than that, some engagement around availability with the interest group and some desktop research about other local offers and support available to families in Essex. We’re also scheduling interviews with parents and carers to better understand their experience.

The biggest challenge so far:

• It’s school holidays — tricky to get time with families and young people.

What’s next?

Spring planning, interviews with parents and carers and more desktop research.