Brent City Council

Brent City Council are committed to supporting their residents through the current cost of living crisis. They know many of their services are under-utilised, and want to understand how to best support residents to access available services, or if there are other unmet needs.

As design partner on this piece of work, we were tasked with leading the end-to-end design process, with a specific focus on ensuring solutions had actively considered equity, diversity, and inclusion. A secondary aim was building the creative capabilities of Brent's early career researchers. 

After aligning our strengths as a blended Brent/IU team, we designed a methodology that included learning opportunities prior to each design phase. We were the critical friends in their research process, and led on creative design practices. I led the co-creation and rollout of the engagement and rectuitment processes, as well as the prototyping day with wider stakeholders.

Our discover phase taught us that residents with complex cases don't feel well supported by their interactions with frontline council staff, particularly with groups who are more disadvantaged. We also learned council staff feel ill-equipped to support complex cases, especially when they anticipate the interaction becoming confrontational if they are not able to give someone help. 

Part of the budget was repurposed to test the impact of upskilling frontline staff with training in trauma informed practice. Brent City Council have also repackaged two service offerings to target residents currently unknown to services, and people who are not eligible for public funds. Insights and opportunities were fed back to Brent's marketing teams to change their approaches in future comms.