• About the Greenwich Supports strategy
• The Greenwich Supports pilot onboarding journey
• Beyond ‘presenting need’: how we’re designing a new service for residents’ interwoven challenges
• Reaching out to residents: shifting to a more proactive model of support in council services

A recap of Greenwich Supports

The Greenwich Supports pilot project stemmed from the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s anti-poverty strategy. It’s a 12-month pilot service featuring a multidisciplinary eight-person team, made up of specialists in benefits and welfare rights, debt, employment, housing, and customer services. Our hypothesis is that by providing holistic support in one place, we will be more resident-centric and preventative. In this blogpost, we focus on prevention — specifically, where we’ve seen wraparound support preventing poverty or hardship among our residents, and some emerging thoughts on measuring the impact of prevention.

We’re now wrapping up the pilot — across the twelve months, we’ve supported over 513 residents and generated an average financial gain of £5,877 per household.

Prevention: what makes it challenging?

Much of our recent design work across the council has focused on shifting the council toward a culture that is preventative and proactive rather than reactive. This looks different depending on the programme — preventing people’s health from getting worse, preventing complex antisocial behaviour in council properties, or — in the case of Greenwich Supports — preventing poverty.

There are a couple of common challenges across prevention-geared programmes.

Prevention involves measuring something that didn’t happen

The trickiest thing about prevention is measuring it. When you stop something from happening it’s hard to measure because… it didn’t happen. In some of the examples above, we can look at the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of hospital admissions, or evictions, and attribute a portion of the decline to our design intervention. But for Greenwich Supports, it’s more complicated. How might we understand whether our service has prevented future hardship — financial or otherwise — for residents? Whether it’s prevented entry into council statutory services? Or, more broadly, whether it is the thing that’s attributable to a reduction in poverty across the borough?

Prevention work often feels counterintuitive

Working in a preventative way can often feel counterintuitive, because rather than focussing on urgent and high-stake situations, we focus on problems that, in comparison, feel quiet and small. Both are critical in council settings, but often the former outweighs the latter.

Someone who missed last month’s rent payment does not provoke the same sense of urgency as someone who has an eviction notice in a few days’ time. Similarly, for heads of service looking to prioritise financial gains for residents and the council, someone who recently entered into £50 of council tax debt doesn’t feel as high priority as someone who owes £2,000. The former, however, likely represents someone who might be on the brink of a difficult life change. In supporting them to stabilise the situation earlier on, we’re likely to prevent an escalation of money or other challenges.

Despite these challenges, the pilot has helped us understand what really works when it comes to enabling and measuring prevention.

What has helped us work in a preventative way

A multidisciplinary team and service offer

Working in a multidisciplinary team means we have a holistic view of the resident and understand their employment, housing, and financial status. We know what other advisors they’re working with and how far along they are with those supports, and we can reassure them they will not be lost in the system.

When advisors across various disciplines have full view into a resident’s situation, we have more people assessing what support might be suitable. This reduces the chances that issues are missed and reappear in greater severity down the line.

Combining (and prioritising) financial and relational support

To enable homelessness prevention on the pilot team, we secured a housing advisor. But we’ve seen just as many instances of financial support being a critical tool to prevent homelessness as housing support. We’ve had important learnings on both:

1. Homelessness prevention via financial support
Where financial support on the pilot has enabled homelessness prevention, it’s been through helping residents get on top of their rent payments — by increasing their income, reducing their expenses, and/or supporting them to build financial capabilities. So far through the pilot, we’ve increased each household’s annual incomes by an average of £5,877. There are instances where we know with complete certainty we prevented homelessness, because the resident or household was at imminent risk of eviction and we were able to work with them to get them to a more stable financial position.

There are other instances where we may have prevented homelessness but it’s too early to say definitively. These are residents who were in unsustainable financial situations — for instance, were borrowing money from friends or family, or in some rent arrears that were at risk of accumulating over time.

2. Homelessness prevention via relational, flexible housing support
Where housing support on our pilot has enabled homelessness prevention, it’s been a different kind of support than what’s typically provided in housing teams across the council. The pilot grants advisors the flexibility to work in the way they feel is best, and our housing advisor has done this. He’s also been able to support people who were at imminent risk of eviction — who on paper ‘couldn’t be helped’, or who needed more relational support at a time of immense emotional upheaval.

In one instance, a family was on the housing register for social housing due to the father/husband’s medical priority. Two days before they were meant to pick up the keys to their house, the father/husband died. When the mother informed the council of this news, she was told she was no longer entitled to the property due to there no longer being medical priority in the family.

With lack of housing options available, the family moved in with the mother’s sister-in-law — the home where her husband died. She was connected to Greenwich Supports, and our housing advisor helped her fill out the Housing Inclusion form to indicate the family was at risk of homelessness, as they could only stay with the sister-in-law for so long.

With time, they were offered a private property and were told that if they didn’t accept the place, the council would give it to someone else and could no longer help them. Feeling panicked and pressured, they contacted our housing advisor. The mother was worried the property was too far from her work, and amid the grieving found it incredibly overwhelming to process this decision with a clear mind.

Our housing office negotiated with the housing team for a bit more time to talk to the family. He listened to what the family’s concerns were and helped them map out the mother’s commute over the phone. Together, they saw the new commute would only be a few minutes more than her current one. Relieved, the mother agreed to take the property. Our housing advisor described how this simple act of working through the decision with her was obvious to him, given what she was going through:

“Mum’s first language isn’t English. She’s lost her husband. She’s still working full time and caring for an 18-year-old and a nine-year-old. She just needed that one person to sit down and explain it to her. Which is what I was able to do.”

This kind of relational support — talking through the feasibility of a potential private letting with a grieving family — is not a standard council offering. But without this support, this family could have rejected the property and become homeless.

Broadening outcomes and developing approaches to measure what didn’t happen

The pilot has led us to rethink what outcomes we capture in this service and across the council more broadly, and how. Even though financial support is so closely linked to homelessness prevention, it’s not something systematically tracked by Greenwich’s existing teams that offer financial support. Council services tend to report on outcomes that tie to their own specialisms, whether because that’s what their funding sources mandate, or because it’s simply the intuitive thing to do. But many supports across the council have ripple effects beyond their own areas of expertise.

Within Greenwich Supports, we’ve begun intentionally tracking instances where we’re confident we’ve prevented homelessness (specifically, entry into temporary accommodation — TA) in a way that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, relying heavily on the expertise and oversight of the manager to do so. From there, we’ve worked with our TA cost reduction team to understand what impact this has financially on the council. Our analysis shows that so far, with a conservative estimate, we’ve generated over £30,000 in council savings this year alone through homelessness prevention.

Homelessness prevention has now become a core outcome of Greenwich Supports, and will also become a core outcome of existing services offering financial support. This is one example where, through the pilot, we’ve recognised the linkages across and between services, and moved toward shared, cross-council anti-poverty outcomes.

Data-led proactive outreach

Our last blogpost focused on how reaching out to residents rather than waiting for them to come to us is a powerful and effective means of prevention. Data are a critical component in deciding who to reach out to. On the pilot, we’ve prioritised reaching out to cohorts of residents we believe might be more at risk of homelessness and eviction: for instance, households with non-dependents, because the biggest reason for presenting as homeless at the council is friends and family breakdown.

But we’ve noticed limitations in our data. Firstly, we’re operating mostly on hypotheses of who might benefit from early intervention, or using approximations (for instance, non-dependents as a proxy for friends and family breakdown). What if we knew with certainty the exact circumstances that predispose someone to present as homeless, and could prioritise people based on those specific data points? Secondly, different data on the same individuals are sprinkled across council teams, making it difficult to understand the interconnectedness of various factors when it comes to someone’s housing situation. What if we had a full picture of a resident’s background and all the factors that might put them more at risk of homelessness?

In an effort to solve for these two things, we have begun a data discovery exercise to 1) bring together data from across various council systems and teams; 2) unearth patterns in people who have presented as homeless to Greenwich; and 3) filter by those characteristics to proactively reach out to them at the right time and with the right supports.

If we learn that people who have applied for emergency support three times in the past year and have been deemed ineligible for a care package are statistically more likely to present as homeless, for example, we can connect with the relevant council services and offer support earlier on — before that third emergency support application, or right after they receive notice of the care package outcome.

This data discovery is a work in progress, and data sharing/privacy constraints make this no small task. But our pilot shows us that to foster a culture of prevention, data and knowledge should be a priority.

Reflections and what’s next

What we’ve seen with Greenwich Supports is that small, inexpensive actions can be effective preventative practice — whether that be:

• acknowledging residents’ emotional as well as practical needs
• bringing different specialists together to have more ‘hands on deck’
• reaching out directly to residents instead of waiting for them to come to us
• focusing on upstream challenges that may seem smaller but are just as — if not more — important than those downstream

The pilot itself is coming to an official close, but because of its success, it is continuing as a permanent service. In our next blogpost we’ll have some final reflections on our journey, potentially sharing some insight into our post-pilot co-design process as well.

In the meantime, do reach out to us if you’re embarking on similar discoveries, have insights to share, or if you simply want to learn more. Contact us on Medium or by emailing celia.beketa@royalgreenwich.gov.uk or corin.hammersley@royalgreenwich.gov.uk.

Measuring what didn’t happen: designing for prevention in the Greenwich Supports pilot was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since 2025, a small team at Royal Greenwich has been working on digital opportunities in adult social care.

One problem we know people have experienced in this service area is a lack of clear and consistent information, including with questions like, ‘how do I access support?’.

Although our web content on this topic is relatively clear and up to date, our Contact Assessment Team (CAT) still gets hundreds of enquiries by phone and email each week. This makes it challenging for the service to use their skilled resources in the right way.

Our hypothesis was that a digital route into the service would support CAT by allowing people to find the information they need and access support without first having to contact us by phone or email. We started to sketch out ideas for a digital way into these services.

Exploring and testing ideas

After getting some inspiration from other councils, we prototyped 2 concepts:

• an eligibility checker that would advise people on their likelihood of receiving support under the Care Act, similar to a tool developed by Kingston
• a support finder to help people find and access different kinds of care and support, similar to a tool used by Brighton

We took paper prototypes of these ideas to the Greenwich Carers Centre and to resident activity groups at Woolwich Library.

From this, we learnt that residents:

• wanted to see a range of care and support options and be able to make confident decisions about them
• didn’t want to waste time looking at support they wouldn’t be able to get
• didn’t understand the range of care options available in the borough
• expected help from the council rather than signposting or advice
• wanted to be guided by someone they felt they could trust, especially when feeling stressed or vulnerable

Based on this, we decided to work on a form for the service that would allow people to contact us online and be signposted to advice and support about their options.

Designing the new form

Our proposed form had three parts:

1. urgent-need signposting, to filter out those in immediate danger and get them appropriate help
2. a basic needs assessment, to suggest tailored options for next steps using a score based on the Care Act
3. referral questions, to gather more detail about the person, their situation, and any support they’d need with an assessment

We worked with CAT to try and make sure we collected enough data to help them make decisions, without causing people more worry or stress with a long and difficult form.

One change we made was to add a route for when someone’s form submission didn’t fully make sense. For example, if they’d told us they didn’t struggle with any of the daily activities described in the Care Act — except for moving around inside their home.

On a phone call, this would prompt further investigation, but on a digital form we could easily end up signposting this person elsewhere. We designed a route that prompted these people to tell us more about their situation, reducing the risk that anyone would be turned away when they really needed our help.

Preparing to release

Before release we tested the form with Greenwich residents, aiming to find out if they could use it successfully and how they found doing so. We wanted to make sure the form didn’t result in false positives or negatives, or give people misleading expectations about the support they might get.

We struggled to find test participants who weren’t already known to our services. This limited how far we could be sure the form would work in different scenarios. But we saw enough to feel confident that the form was straightforward and helpful, and that it was safe, so we decided to launch.

What’s happened since launch?

We quietly launched in mid-January to see how the form would work during a busy period for CAT (after Christmas, when many people see their relatives and decide they need some extra support).

Since then, around 11% of referrals to the service from people referring themselves or a friend or family member have come through the new form. This is lower than we’d like. What’s more, although the form is focused on support under the Care Act, people are using it to ask for all kinds of things — from mental health support, to equipment and home adaptations, even support for children and young people or those currently in hospital.

We’ve reviewed many of the form submissions with CAT and feel confident it’s giving accurate results in terms of eligibility for care. The problem is that almost everyone filling in the form is eligible — presumably because they’re waiting until they’re in crisis before they contact us.

This means a lot of people using the form are seeing the same recommendation — to contact us and ask for a care needs assessment. It also means they’re not seeing much signposting to other services, like our occupational therapy service or our support for carers.

As it turns out, in many cases it’s these other services that people feel would really help them. When CAT colleagues follow up with them about their needs, it’s often services like this they end up being routed to. They don’t always want a care package, even if they’re technically eligible for it.

In its current iteration, the form doesn’t pick up this nuance about what support people are looking for or what they would or wouldn’t feel comfortable with. This leaves our CAT colleagues needing to call people back, resulting in a lot of time still spent on the phone as they try to work out what support people really need. We think the form could do more to help with this, so that’s what we’ll focus on in our next iteration.

Talk to us!

We’ll continue to post about our work in this area. If you’re also working on adult social care services, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn — we’d love to share ideas.

Designing a digital first point of contact for Royal Greenwich’s adult social care service was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This was my first time on a panel and was a great experience and an opportunity to try something new.

So here’s how I was invited onto the panel and some reflections on some of the common topics people raised.

How did I get the opportunity

I’m Content Lead at the Royal Borough of Greenwich and am very lucky to work with Eleanor, one of the hosts of the London Content Design meet-up/ We’ve worked together for 5 years and she’s always encouraged me to push myself and not downplay my experience. So when she asked me if I’d be up for joining the panel, I accepted despite being a bit intimidated.

It’s important in any role to push yourself out of your comfort zone and develop skills that might not come naturally. As a lead, if I don’t challenge myself and try new things, how can I expect my team to?

I’m also responsible for hiring new content designers into the team so it was a good opportunity to hear from people starting out. Hopefully we were able to encourage people to apply for content design roles even if they don’t have content design in their job title yet, or apply for more senior roles.

Common questions after the talk

Attitude and people skills first, tools and processes later

One of the things that stood out to me was that people are really focussed on tools and processes. This makes sense as these are things you’re using day-to-day as a content designer. However, every organisation uses different tools and has slightly different processes and should offer training to help you learn how to use them.

The more important thing is who you are, how you build relationships, approach problems and deal with challenges. You need to be good with people to communicate change and show them the value and benefits of good content. These are the hard skills. You can learn them and can improve them over time with experience but a lot of it is your own mindset. You need to be able to understand someone else’s perspective and be open to having your mind changed.

Tools and processes can be taught. Empathy, compassion and a growth mindset is what people are really looking for when hiring a content designer.

How to know what content design role is right for you

Content design roles can vary in different organisations and sectors. You may even be doing a content design role with a different title.

It’s worth exploring what you really enjoy and what gives you energy and fulfilment. It might be:

• working with other disciplines and being able to be very creative
• teaching or training people in content design and best practices
• contributing to wider service change
• being digital focused, diving deep into analytics and iterating website content
• getting into the detail of microcopy and user experience design

Content design incorporates all of these things but different sectors will have slightly different requirements and projects which will allow you to dive deeper into certain areas.

If you’re not sure which type of role or sector is best for you, there are loads of content design communities you can reach out to. Speaking to other content designers informally can help you get a more honest and clearer understanding of what content design looks like in that organisation or sector. This can help you focus your search on roles and sectors that best fit you and your interests.

How to stand out in an interview

A lot of people asked about how to stand out in your CV, portfolio or in an interview. For me, you do not need a heavily designed CV, portfolio or cover letter. Applying your experiences, approaches and reflections and relating these to what’s being asked for in the job description is what makes you stand out.

The same applies when it comes to interviews, it’s about being able to show the interviewer that you really care about what you do and the impact you have. To do that, you need to be in a role you actually like and feel contributes to something you’re proud of.

Something I mentioned to a few people was that they can, and should, ask questions in interviews. I’m not talking your standard “when will I hear back” or “what’s the salary” but questions like:

• what does content design look like at this organisation
• what is the team structure
• what other disciplines will I get or collaborate with
• where does the team sit in the wider organisational structure”

These questions have helped me in the past to make sure that the roles I’m going for are actually content design. I also like to know that any jobs I apply for have the structure around them that I need to do my job whilst also making sure I can have an impact and get fulfilment in the role.

Interviews are a way to see if you’re a fit for an organisation but also if the organisation is a fit for the career you want to develop. If someone asks questions to me in an interview I know they’re interested in content design and I know that their approach to content design aligns with how we work. If a content designer can’t work in a multidisciplinary team then they’re going to struggle to have the same impact as team members who fully embrace the wider team and learn from others.

The main takeaways of the talk

I’m glad I got the chance to be on the panel and share my own career journey which I hope made it feel more attainable to others. We got fantastic questions and had some really lovely conversations.

To summarise the advice from the evening:

• Show the value of content design. Don’t just talk about it
• Find a job that allows you to focus on what you enjoy
• Your attitude and approach is more important than tools
• Be human
• Be your full self

Also, if you’re invited to do a panel and there’s a voice in your head telling you that you don’t have the experience or people won’t care about your experience, ignore it and do it anyway!

What I learnt from being on a panel about career progression in content design was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m often asked about the tips and tricks we’ve used to make our Community of Practice (COP) successful, as it seems to be thriving from the outside. Honestly, I feel a huge sense of pride when colleagues say our team “feels like how a team should be”: open, diverse, enthusiastic, hands-on, kind, supportive, and high-performing. This year, we even got nominated for the 2025 staff award at Greenwich in the category “team of the year”.

We’ve been working as a team since 2021 and have experimented with different ways of running our COP. This year, we’ve learned a lot, and I’d love to share what worked for us. I hope that these insights will help you and your team build and grow your own community of practice in the future.

1. Start by defining our learning goals and time-boxing them throughout the year: one thing at a time!

At the end of 2024, we did our end-of-year retrospective to analyse what went well, what didn’t go so well, and where we wanted to focus our energy during 2025. We analysed our core capabilities as service designers and areas where we needed to stretch a bit more due to our organisational context. We managed to break this down into three main themes that represented our learning goals. Once we defined our learning goals, we decided to work on them quarterly: one thing at a time! This means we focused on each theme for three months, and one month was used in between to document, reflect, and plan next steps. Below is a summary of each theme and what we explored this year:

• Sustainable change: we learned more about bringing change within the organisation, explored methods such as the theory of change, behavioural change, and analysed some frameworks available. We dived into the behavioural change wheel, nudge theory, behavioural tactics, etc.
• Operating model design: over the past couple of years, we have been stepping more into operating model design, and we wanted to cross-pollinate our learnings, analyse other work in the sector, and understand more about org design and its synergies with op models. We also explored what Nesta and Public Digital are discussing about Operating Model in Local government.
• Creativity: as we often face complex challenges in Local Government that require innovative and creative methods, we wanted to embrace creativity in our day-to-day at work to facilitate conversations, workshops, frame problems, etc. We explored new (to us) methods such as visual note-taking, LEGO® Serious Play®, the theatre of the oppressed role-playing, and speculative design.

2. Have a good structure, ownership and clear plan for each learning goal

• Planning each goal so we have a clear path to follow: at the beginning of each period, we had a planning session to break down what we wanted to achieve and which specific topics and subtopics we wanted to explore during 3 months. This helped us to have a clear plan, and it was easier to build our weekly agendas.
• Assigning shared ownership to divide and conquer: We’re a team of seven Service Designers, so we each chose a theme to focus on based on our interests or motivation. This formed two pairs and one group of three, with each group taking the lead for their chosen theme. Their responsibilities included creating the agenda for each COP session, planning activities to support the learning goal, running a retrospective afterwards, and documenting what the group learned.
• Retro after each goal: we had a retro after each topic to assess our progress and learnings, celebrate what went well and what to improve next period. This really helped us to continuously improve our COP space and keep doing what was working well.
• Document learnings and share them widely: after 3 months of learning, we spent some time documenting learnings and shaping them into a guideline in MS Loop. We also did some Open House sessions (a meeting with the whole Product team) to share widely with other disciplines. Although this could be improved, we think it’s important to create tangible outputs that can summarise our key takeaways.

3. Be consistent in our routines and provide a safe space to learn

• Meeting regularly, little and often, it’s better for us: meeting for one hour each week helps us maintain momentum and continuously build our knowledge, and once a month we meet 2 hours to get things done. Over time, we’ve tested different rhythms for our COP and found that this weekly cadence works best for us. It keeps everyone aligned and ensures we don’t lose track of what we’re working on as a team. We rarely cancel or miss these sessions because we see the value they bring — learning from each other not only strengthens the COP but also supports our individual projects.
• Use the COP time to do the COP work: as we have a very structured way of running our COP, we try to do as much as possible within the hour we have together. We use collaboration tools such as Miro board and Loop so we can all add ideas and maybe add a few bits asynchronously.
• COP time is always safe: I personally think this is the key ingredient for a successful community of practice. By having a safe space where people can express what they think and feel, you enable a space for growth.

4. Being creative and using simple formats to run our COP

• COP is a fun thing, not a heavy burden: watch parties or reading together, followed by reflection and brainstorming, role playing, check-ins using LEGO® Serious Play® or drawings, etc. We also have done some wellbeing sessions to talk about emotions, feelings, and also do some meditation to reduce stress levels.
• Using digital tools to keep capturing what we do: we used Miro board to capture our ideas, which helped us a lot to then come back, revisit what we did and document in a more shareable way.
• Finding external resources to upskill ourselves: One of the highlights this year was getting some training on LEGO® Serious Play® (for free!). I think the public sector is always keen to support each other, so definitely using our networks, connections and friends to enable these possibilities is something we would recommend!

5. Have social time outside work

This has been a very important topic for us, and we took it seriously. We have so much to talk about, so much to share, that often at work it’s hard to find time. This is important for us to build real connections and relationships that can go beyond work. We were also creative in having social time, as we know it’s hard to find space in our busy personal agendas!

• Going for casual drinks after COP sessions: we strategically booked our COP on Thursdays at 4pm to 5pm. Perfect to go for a short drink after work.
• Having casual dinners to explore London cuisine or taste team members' cooking skills: We have real chefs in our team, and Chiara has hosted multiple Italian dinners at her place. We learned how to prep pasta from scratch and tried her famous focaccia!
• Have a potluck dinner hosted by one of us every 2 to 3 months: we can never have enough food. We met regularly in one of our houses, and each of us would bring a dish to share; however, we always brought so much food that the host would have leftovers for a few days.

In summary, this has been a fantastic year for our Community of Practice. While our recent end-of-year retro highlighted a few areas to refine, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made and the sense of achievement we share as a team. Looking ahead, we’ll keep evolving — exploring new topics, learning together, and doubling down on the practices that work best for us. Here’s to building an even stronger COP in the year to come!

How we ran our Service Design Community of Practice in 2025 was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This year, our Service Design team at Greenwich set out to explore creative tools and methods that bring value to the organisation. We were curious about LEGO® Serious Play® methodology, as some of us had previous experience as participants. We were lucky enough to have a good friend, Nickolas Laport, who is certified in this methodology willing to train our team free of charge. We’ve since used this approach for several sessions,including our end-of-year retro.

We had a 3-hour in-person session to reflect on learnings from the past year and imagine the future as a team. In this blogpost, we will describe what we did, how we did it, the results, and the next steps for us.

What we did during the session.

1. Team retrospective

We reflected on what went well in our community of practice this year — and what didn’t — using LEGO® Serious Play®. Each team member had to build a model to represent what went well this year, and what didn’t go so well. The results were fascinating! The depth of meaning of each model was impressive, revealing and representing in a visual and tangible way those inner thoughts and reflections that sometimes words cannot express easily.

Based on the models we built, we did a summary of our reflections:

What went well this year?

We all feel we have a very strong learning culture and that we have improved how we plan our time together to make the most of our Community of Practice sessions. By setting clear goals and rotating leadership, we stayed accountable and organised this year. This approach not only ensured we met our objectives but also gave everyone the chance to facilitate, coordinate, practice public speaking, and actively contribute. We also used multiple ways to develop and share knowledge such as watching videos, analysing frameworks, reading together, role playing, sharing work in progress, among other practices.

We also celebrated that we are dedicating time to be more creative. We are being intentional in bringing creativity as an important skill to face challenges in the public sector, and we are actively exploring new tools and methods. We are also being creative in how we boost our skills using our networks outside Greenwich. For example, we organised some great out-of-office training sessions — one highlight was a LEGO® Serious Play® workshop at Kew Gardens, thanks to our friend Nicko, who works there and kindly invited us to train in that amazing setting.

Finally, we recognised how valuable was to increase our team’s social time. Alongside celebrating our birthdays and organic meetups, we’ve introduced regular team dinners every 2–3 months. These moments outside the office are essential for us — they help strengthen relationships and give us space to talk about life, hobbies, and interests beyond work. Building these informal connections makes our team feel closer and more resilient.

Overal, we are genuinely grateful for having a safe space for sharing achievements, struggles, learn and get support from each other.

What didn’t go so well this year?

We recognised we could have done better in connecting with others to co-build and expand knowledge. For example, we had a limited connection with other Communities of Practice where we could have worked together around certain topics we have in common. We also reflected that the learnings gained throughout the year (change management, operating model design, and creative methods) weren’t applied often enough. So, we want to expand and cross-pollinate more in the new year.

We recognised that the financial pressures across the sector are affecting morale and making it harder to see where our work as service designers fits. The current emphasis on impact modelling and cost‑saving is unfamiliar territory for us, as our practice is rooted in understanding people and improving their experience of services. Translating qualitative insights into stakeholder value defined largely by savings is proving challenging. While service design delivers system-level improvements and long-term benefits, these don’t always translate into immediate financial returns. We need an approach that honours both the short‑term pressures and the longer-term value we know good design can unlock.

2. Imagining the future

After the retrospective, we spent the next hour discussing our vision for the future. We have existed as a Service Design Team within the Royal Borough of Greenwich since 2021. The context in our organisation has changed, and what we do as service designers has evolved. We think it’s time to pause and imagine what’s next for us and where we want to be in the next few years.

We first spent 7 minutes individually building a model (using Lego again) that represented “what achievements will we as a team be most proud of in 3 years?”. We had some prompts to inspire the building process: What difference will we be making in 3 years? What will we be known for? What will it feel like to work in this team? What skills and capabilities will we have?

We had a rich conversation about the future and we identified multiple patterns across all LEGO models. We could group these into two main big themes that will be our 2026 goals:

1. We want to bring greater financial sustainability for the organisation and at the same time, advocate for more people-centric approach to delivery value.

• achieve a balance between cost savings and resident and staff experience.
• deliver services that save money and improve resident experience.
• secure more financial resources for service innovation.
• maintain care and heart within the team (our safe space).
• keep demonstrating the value of service design and influence stakeholders through compelling narratives.

2. We want to expand our Creativity, Collaboration, and Capability Building within RBG and in the sector

• foster creativity and multidisciplinary collaboration.
• equip others with tools for joined-up and creative working.
• work transparently and harmoniously with other teams.
• build strong internal and external connections to share ideas.

3. Drafting our vision statement

After discussing individually what we wanted to achieve in three years, we had the challenge of creating and writing our vision statement. We brought together all the individual models, connecting them together and drafted a vision statement that represents the collective vision for our team. We had some examples of vision statements that are concise, inspiring, and aim high, so we could have some inspiration. The team had 15 minutes to discuss and agree on our vision.

Our initial draft: “We connect ideas to support Greenwich to thrive together”

Next steps

We will refine our Service Design vision statement for the next three years and define the specific activities we want to prioritise in 2026 to move closer to that vision. Our goal is to take collective, intentional action as a team — focusing on what truly brings value to the organisation, while considering the current context and challenges faced by local government. At the same time, we aim to push beyond our comfort zones and continue developing our skills, connecting more with others.

Using LEGO® Serious Play® for our Service Design team end-of-year retro was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyscalculia — the latter pronounced to rhyme with Julia (“dis-cal-coolia”), a top tip from the Accessible Numbers podcast, just to get that out there upfront because yes, it’s not pronounced how you’d expect! Since then, I’ve been learning what those diagnoses mean for me personally and professionally: how I work, think, and increasingly lead.

Pretty much straight after being diagnosed, I knew I wanted to be open about these learning difficulties (although I prefer defining them as learning ‘differences’ so that’s how I’ll refer to them). I wanted to write this partly so people know how best to work with me, but also because there isn’t enough awareness or discussion about the diversity of these experiences and how they show up for different people. When I was diagnosed, I struggled to find myself in the narrative.

So, in writing this, I’m speaking both to you, the reader, to help build that awareness, and to a younger version of myself or anyone who may have been recently diagnosed.

It’s also important to say that my diagnosis, and all the learning that’s followed, unfolded during a period when my career was accelerating quickly. Since joining the Royal Borough of Greenwich as one of the Council’s first ever Delivery Managers at the end of 2021, I’ve progressed to Senior Delivery Manager, to a Programme Lead running one of the Council’s largest transformation programmes, and more recently, the Head of Delivery.

I share this, not just so you know a bit more about me and the context of my work, but to show that learning differences don’t have to hold you back. You can still grow, progress, and lead whilst you’re still discovering a lot about yourself.

Before we get into it, it took me a while to decide how I wanted to share this. Then I met a lovely colleague, Stephine Shine, who is also dyslexic — you can read his dyslexia story on the British Dyslexia Association website. After some discussion, I decided I wanted to do this in a conversational format with the support of Ste because that’s what plays best to my strengths. So, a heads-up: it’s a little on the long side, but I hope you’ll stick with it and take something from our conversation! And Ste, thank you for doing this with me.

Ste: Shall we go back to the beginning of your diagnosis, how old were you and how did you get diagnosed?

I was 26. I’d just started a job at the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council and found myself struggling more than usual, with new systems, technology, and a new commute. At first, I blamed adjusting to a new environment and moving from a Google to Microsoft Teams organisation, if you know you know — highly disorientating! But, I was also working with lots of designers for the first time, and the visual side of the work felt really hard. One evening, I randomly googled “Dyslexia” and found these bullets about dyslexia in adults on the British Dyslexia Association website describing things like difficulty remembering important dates and conversations, personal organisation, getting thoughts down into paper — and it all just clicked.

I spoke to my manager, got referred for an assessment through work, and as a result, was diagnosed with both dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Ste: Did you have any thoughts about dyscalculia or dyslexia before?

Yes, I was pretty sure I had dyscalculia. I’ve always struggled with numbers; maths was the bane of my school life. I failed my GCSE the first time, went through several tutors, and had more or less self-diagnosed.

I never thought I was dyslexic though, because a lot of the narrative is that it primarily affects reading and writing skills and I didn’t see myself in that. There’s also this idea that dyslexic people tend to be strong visual thinkers; good with diagrams, spatial reasoning, and creative design. But I’m the opposite. I find visual information really hard to process, and that’s actually one of the biggest ways dyslexia shows up for me. So when I was diagnosed with both dyslexia and dyscalculia, it was a bit of a shock.

I’ve since learned that dyslexia is about how you process all kinds of information. I also discovered that there’s often an overlap between dyslexia and dyscalculia, with around 60% of people with dyslexia also experiencing difficulties with maths.

Ste: So what does dyslexia and dyscalculia look like for you day to day?

At work, it’s mostly about how I process visual information, follow detailed step-by-step processes, get my thoughts down in writing concisely and quickly, and manage my working memory. For example, I struggle with maps, diagrams, and graphs, I just can’t make sense of them. This is due to my perceptual reasoning abilities (such as my ability to use visual information to interpret or solve problems) being in the extremely low range. So, when I started working with designers and business analysts creating complex visual processes and service maps, it suddenly made sense why my job move had felt so difficult!

Growing up, I used to record conversations if I thought a lot would be said and I’d need to remember it. I never realised I was doing that to help compensate for not retaining all the detail the first time around. I still do that now at work, recording or transcribing meetings so I can process them properly afterwards and focus on being present in the conversation rather than worrying about remembering everything.

With dyscalculia, it’s more about being prone to errors with anything numbers related. I often read or retain numbers incorrectly, for example, misreading a meeting time and turning up late or early (luckily, this is usually minor!) or writing out an agenda with timings that don’t quite add up. Recently, I oversaw a day of hybrid workshops that brought together the entire portfolio of design and change work across the team. When the day inevitably ran behind and we had to adjust sessions on the fly, I found it difficult to keep things accurate. I eventually delegated that task to someone else, which became a real “note to self” moment about recognising my limits and focusing on the areas where I can add the most value.

Outside of work, both dyslexia and dyscalculia affect my wider organisation skills; things like travelling somewhere new (especially when I have to use maps), remembering birthdays of family members or friends, recording dates and times correctly, participating in certain games or activities, calculating tips, or working out discounts. I used to joke with friends about “a day in the life of Beth” because so many of these things seemed to go wrong.

Since being diagnosed, I’ve started to reframe a lot of this and stopped being hard on myself. Not long after, I decided to take a solo trip to Bali partly to prove to myself that I’m capable, despite the challenges dyslexia and dyscalculia bring. I was terrified, but it turned out to be a really affirming experience, and I’m proud of myself for doing it!

Ste: You’ve mentioned some techniques you’ve used and some reflections on your diagnosis, which we’ll come back to shortly. So far, we’ve focused mostly on the challenges, but I read in the Dyslexic Advantage book that people often view dyslexia as looking through the wrong end of a telescope and yet, if you turn it around it becomes an amazing tool which lets you see things far off in the distance and in different ways. With that in mind, what do you see as the positives or flip side of your dyslexia and dyscalculia?

I love that! And yes, this definitely resonates — the charity Made by Dyslexia recently did a study that found one in three founders are dyslexic, and in their book ‘This is dyslexia’ they highlight how valuable dyslexic thinking skills are; particularly today, as AI advances and we increasingly need to harness interpersonal, innovative, and complex problem-solving abilities.

For me, as someone who’s dyslexic, my biggest strength is communication. I’m good at building relationships, bringing teams together, presenting, and facilitating — whether that’s in a board meeting, with a large group, or one-to-one. I’m an active listener and can consistently summarise and make sense of what’s happening in real time, verbally. This is backed by my diagnostic assessment, which places me in the top 14% of my peer group for verbal comprehension.

I hesitate to call it “emotional intelligence” (because I don’t want to sound self-congratulatory!) but I do naturally tune into the feel of a room and tend to process information through more of an emotional lens — the dynamics, the atmosphere, and how people are reacting. That’s been especially valuable with stakeholder management and navigating difficult conversations.

I’m not naturally detail-oriented, so getting into the nuts and bolts of a problem can be challenging sometimes. But I’m great at seeing the bigger picture and cutting through the noise to what really matters. For example, if a team is curating a slide deck or narrative, I can quickly piece together the beginning, middle, and end, clarifying what we need to focus on and why. Similarly, when people show me their design work or complex modelling, I can help them identify what to emphasise and what to draw out.

When it comes to dyscalculia, I think my strength lies in my willingness to challenge established approaches. Councils are becoming increasingly financially driven for understandable reasons, but the way financial information is communicated is often very technical, as are the methodologies behind it. While I recognise that a lot of this complexity is unavoidable, around 25% of people experience some level of difficulty with maths. If we’re serious about meeting the financial challenges ahead, we need to acknowledge how inaccessible some of our financial decision-making and reporting can be for those outside that world and ask whether what we expect of the wider workforce is truly realistic without addressing this. I’ve been inspired by the work happening within the civil service to improve this. For example, their poster about designing for users with dyscalculia or low numeracy is great. I’d love to be bolder in challenging these issues, and help replicate that progress in local government.

Ste: You’ve tied your strengths to things that you do in your job, do you think that you’ve gravitated towards your job because of the way your brain works?

I think my approach to work has been shaped by ambition and stepping into discomfort. I’ve always pushed myself into areas I found challenging. When I was on the National Graduate Development Programme (NGDP) scheme starting out at Hackney Council I saw it as an opportunity to do that. So for example, I did a placement in Area Regeneration even though my background was in Social Care because I wanted to explore an area I knew very little about and then I decided to do a placement in a Data & Insight team because of my fear of numbers. I remember speaking to a coach soon after my diagnosis who challenged me and said ‘if you were neurotypical, do you think you would have approached it in that way?’. Not sure if I’m answering the question, but that’s what springs to mind…

Ste: Yes in a roundabout way it is, it sounds like it’s not so much about your conditions per se but more so the way you’ve approached work as a result of it, and that it’s made you more bold and resilient through exposing yourself to situations that are more challenging.

In many ways, yes. But that tactic could only take me so far, because as I’ve progressed, the stakes have become higher and the risks greater. Over the past few years, I’ve led major pieces of work where I’ve been responsible for delivering significant financial savings, managing multiple teams, and presenting complex work confidently to senior leaders, politicians, and residents… Masking doesn’t really work if you’re participating in a formal political scrutiny (and nor should it!).

Looking back, masking my challenges also often felt like high effort, low impact, and sometimes emotionally and cognitively overwhelming. For example, with data and numbers, no matter how many times someone showed me a dashboard and explained the methodology, I still couldn’t fully grasp it. I don’t regret any of that, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but occasionally I do wonder: at what cost?

Ste: What have you done since your diagnosis to change the way you work?

Honestly, it’s still a work in progress! But, I transcribe meetings to process and retain information, I lean on trusted colleagues for the ‘detail’ and when there are significant steps to make, for example, in admin processes, and have a “number buddy” for anything number related, for example, working on spreadsheets, calculating costs and so on.

I also focus more now on understanding problems conceptually, so the context, risks, trade-offs, impacts and asking teams questions as opposed to always trying to understand the granular details myself.

Earlier on, I tried some coaching and experimented with assistive technology; specifically speech-to-text software. The coaching was helpful, but I don’t think I was quite ready for it at the time; I was still processing the diagnosis. And while the software had potential, I found it tricky to make time for it, and it felt a bit unnatural and ended up slowing me down.

Ste: Yes, I had a similar experience with speech-to-text software - it’s a whole new way of working and it’s hard to learn these things as an adult already working! So you understand the concepts, how the solutions fit together and enough about the analysis required to make decisions or steer direction but keep a zoomed-out view and rely on support for the detail?

Exactly, yes, and I’m increasingly learning to give myself permission to do that. One of my strengths, as I mentioned earlier, has been my willingness to give things a go and step into discomfort, even when something doesn’t naturally align with my way of thinking or when I don’t fully understand it.

But now, I’m more deliberate about drawing a distinction: am I just doing something for the first time and going through the classic learning curve, or is this a moment where I need dedicated support? Ultimately, everyone faces discomfort at work — we all have tasks we enjoy, the things that energise us and ones we tend to avoid. But knowing when to push through and when to ask for help is a fundamental distinction for me.

Ste: Yes, it’s about tuning in to yourself to know the right time for that, and sometimes unlearning behaviours that have served you well in the past but don’t fit certain contexts now. That’s a nice segue into my final, broader question: how do you think getting the diagnoses has affected you overall?

I think overall it’s been a positive experience. It helped me reframe years of self-criticism and realise that I’m not just “scatty” or abnormally “bad” with numbers, my brain is wired differently. That clarity was really affirming, but also complex. I was diagnosed at 26, and I’ve had to unpick years of coping mechanisms and rethink how I work, lead and learn to advocate for myself.

I’ve also pondered a lot on whether I want to be open, but I also needed time to understand what openness really meant for me, not just saying “I’m dyslexic and have dyscalculia,” but being able to explain how that shows up for me and how others can support me.

At the same time, I’ve wrestled with how much I want this to be part of my identity. There are still niggling fears about how I could be perceived going forward. I want to be seen as me, not just through the lens of the diagnoses.

Ste: Yes, it’s a part of you but it doesn’t define you.

Yes, exactly! But through conversations like this, and the books and podcasts I’ve found along the way, I’ve felt seen. And that’s inspired me to share my story, not just for myself, but to help others feel seen too, and maybe spark change in the sector I work in too.

Looking through the “wrong” end of the telescope: a conversation on Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and work was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is our fourth blogpost in a series about how we’re tackling poverty at the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Previous articles in this series:

• About the Greenwich Supports strategy
• The Greenwich Supports pilot onboarding journey
• Beyond ‘presenting need’: how we’re designing a new service for residents’ interwoven challenges

The Greenwich Supports pilot so far

The pilot is Greenwich’s response to poverty: a multidisciplinary eight-person team, made up of specialists in benefits and welfare rights, debt, employment, housing, and customer services. Our hypothesis is that by providing holistic support in one place, we will be more resident-centric and preventative.

Across the four months that the pilot has been active, we’ve supported over 174 residents. Most of these residents (over 58%) have come into the service through us reaching out directly to them, something we call ‘proactive outreach’. This is a slightly different approach from other services in the council, which may do a degree of outreach to inform residents of a service, but primarily rely on residents coming to them.

Proactive outreach — why we’re doing it

It’s not uncommon for people to not want to interact with the council. They see it as another job on their list — one that is often unpleasant and stressful and may even bring back traumatic memories.

It’s like putting off a GP appointment because you know you’ll be in a holding queue for 30 minutes. If a GP rang you, told you they were doing free screenings for the very thing you’ve been putting off, and asked if you’d like to book a slot, you would probably be pleasantly surprised. It might be just the nudge you needed to book the appointment.

The council reaching out to people is unexpected and human. It makes people realise that the council isn’t just an organisation trying to cut services but one made up of humans looking out for other humans.

Our aim in prioritising proactive outreach is to do just this — to humanise council services and truly centre residents in our service delivery.

It’s also to support residents to improve their situation before things get worse. Maybe someone has only recently fallen into a bit of debt, or maybe there’s only a small shortfall between their income and expenses. But by ‘intervening early’ with financial and/or employment support, there’s a greater chance we can support them to stabilise their situation early on — for example, before a bit of debt turns into multiple missed rent payments, which then turns into eviction threats, which then turns into homelessness.

Who we’re reaching out to and how

We asked ourselves, “who could benefit from wraparound support but currently isn’t receiving it?”. We thought of ‘indicators’ that might suggest someone is facing financial hardship, to whom we could provide support in the form of benefits maximisation, debt management, and/or employment. Data has been critical for this — understanding what data we have available to us, on residents both known and unknown to the council.

So far, we’ve identified two cohorts of residents to reach out to. The first is residents who, according to the LIFT dashboard (Low-Income Family Tracker from Policy in Practice) don’t have enough money to cover their expenses and appear to have low barriers to employment.

Our Customer Services advisors cold-called 223 residents from this group, with almost a third agreeing to work with us. 86% of those we managed to reach were happy to engage with Greenwich Supports.

Our next cohort is a group of residents who are now paying more for council tax than they were before due to changes in our council tax scheme. For this one, we’re trialling a different approach: sending a text first and only calling those who express interest. So far, we have texted 121 residents, with 29% responding that they would like to engage with Greenwich Supports.

Outreach is often met with pleasant surprise — a warm tone and clear, strong offer are critical

Our proactive outreach — in particular the cold-calling — was more successful than we anticipated. One advisor shared:

“The reception that I’m getting while being here in Greenwich Supports, it’s a lot less adversarial than what I’m used to … the clients want to work with us.”

When we asked the team why residents seem more receptive to this kind of support, they had a few ideas. Our manager emphasized the impact of having our Customer Services advisors as the first point of contact. Their expertise in empathising with residents, providing confidence in the legitimacy of our service, and navigating refusals with understanding was made clear — outreach work among other teams on the council doesn’t always have the same success rate.

Advisors also identified the following factors for the success of outreach:

• The fact that the service is voluntary
• A clear understanding of the service we have on offer among those doing the outreach (this took time with a new, ever-evolving pilot)
• The nature of the service — the fact that residents can get support across multiple areas all in one place, and imminently rather than eventually
• The name ‘Greenwich Supports’, which is by nature open and inviting

“Staying with that customer rather than pass[ing] [them] over from pivot to post … they feel more relaxed and more … like I’m there to help rather than there to do a job.” — Greenwich Supports Advisor

Outreach can also be met with scepticism — have a plan to address it

A challenge with cold-calling residents is instilling trust in the service. Being wary of scams, people may naturally be sceptical of unexpected calls or may not believe we’re genuinely from the council. People’s scepticism sometimes led to them calling the council’s Customer Services or checking on our website to confirm the new team and service were legitimate. We learned how critical it was for the council’s Customer Services team to be aware of this pilot, and for there to be information online about its existence.

Outreach is an important component of prevention

Although difficult to prove, we are starting to see how outreach might lead to prevention. Though outreach, we’ve been able to reach residents who otherwise would not have been aware of the support available, hesitant to ask for support, or wary they may not be entitled. In one instance, a resident from our outreach was connected to our employment advisor:

“She was saying if she didn’t receive the call and if I wasn’t able to help with this, she wouldn’t have done it because of where she is mentally … She’s just like, ‘I’m so appreciative’, like, ‘you don’t know how much this means to me.’” — Greenwich Supports Advisor

In another instance, an advisor shared a story where a resident they called was planning to go to the council the following week. Having someone else anticipate our needs can make us feel seen and more willing to ‘do the thing’ — like that GP calling us to offer free screenings for the very thing we were putting off.

Reflections and what’s next

The success of our proactive outreach is telling. In contacting residents we think might be in need and offering them our support, we show them that we care. We build deeper relationships with them, some of whom may have previous negative experiences with the council or may not even have a deep history with the council. We catch ‘issues’ early on, before they may escalate to something more burdensome and challenging.

Defining prevention and measuring outcomes around it is notoriously tricky. We are still learning more about this, including how prevention shows up in the pilot more broadly beyond the outreach. Stay tuned for more blogposts about this and other topics.

In the meantime, do reach out to us if you’re embarking on similar discoveries, have insights to share, or if you simply want to learn more. Contact us on Medium or by emailing celia.beketa@royalgreenwich.gov.uk or corin.hammersley@royalgreenwich.gov.uk.

Reaching out to residents: shifting to a more proactive model of support in council services was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Four months ago, Olabisi, a 35-year-old mother, was navigating life with complex health challenges: registered blind in her right eye, partially blind in her left, bilateral deafness, and mobility issues requiring a walking stick. With a new baby and frequent falls, her family worried about her safety when alone.

Today, her Alexa Show enables video calls with family who can lip-read Nigerian with her. Fall sensors detect emergencies immediately. Movement sensors let her family know she and her newborn are safe throughout the day.

She’s one of 800+ residents now supported by the Digital Health and Care Technology (DHACT) programme — but her story illustrates something bigger than technology adoption.

It’s about what happens when you design services with people, not just for them.

The challenge: more than just technology

The DHACT programme was funded by the NHS and the Royal Borough of Greenwich and launched in March 2025. It has an ambitious goal: transform how residents manage long-term health conditions and needs around their care by staying well and living safely at home through digital technology, data, and expert monitoring when needed.

But rolling out devices was the easy part. The real challenge was human: How might we embed new technology into existing health and social care systems? How might we change decades-old workflows? How might we get clinical and social care teams — with different risk appetites and cultures — to collaborate seamlessly?

Our approaches:

We anchored our work in three principles:

• Sustainable change over quick fixes
• Co-design with staff and residents
• Data-led decision making

Phase 1: Discovery with immersion

Rather than start with assumptions, we embedded ourselves in the daily realities of care teams. We shadowed social workers, observed clinical assessments, and mapped existing workflows. We visited Warrington Council to learn from their successful implementation, giving our teams concrete inspiration and confidence.

Most importantly, we shared insights back with teams immediately, ensuring they felt heard and maintained ownership throughout the process.

Phase 2: Designing the new service

To make sure that we designed a service that worked as best as it could for our residents, we designed it with residents.

We created a resident and staff design group, which continues to this day, so that we could coproduce and codesign all elements of the service in a way which was collaborative and real. We also created a comprehensive operating model, mapping service steps, user journeys, and data flows.

This helped clarify:

• Key roles and responsibilities
• Team collaboration methods
• Data integration across systems
• Long-term vision versus short-term go-live priorities

The model became essential for navigating the complexities of our “to-be” service while communicating with wider stakeholders about the future vision. It brought abstract concepts to life, enabling accurate feedback even when significant uncertainties remained about the service design. We created tailored versions for different audiences — health and social care stakeholders received strategic overviews and aligned different visions, while the monthly resident design groups saw a more user-focused version.

Phase 3: Preparing for launching the new service

We conducted detailed interviews and shadowing with each team to understand their specific workflows and system access. This informed our referral processes and forms design.

Our partner, Rethink Partners, delivered immersive training sessions for each team, building confidence in device selection, how to think confidently about supporting people in new ways, and referral processes. We learned that technical training alone wasn’t enough, teams needed to understand the ‘why’ behind the service.

Phase 4: Live learning and iteration

We treated the first month as a live pilot, using daily check-ins, real-time data, and feedback loops for continuous improvement. When we noticed unusual referral patterns, we spoke directly with teams to understand ground-level challenges.

This wasn’t just “go-live” — it became “grow-live.”

Our learnings and reflections

1. Co-production means balancing expertise, not seeking consensus

Working with both clinical and social care teams revealed a crucial insight: co-production isn’t about everyone agreeing. It’s about valuing and balancing diverse expertise.

Clinical teams prioritised safety and medical outcomes. Social care teams focused on independence and quality of life. And teams may have different working hours or diverse ways of managing their cases.

Rather than forcing consensus, we designed tailored referral processes that honoured both perspectives while maintaining clear decision-making pathways.

2. Daily collaboration trumps strategic vision

Our high-level operating model provided direction, but success came from countless small decisions — referral workflows, training protocols, escalation procedures.

We learned to treat our model as a living prototype, constantly tested against real-world constraints. The most important design work happened in the details: How does a social worker access the referral system during a home visit? What happens when a device alert comes in at 2 AM?

3. Sustainable change requires patience and investment

Instead of creating a separate DHACT team to handle all device selections, we decided to train existing practitioners to make these decisions during regular assessments. This was harder initially but it builds long-term capability.

We provided step-by-step guidance that people can print out. We also introduced small prompts into daily assessment tools — gentle nudges that gradually shaped new ways of working. Not flashy, but effective.

4. Progress over perfection needs clear communication

Data became our most powerful design tool. We collaborated with data experts to map out the data needed for the impact measurement before go-live, ensuring we captured essential information at each service step and could share it across systems.

During our first live month, we used a real-time data dashboard and weekly feedback loops to drive immediate improvements and monitor service impact. These conversations led to practical improvements: redesigned referral forms, streamlined escalation routes, and clearer device selection criteria.

We embedded feedback into our operating rhythm, holding structured review sessions and maintaining open communication channels across all partners — from Alcove (our device supplier) to monitoring teams to frontline workers.

The real impact

Five months in, the numbers tell a compelling story 800+ residents supported, 1800+ devices provided, and promising cost savings are starting to show. Nearly two-thirds of existing clients reduced their care spending by £20-£300 per week after being referred to DHACT. Among clients without an existing package of care, 80% had zero invoiced spending 4 weeks after being referred to DHACT, delaying potential care cost increases of up to £250 per week.

These are early figures that need to continue to be reviewed and refined, but the initial indications look positive. Demand continues growing — we’re receiving increasing referral requests from social care and healthcare teams across Greenwich. The DHACT programme is expanding into its second phase, introducing clinical devices to serve more residents with healthcare needs directly in the community.

Working on this transformation has been a privilege, supported by strong leadership that emphasised clear priorities and value propositions. But lasting change came from the daily work of embedding new practices into existing cultures — one referral, one training session, one feedback loop at a time.

The real impact also lives in stories like Olabisi’s: people staying safely in their homes, families with peace of mind, and care teams empowered with better tools. And we’ve created a foundation for continuous improvement. The operating model we designed isn’t just about technology — it’s about embedding new ways of thinking into everyday practice.

The DHACT programme could not be successful without team effort. I appreciate all colleagues, partners, and residents who contributed to this work. Credit and recognition are shared among everyone involved.

Our partners:

Thanks to Rethink Partners for their expertise in co-designing Greenwich’s transformative TEC service. Since October 2022, they’ve guided us through discovery, stakeholder engagement, service modelling, and culture change — helping embed technology as a core component of care while building staff confidence and capability.

Thanks to Alcove for delivering Greenwich’s comprehensive end-to-end assistive technology service. From receiving referrals and home installations to ongoing maintenance and sustainable equipment recycling, Alcove ensures residents receive timely support while promoting efficiency and environmental responsibility throughout the DHACT service

If you’re interested in learning more about service design in technology-enabled care or want to discuss similar transformation challenges, connect with Vicky.wang@royalgreenwich.gov.uk or DHACT@royalgreenwich.gov.uk.

When technology meets care: lessons from transforming social and health care services in Greenwich was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• About the Greenwich Supports strategy
• The Greenwich Supports pilot onboarding journey

Three months into the Greenwich Supports pilot

We are now about three months into our Greenwich Supports pilot, having completed one month of onboarding and two months of working with residents.

In this pilot, we bring together advisors from various disciplines across the council to provide more wraparound support to residents. The aim is to prevent and reduce poverty in the borough. So far we’ve supported over 120 residents and helped them increase their income by over £76,000 total.

Our Greenwich Supports team is made up of eight people from vastly different disciplines across the council:

• One benefits/welfare rights manager
• One benefits/welfare rights advisor
• Two debt advisors
• Two customer services advisors
• One employment advisor
• One housing advisor

With residents experiencing challenges across more than one of these areas, it’s not always straightforward to know where to begin. In this blogpost we share our learnings so far on how we’ve gone about doing so.

Life is complex and dynamic — the support we provide should reflect this

When people are caught off guard by an unexpected life event or are grappling with the cost of living, they experience multiple challenges across money, employment, housing, health and wellbeing, and more.

Someone who lost a job likely doesn’t just need employment support — they’re probably grappling with the emotional impact of job loss, may have fallen into debt as a result, and may be eligible for more benefits than they’re aware of. What comes across as ‘employment support needed’ carries much more nuance — support needed likely extends much broader than that.

So how do you determine what to address first — what the resident’s ‘priority’ or most urgent need is? On the pilot, this has turned out to be more of an art than a science.

Start by getting to know the resident

For residents who aren’t known to a council team (who we reach out to proactively because we think they might benefit from preventative support) we start by having a Customer Services advisor talk to them. They get to know them as a full person — what’s their housing situation like? Are they working or interested in looking for work? Most importantly, what do they see as their priority?

Know what context you need… but expect some trial-and-error

We’re learning how important it is to gather the right context in these first conversations. Sometimes our Customer Services advisors need to go back and ask a resident questions they didn’t initially ask after consulting with other specialist advisors.

For example, we learned that having someone from the council call you out of the blue may make you feel pressure to say you’re actively looking for work, even if you’ve been consumed with other things. In one instance, when our Customer Services advisors connected one such resident to our employment advisor, she quickly learned the resident wasn’t ready for work and was better suited for a different advisor.

So, it’s not just a matter of asking the question but asking it in the right way. We’re continuously iterating our ‘first conversation’ script as we learn more about what context we need and how we go about getting it.

Balance the resident’s view with the advisors’ expertise

Residents are experts on their own experiences, and our advisors are experts on navigating complex systems like benefits or housing. A resident might think they need a quick benefits fix to increase the amount they’re receiving each month. In reality, they’re receiving the correct amount in benefits because they’re getting deductions for living in a place with more rooms than people. The only way to receive more money would be to downsize their flat. What appears to be a money issue is actually a housing issue.

‘Translating’ the need the residents’ stated to the correct (and often technical) remedy while honouring their lived experience and keeping their priorities at the forefront is a delicate and important act.

Acknowledge that you might still get it wrong (and that’s okay)

Sometimes, we get it wrong. In one instance, all signs pointed to debt and employment being the individual’s priorities. But when our employment advisor built trust with and got to know them, they learned they lost a loved one three weeks prior. Focussing on anything else was nearly impossible.

The pilot is about wraparound support, so while we don’t have a bereavement expert, we did what we could. The advisor coordinated three-way calls between themselves, the resident, and bereavement support providers, and left the door open for debt and employment support whenever they felt ready.

There’s never just one challenge people are facing, and these challenges are all likely intertwined. It’s just a matter of where to begin. For many residents we’ve worked with, multiple forms of support end up being provided simultaneously by more than one specialist advisor, so long as they feel that’s the right fit.

The collaboration and coordination behind the scenes

Determining how to best support residents in the way we’ve just described requires some coordination within the team. We need to understand what support we collectively offer and work together to tailor this support to residents. When we started the pilot, we wondered how much we would need to ‘design’ for this kind of collaboration to happen, and how much would happen organically. We learned it’s a bit of both.

Some degree of structure is needed (at first)

A good degree of intentional collaboration was initially needed — we were bringing together people from five different specialisms, each with their own ways of working with residents and colleagues. Like we mentioned in our onboarding blogpost, we spent a significant amount of time in the first month familiarising ourselves with what exactly everybody on the team ‘did’.

Our ‘case allocation’ meetings became lively two-hour discussion spaces to do just this (and more). In these sessions we:

• Collaborated on how to best support residents
  Each resident has a unique set of circumstances and needs, and each team member’s expertise leans itself to a different problem-solving lens. Team members bounced around ideas on what support might help, or questions they had about the resident which, if clarified, might help them better support them.
• Learned from each other and became more familiarised with others’ expertise
  If someone brought up ‘breathing space’ (temporary protection from debt collectors) for instance, as an idea to help a resident, those unfamiliar with the term were bound to ask what exactly this meant. These were spaces for our manager to learn too — to familiarise herself with the expertise of team members and validate her assumptions on what each person could help with.

The designed ‘purpose’ of the meeting (to see which advisor was best suited to support a resident) wasn’t necessarily important. But ensuring there was dedicated space and time to work together was.

Collaboration can indeed be over-engineered

We set aside more than one recurring meeting (including and beyond the case allocation meeting) with the intent to ‘collaborate’. What were meant to be one-hour meetings sometimes became ten minutes ridden with awkward silence upon asking the question, “Does anyone have any questions for anyone?”.

We quickly realised the most valuable form of collaboration happened outside the meeting room. The team consulted each other most frequently in the moment they realised they needed input from someone with different expertise. The nature of the work they were doing as well as the comfort and familiarity they had with each other lent themselves well to a more organic form of collaboration than we’d expected. The learning here is if you put in the work to build team culture from the start, collaboration will probably organically happen.

There’s still more to learn

We’ve begun chipping away at our search for the ‘recipe’ for holistic support provision and multidisciplinary ways of working at Greenwich, but there are still many more questions we want to answer:

• What are the pros and cons of having one advisor working with a resident at a time vs. multiple?
• Is this model truly an effective way to prevent crisis/poverty? In what ways?
• In what ways does becoming more upskilled enable advisors to better support residents?

In the meantime, do reach out to us if you’re embarking on similar discoveries and have insights to share, or if you simply want to learn more. You can contact us on Medium or by emailing celia.beketa@royalgreenwich.gov.uk or corin.hammersley@royalgreenwich.gov.uk.

Beyond ‘presenting need’: how we’re designing a new service for residents’ interwoven challenges was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to our ‘Greenwich Supports’ blogs series — where you can join us on our journey.

The Greenwich Supports strategy is the council’s first anti-poverty strategy which promotes a preventative, holistic and resident-first approach to preventing and reducing poverty across the borough.

We’ll share our insights and learnings as we go along and are keen to hear your feedback as well.

Articles in the series

1. Introducing Greenwich Supports Strategy — our plan to prevent and reduce poverty
2. The power of joint working when piloting a new service
3. Beyond ‘presenting need’: how we’re designing a new service for residents’ interwoven challenges
4. Reaching out to residents: Shifting to a more proactive model of support in council services
5. Measuring what didn’t happen: designing for prevention in the Greenwich Supports pilot

Greenwich Supports was originally published in Royal Greenwich Digital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.