People in Wales with energy and ideas are finding new ways to deliver meaningful social care. Now more than ever, innovation is needed to help deal with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. The question is how can we better understand what’s already happening across the country and how can we better support innovators to grow, scale and spread new ways of doing things that will help people live their best life without compromising future generations?

Social Care Wales is working with a team from People Powered Results at Nesta and Y Lab of Cardiff University to discover what they can do to support the adoption and spread of innovation that makes people’s lives better. We aren’t focused on definitions of innovation, rather speaking with people who see themselves as doing different things, or doing what we already do differently.

You might make policy, work on the frontline delivering services or be someone with lived experience - we want to hear from you. What do you believe is needed to help change things for the better? How would you change the way social care works to do more of the things that matter? What helps or hinders when you try to do different things to get a better result?

Do you see yourself as someone who innovates, taking a different path or way of working? Do you long for services that are different? Are you frustrated and feeling held back by an unresponsive system or set of circumstances?

We are taking a collaborative approach to user research to understand what people in social care need, want and value. The insight gathered and learning generated will directly feed into Social Care Wales’ future plans. We want to engage with 40-50 people with different roles and relationships with social care and innovation to gain a broader understanding of the landscape.  Our ambition is to develop tangible actions to help put some of your suggestions into practice.

But we, as a user research team, won’t have the final say, people in social care will.

If you’re interested in joining us, you will be invited to take part in a short research questionnaire. The questionnaire will enable us to have a wider reach to hear from and elevate the voices of more people in social care than we’d be able to reach through deeper engagement. Depending on availability, some people will be invited to a focus group or interview to help us test and generate promising ideas and insights for Social Care Wales. We will then bring people in social care back together to prioritise, scrutinise and focus on what they think Social Care Wales should do next. This will be what goes into our end-report to Social Care Wales.

It’s clear the way we’ve been doing things isn’t fit for the future. Increasing demand, limited supply, overworked staff, complex inflexible systems, lack of time or resources to think about doing different things are just a few things that hold back change. The scale of the challenge and the variety of organisations, services and people involved can seem overwhelming too.

But we know we must do something, so what is the one thing you think will start to make a difference? And will you take the time to work with us to find out how Wales is innovating and what social care needs to make the move to a better future?

Do you have 15 minutes and would you like to take part in our research? please click here to respond to our questionnaire!