Context

adding a Need-based Screening before the current Service-based Screening

Currently the social care service is under great pressure across United Kingdom. The system has been striving to tackle with a growing number of elderly people and rising social care costs. In the context of the Care Act, as one of the representative social care service provider, Lambeth Adult Social Care (LASC) envisages an evolution of their current screening process, adding a Need-based Screening before the current Service-based Screening. The aim is to support a more preventative approach for users (mainly focused on older people over 55 years old) and reduce their demand on Lambeth Adult Social Care service.

• Service-based Screening – Identifying if the applicant is eligible for the services provided by Adult Social Care
• Need-based Screening – Identifying strengths, skills and values that the applicant has or needs to develop, then recommending the right services, which includes not only the services provided by LASC but also voluntary and community services and other social care services.

Scope

preventing loneliness and isolation relieves Lambeth Adult Social Care (LASC) efforts

As a result of desk research we decided to focus on the service for potentially isolated people. Since loneliness and isolation is a huge issue in UK, which cause elderly people to seek for help in Lambeth Adult Social Care frequently because of their mental health problems or their physical problems caused by mental health problems. This contributes greatly to the Lambeth Adult Social Care`s being extremely crowded now. Considering this, we decided to design a long-term solution for our client, which focus on preventing loneliness and isolation as it is the most effective way of tackling with this problem.

User Research

process

key insights

What should the format of the pre-screening tool be, to benefit both social care service staff and older people the most? Our research highlighted the needs of older people and staff in Age UK and Lambeth Adult Social. Understanding these needs generated 5 main insights:

summarized user needs

3 typologies

Research Question

How might we match the elderly with community groups in order to prevent loneliness and isolation problems, reducing the number of people seeking help from Lambeth Adult Social Care ?

Design Outcome

Our solution is Com.Pair, a service platform that benefits potentially isolated people and social care service providers. Com.Pair helps prevent potentially isolated people from loneliness and isolation by finding their value and connecting them to activities which suit them most in their community. By collecting data using pre-screening game, Com.Pair analyses the color-coded data to understand the user`s character consisting of interests, skills and lifestyle. Based on this and some basic information collected before the user played the game, including address, gender, age, ethnicity and religion, Com.Pair will recommend the activities for users in their community. It also enables social care providers to screen out the users who are ineligible for their service and better integrate voluntary and community services to support them.

Key principles

The following diagram shows key principles of our service, corresponding with clients` requirements and insights from the user research.

Com.Pair System Overview

stakeholders and their roles

design – branding

Name: Com. Pair (means to pair users with the community)
Slogan: Playing for a better life in the community
Logo: The proposed logo refers to a shape of our answer boards. The main aim was to create playful and funny feeling around the brand. It also intends to build an energetic and colorful atmosphere around whole service experience and to wish the users a colorful life. Therefore, we choose four basic colors which are also used on answer dices and questions cards.