Research and design to help Rape Crisis further support frequent users of their 24/7 Support Line
Rape Crisis run a 24/7 Support Line for victims and survivors of sexual abuse. With a service recommissioning process coming up, they wanted to better understand the behaviour of ‘frequent users’ and explore ways in which the service could be redesigned to better support them.
This project was delivered in partnership with Charley Pothecary at Inclusively. Illustrations credit: Emma Philip and Tyla Mason.
Consolidating existing insight.
How to support frequent users of the service is an area the service delivery partnership had been exploring for a while. With a small budget for this project, it was important to start by consolidating the evidence the team already had to ensure any additional research was filling gaps and deepening existing knowledge.
User research with staff.
People using the 24/7 Support Line frequently are often in a vulnerable position, therefore it would not be appropriate to involve them directly in research at this stage. Instead, we gathered a small group of support line workers and managers to work with us on this project. We started by speaking to each of the staff members individually to hear about their experiences of supporting frequent users, as well as the challenges they face in delivering the service.
Articulating the needs of both staff and service users.
With a service recommissioning process coming up, it was important to articulate our research as user needs that the service delivery partnership could go back to. As a team, we worked to tell the story of our findings using user needs as a mechanism for clarifying, on both sides, what was needed for frequent users to be best supported by the 24/7 support line and for staff to be comfortable and effective with their service delivery. This was especially important as some of the solutions related to better use of technology and the project didn’t allow for in depth work in this area.
Co-designing solutions.
The staff we worked with were full of ideas because they work on this service day-to-day. We captured these throughs through the research and found we were uncovering a spectrum of possible solutions, from small targeted changes to bigger redesigns of the service. The service delivery partnership were already thinking about and working on some of the ideas that surfaced so we used the design time we had with staff to start to prioritise the smaller ideas while building important context and considerations around the bigger solutions. We also ran expert interviews with people in other charities who have grappled with similar challenges but are further ahead with their service redesigns.
“Emma is a joy to work with. She brings a deep expertise in service design and an enthusiasm for helping to make services better for the people who use them. She is communicative and thoughtful, and kept our projects on track throughout.”
Rape Crisis Client
Outcomes.
The service delivery partnership were left with clear priorities to move forward with and a group of committed staff to continue to co-design solutions with. We also packaged the work up and told the story to funders of the service. This provided evidence for both parties to work with when recommissioning the service in future.