Thoughts

Before we get stuck into a massive new one, including a big new chapter on the horizon for our ANZ organisation, it’s worth a look back…

“We can’t do that, because this building won’t allow us to do it.”

With support from us at Innovation Unit, Sport England’s brilliant Youth Voice team have been navigating the roller coaster of codesign. As we gear up for the next big adventure – prototyping – it’s essential to pause, harness what we’ve learned, and share it with you.

Adapting a service model for FDV hubs in partnership with local communities in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia

This new innovation brings practitioners from prison, probation and leaving care services together with young men in prison with care leaver status, to integrate their support.

It is with deep sorrow that we report the death of our brilliant colleague and contributor David Price.
David was a remarkable educator, thought leader, learning designer, activist, musician and
much besides. He worked with IU almost from its inception as an independent entity in 2006.

Applications are open for our 2025 Design Academy!

What we are learning about the needs of the DFV field with participants of the Paul Ramsay Foundation’s Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Support Open Grant Round 

In March, the Innovation Unit Design Academy held the second annual Service Design Jam, hosted by the Royal College of Art Service Design MA course. Sport England sponsored the event, which a range of its partners supported.

Download and share our impact story PDF

What can the past teach us about green energy and innovation in today’s political, financial and ecological climate?

We are celebrating! Innovation Unit are proud to have been named one of the UK’s leading management consultants of 2024 in the public and social care sectors by the Financial Times.

Effective approaches to capacity building from The National Lottery Community Fund’s Health Equalities programme

Key takeaways from The National Lottery Community Fund’s Health Equalities programme

Innovation Unit has partnered with Paul Ramsay Foundation (PRF) to generate insights and recommendations for strengthening the specialist DFV support field in Australia.

The Innovation Unit Design Academy Australia is officially accepting applications to join our 2024 cohort!

Care experienced young adults (18-25 years old) are over represented in the prison system; approximately 25% of all adult prisoners have had experience of care, compared to 1% of the general population.

Based on the piloting of Always Hope in the West Midlands, we have developed this handbook and accompanying manual to help staff in other regions implement the protocols and practices that have been delivered; aiming to improve the way that care experienced young adults receive support whilst in prison and on release.

Content warning: Please note, the following blog includes descriptions of experiences of racism and references to death

As people who are tasked with facilitating consultation, codesign, and amplifying unheard voices, the Voice referendum is close to our heart. We’ve been contemplating the referendum alongside big reflections as an organisation about our place as non-Indigenous designers and facilitators in the work we do with First Nations communities across Australia and Tangata Whenua in New Zealand, and internationally.

Innovation Unit is the Learning and Support Partner on The National Lottery Community Fund’s Health Equalities programme

Co-design of new WA model out-of-home care wins Gold at the 2023 Australian Good Design Awards

Words from Christine Owen, Associate Director (Scotland)

What are the minimum ingredients for radical evolution in UK education? 

Innovation Unit is proud to be supporting the ‘George Aye: Doing Design Differently’ tour

Beyond NHS 75: Scaling community-centred primary care

Building connection, empathy and relationships with Thrive Edinburgh.

As part of the WA government’s Family and Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Grants Program, Innovation Unit is running an exciting co-design project that takes a flexible and creative youth-focused approach to primary prevention of family and domestic violence.

Learning #3 – a new response can evolve an enlarged understanding and response to mental health

Learning #2 – a new response requires a radically different environment of collaboration

Supporting children, families and communities to thrive

Learning #1 – a new response to mental health is urgent and possible

Innovation Unit is delighted to share with you our learning about how to change the UK’s mental health systems in order to generate significant impact, based on our experience of supporting pioneering places to adapt and adopt Living Well systems.

Family Hubs have been a key priority for all leaders working in Children’s Services since they were announced by the Department for Education (DfE) back in 2021. The ambition for hubs is a ‘one stop shop’ for families, creating more accessible, better connected and relationship-centred physical and virtual spaces that families can use as soon as they seek help and that seamlessly support them as their needs change over time.

At Innovation Unit, our amazing partners in local authorities, the NHS and voluntary sector, prisons and probation have all been operating on empty, whilst dealing with a year of exceptional economic and political turmoil and increasing pressures on their support.

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change.In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change

“Art, music, dance, story, song”

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change.

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change

The next in our 10-part series sharing different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change.

In this 10-part series, we share 10 different pictures that can help us to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change.

In this blog series, I want to share 10 different pictures I’ve come across in my work and my studies that have helped me to make sense of the big complex world of social innovation and systems change.

The NHS is one of the largest landowners in the UK, with an estate footprint of 24 million m² in England alone. It’s fair to say many people picture NHS buildings as sombre, daunting and single-purpose.

Challenging assumptions about how people sleeping rough get online and use digital services

At Innovation Unit, we’ve been working on mental health system transformation for over a decade. So when the teenage daughter of our Director of Mental Health Innovation, Nick Webb, experienced anxiety and stress, he was dismayed to see how much further the system has to go to truly meet children and young people’s needs.

Supported by Innovation Unit, Bermuda opens its first Signature Schools, offering Signature Learning Programmes which enable each young person to lead personally and professionally, compete locally and contribute globally. With Ministry of Education, Bermuda.

Originally developed by Policy Lab in the UK Cabinet Office, hopes and fears cards use images to inspire people to express their objectives and concerns for a policy, project, or a problem.

For public sector organisations looking to improve the lives of both employees and service users, recording and analysing data is an extremely powerful means to measure impact and inform daily and strategic work.

Putting home and healing at the centre of accommodation for those experiencing homelessness.

What can we learn about improving the prison system when we listen to people with professional and personal experience of care and custody?

In 2019 Parkerville Children and Youth Care embarked on a journey to redesign its out-of-home care services out of a desire to transform the experiences of children in care and their families, in a state where the number of children requiring out-of-home care is growing each year.

Managing risk is an important part of designing and implementing new services. So when it’s time to transform existing services to better meet the needs of both the people who benefit and the professionals who deliver, how do you overcome long-standing real and perceived barriers to saying yes?

The key role of anchor institutions is to benefit their local community by enhancing social determinants of health and reducing inequalities. This HALN event shared learnings on how to best measure, analyse then make good decisions on your anchor work.

At Innovation Unit, we have years of experience as a learning partner, helping programme participants understand and share insights about what’s working, what’s not and why.

Taking the time – having the space to stop, reflect and then converge with other changemakers when there is so much else to be done – is the perfect time to join a kōrero to think about what we are currently doing and what could be possible to make space to create change.

At Innovation Unit, we use design to help tackle the inequalities we see around us. Last year, we established our own in-house service design academy to provide high level design skills, confidence and experience for professionals working in social innovation and public service transformation.

Dr Bob Klaber, Consultant Paediatrician and Director of Strategy, Research and Innovation at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) and Chair of the Shelford Strategy Directors subgroup, describes how anchor institutions can improve the health and wellbeing of their local populations.

Decentralising leadership and the work of change, and distributing it to the peopl who will eventually be asked to deliver what emerges results in new services and new solutions that are far more likely to meet people’s needs holistically and effectively.

Alex Baylis of The King’s Fund, Savannah Fishel of Innovation Unit and Sonakshi Anand of Institute for Voluntary Action Research have some insights from cross-sector place-based partnerships tackling health inequalities.

Innovation Unit is scaling the Living Well approach in Derbyshire: creating new mental health teams who meet people’s needs in their community.

Missed the event? Catch up on the speakers, crowdsourced top tips and everything else that happened.

When we considered how to evaluate Living Well, we quickly realised the current ways of collecting and evaluating data wouldn’t meet our aspirations to understand how a person had experienced support or a change in their life – or how ‘healthy’ the system itself was in delivering that support.

Learnings from The National Lottery Community Fund Health Equality programme and Generation Medics’ NHS partnership

Infoxchange, Anglicare, Innovation Unit and Anthologie have been appointed as a consortium to deliver a world-first digital access portal for the WA Government and homeless sector.

It has a unique opportunity to help – but more could be done to optimise impact.

Over the past year, we’ve supported anchors during the early stages of their journey, helping them share and learn how to set up an anchor mission, how to work in partnership and how to overcome barriers.

Last year Innovation Unit committed to becoming an anti racist organisation.

There is a lot to welcome in the government’s Levelling Up White Paper. We support the recognition that tackling entrenched regional inequality will not be a quick fix and the commitment to a long-term agenda of systems change, innovation and devolution.

Thrive LDN is working in partnership with Mind in the City, Hackney & Waltham Forest (CHWF) and Innovation Unit, to grow a culture of Radical Caring in different places and communities across London.

In the mental health space, we often hear people talking about the use of co-production in relation to practice. What takes more commitment, however, is the leadership and courage to weave co-production into the fabric of a system.

With growing evidence that the pandemic has widened pre-existing inequalities, there is a critical need to radically rethink the way in which support is offered, particularly for marginalised individuals and communities.

As Chief Executive, I would say this, but I think now is a really good moment to join Innovation Unit. Over the next couple of months, we are delighted to be recruiting to multiple roles across the organisation.

The National Lottery Community Fund and the Innovation Unit are working together to connect and convene the Health Equality partnerships to generate and share learning, and communicate this learning to wider audiences.

In 2022, we are embarking on the next phase of our evolution to maximise our positive impact in the world. Like everyone else on the planet, the past two years have been tumultuous and challenging for our team and for our work.

Over the past four years, we’ve been creating new systems of community mental health in Living Well sites across the UK including Edinburgh, Salford and Tameside and Glossop. So far the programme has supported some 2,500 people who might not otherwise have been helped and generated over five million pounds of additional investment in local mental health systems.

Inspiring Communities, Hui E! Community Aotearoa, the Innovation Unit and TSI’s Co-Design Lab invited about 30 people from across the country into two conversations about collective change.

Innovation Unit Australia New Zealand is looking for a talented and experienced Project Lead or Senior Project Lead, based in Auckland, New Zealand.

To truly make a difference in the lives of children and young people in care and their families, we must be a driving force in sector and system-wide change.

If we are going to build the families of tomorrow and help them to thrive, and support them in a way that we all want, we need to make sure that we get the fundamentals right. It is crucial that services meet the challenges that families are facing in today’s changing climate.

Following a co-design process involving over 100 young people, families, carers, community group representatives and survivors of the Stolen Generation, a new model of Out-of-Home Care for Parkerville CYC is being developed with the support of Lotterywest.

Making meaningful changes to the state of social housing in Western Australia requires a combination of scaling the solutions we know work, and using innovation to develop new solutions that serve the most vulnerable in our communities.

Our young people are facing an uncertain future, and the context in which young people today are gaining an education and entering the workforce is significantly different from past generations. The future state of education and employment must transition to adapt to these circumstances, and meet the challenges that young people are disproportionately facing.

A picture paints a thousand words, they say, so what better way to explain a fresh approach to children’s social care to staff, young people and their families than through an animation?

Catch up with our conversation with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Chris Naylor, CEO at London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

A conversation with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Chris Naylor, CEO at London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

There are growing fears that homelessness could rise in Western Australia (WA) with the end of government policies like JobKeeper coinciding with the end of the rental moratorium.

How we can work together to make a lasting difference in towns, cities and communities

To really make a difference, you need to be in it for the long-haul. As the final blog in our series explains.

The penultimate blog in our series on place-based transformation looks at why new approaches to local economic development are emerging. In particular we look at asking more serious questions about local impact.

We’ve loved collaborating with a range of talented creatives over the years, and encourage others to work with artists – such as illustrators, designers, photographers and videographers – to communicate complex issues in better ways.

The next in our series on place-based transformation looks at using community organising to create radical local change.

Part seven of our place-based transformation series looks at grow-your-own local leadership

We need an overarching goal for schools that is aligned to the new reality we are in.

Part six of our series shows how successful, sustainable change requires action from top to bottom and back up again.

Plans for sustainable recovery in the budget are welcome but the government still doesn’t seem to understand what it will really take to improve people’s lives. 

This piece is about leadership and governance, informed by the insights of 100+ front-line workers and leaders across Greater Manchester and their reflection on what they experienced and learned during their Covid response.

In response to the news that the government is planning to reverse reforms of the NHS in England, Sarah Gillinson, chief executive of Innovation Unit says more should be done to achieve greater integration and innovation.

This blog is about what happens when the state gets firmly behind a clear, shared purpose in local communities and the lessons that emerge when it does.

The next in our series on place-based transformation focuses on the role of learning as you go when delivering large-scale community change

We are in our third National lockdown, and have been told once again to work from home, where we can. There is so much that we have learnt in this crisis about how we work, communicate and collaborate, and so much that has already been transformed.

“This is what we have. Who needs it most?” From programmes to people in Greater Manchester’s Covid response.

Part 4 in our series on place-based transformation argues that meticulous planning is unnecessary and that more progress can be made by starting and doing

Part 3 in our series finds there can be no vision or meaningful action for place-based transformation without an appreciation of the locality and its residents

Learning from innovation in a crisis: how the disruption of Covid has given Greater Manchester the chance to ‘design forward differently’

Part two of our series on Place-Based Transformation is on the need for inspiration and ambition as the starting point of a strategy for change

Part one of our series shows how place-based transformation substantially improves the life chances of local residents – when it’s done well.

The new report, ‘What does the COVID-19 pandemic mean for young people’s mental and emotional wellbeing in Lambeth?’, captures the experiences and emotional lives of a group of young people living in Lambeth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As we move towards nationwide vaccination and we look forward to the end of the pandemic, we should take the time to think: what has 2020 meant for the emotional lives of young people? What does it mean for future forms of care and support?

Learning from scaling innovation in children’s social care.

Shining a light on intergenerational connection through the COVID19 pandemic.

Innovation Unit head of health and social care William Roberts sets out a vision for a stronger, more sustainable model of care that supports older people to live better lives for longer.

Up to 10% of the government’s new levelling-up fund must be dedicated to innovation if the initiative is to achieve the impact intended.

KEY INSIGHTS FROM CO-DESIGN

GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR WOMEN’S REFUGES

PRESS RELEASE: Jade Tang-Taylor to lead Innovation Unit New Zealand

NEW REPORT: Building stronger communities through parent-led support

NEW REPORT: Bridging the Gaps – new approaches to improving outcomes for care experienced young people given prison sentences.

The new report, ‘From crisis to renewal: Redesigning the mental health system around people and communities’, captures changes in the mental health system in response to Covid-19 and advocates for a new mental health vision shifting power towards communities.

How can we use the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to reduce youth violence?

Our work as part of the Living Well UK Programme has shown us that stories are vital for producing change and improving people’s lives.

The world is in lockdown. It is affecting our mental health, our wellbeing, our lives. Yet there is also much generosity and kindness. We want to be sharing these stories, understanding that some will be harder to tell, and to hear, than others.

How the NHS Framework for Community Mental Health Services can help us to rebuild in response to the Covid-19 crisis.

Innovation Unit ANZ are delighted to be working with Sport New Zealand | Ihi Aotearoa on a new project to understand experiences and perceptions of play from sector stakeholders, parents, and children, to create more quality play experiences.

A new report from Innovation Unit NZ investigates approaches to making Auckland an age-friendly region.

Auckland Council commissioned Innovation Unit ANZ to bring to life key opportunities for system-level collaboration to make Auckland a more age-friendly region, based on feedback from older Aucklanders.

Innovation Unit Senior Associate Siobhan Edwards discusses Sheffield’s journey in adopting the No Wrong Door approach to Children’s Social Care.

Rachel Knight from Innovation Unit Australia New Zealand discusses how Innovation Unit started her cultural competency journey, and some ways to help people engage with Te Āo Māori in the workplace. 

How to look back to Te Āo Māori/the Māori world to advance your design research practices.

This is one of two blog posts based on Rachel and Kataraina’s talk at the 2019 UX New Zealand conference, which you can watch here.

PRESS RELEASE: 350 people in Greater Manchester share their experiences and solutions on violence affecting young people in new report out today.

Innovation Unit is delighted to congratulate 2019’s winner of the Governor’s School STEM Awards – Brookman Primary School – and runner-up Pannawonica Primary School, who have been awarded for their approach to bringing a whole-of-school STEM culture to life.

The Heart Foundation of New Zealand commissioned Innovation Unit Australia New Zealand to lead a social innovation process in Te Tai Tokerau to explore how they might enable Māori to be screened for cardiovascular disease at a younger age.

Matthew Horne, Deputy Chief Executive at Innovation Unit, explains why we need new systems of support that help people to live well.

Innovation Unit are delighted to be working with Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity on an international learning project to help them build their understanding of how living in urban areas affects people’s health and wellbeing.

This report from Innovation Unit in partnership with Big Change demonstrates how important it is for parents, teachers and pupils to be brought along, as well as the communities around them.

PRESS RELEASE: Seven in ten teachers say they wish schools were preparing students for more than just exams. New report on reimagining education launched by charity Big Change and Innovation Unit.

The report, Local Learning Ecosystems: emerging models is part of the WISE report series, in this case in partnership with Innovation Unit, a leading innovation social enterprise.

PRESS RELEASE: A radical new report from World Innovation Summit for Education-Innovation Unit calls for learners to get out of the classroom more and grasp the opportunities of flexible modern ‘learning ecosystems’.

In this blog series we explore three priority areas of the NHS Long Term Plan and provide our view on what we think it will take in practice to achieve the ambition it sets out.

In this first instalment, Sarah Dew discusses the importance of scaling solutions that work for people, not conditions.

A new research report reveals key insights about the experiences of care leavers leaving prison, and the opportunities and challenges they face following release. 

We’re helping six Greater Manchester local authorities adapt and adopt No Wrong Door – last week they visited North Yorkshire to experience the model first-hand

PRESS RELEASE: Innovation Unit appoints Directors from HMRC, Ufi and Richmond Upon Thames Council to their Board.

We are delighted to feature as one of the FT’s Leading Innovation Consultants in the UK for the second year running.

Innovation Unit has been visiting and working with innovative schools in the United States for the past decade. Here are some important things we have learned.

In this article, Kataraina Davis, one of our New Zealand based Project Leads, reflects on her journey into social innovation. 

The following mindsets for social innovation were developed by Innovate Change prior to its merge with Innovation Unit.  

Last week ten ex-carers became the first Coach4Care coaches to offer support to carers and those they care for.  

Innovation Unit in partnership Aga Khan Education Services (AKES) and Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) have been working with UNICEF’s regional offices in sub-saharan Africa to better understand the opportunities and challenges of ICT for learning on outcomes for young people.

We’re looking for two new UK Board Directors to help us get there. If you’re an experienced leader with values that align with ours we would love to hear from you. Please register your interest by 23rd November 2018.

Finding ideas from the high street to make healthy eating easier for children and families.

Over the past year we have been working with a dedicated partnership of funders and London Councils to explore the potential of business and community led ideas that help people make healthier food choices on our high streets.

Want to assess the impact of a new model for community mental health services? We are looking for an evaluation partner for a new ambitious programme supported by the Big Lottery Fund running over three years.

Nick Webb, our lead for mental health, writes an alternative job description for the new Minister for Suicide.

Auckland Council commissioned Innovation Unit Australia New Zealand to understand peoples’ experiences of housing instability to inform a cross-sectoral homelessness plan for Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland)

PRESS RELEASE: New Living Well UK programme will take innovative approach to improving mental health to four new areas thanks to £3.4 million in National Lottery funding.

A new report reveals deep gaps between housing support services, and shines a light on opportunities for system-level change.

Funded by The Oak Foundation, Innovation Unit and partners have begun work to develop a deeper understanding of the issues facing care leavers given prison sentences and their experiences of being in custody and following release.

On Tuesday 31st July Innovation Unit and SCIE will be hosting a free webinar to share and discuss learning from the Named Social Worker Programme.

BBC News coverage of Public Health England’s work on mapping fast food hotspots mentions Tasters Fried Chicken’s new healthier menu for children, which came about as part of our work on Healthy High Streets.

As New Zealand’s Innovate Change merges with Innovation Unit, we create a new Māori identity that connects us to our place in Aotearoa.

On 1 July 2018, Innovate Change will merge with Innovation Unit, a not-for-profit social enterprise that creates new solutions for thriving societies.

A collection of healthcare innovations that are beginning to answer some of the most challenging questions in healthcare.

The ideas in this booklet describe how radically different services might be achieved. They are some of the vital principles that should underpin 21st century healthcare.

Innovation Unit are delighted to be working with Unlocking Potential to support them in the design of a unique primary school for children living in the London Borough of Brent.

On Friday 20 April, we brought together social work leaders and managers from across the UK to learn from innovative approaches to working with adolescents with complex needs.

How can healthcare leaders create cultures in which innovative solutions can scale up? Sarah Dew, Project Lead at Innovation Unit, explores what needs to change.

Jonny Mallinson, Head of Alliances for Change at Innovation Unit, reflects on the rapid progress made by West London CCG as they move towards community-based models of care that are innovative, integrated and sustainable.

The latest NHS Confederation podcast looks at new care models in the NHS. Innovation Unit’s Health and Social Care Lead, William Roberts, offers his insight and experience of successfully spreading change across networks.

On Thursday 15 March Q Community hosted a Twitter chat with David Albury and Tim Horton, discussing how innovations are successfully scaled in the NHS.

William joins our expanding team, bringing significant health experience from both the NHS and local government, where he has held a number of key roles over the last twenty years.

How do we create thriving societies for good mental health? We need to stop working person to person and take a more holistic approach, supporting connected groups of individuals, friends, families, neighbourhoods and caregivers.

Yesterday, Vicki Purewal joined the launch event for a new report on inner-city childhood obesity to talk about Healthy High Streets – the healthy eating project we are delivering with Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity.

Scale is a word on many lips and wish lists. And nowhere is scale a more urgent or important priority than in our public services. So how do you scale an innovation that works? How do you persuade and support people to adopt a new solution to a wicked problem that actually has impact?

We are delighted to have been nominated as a finalist in the Change Management in the Public Sector category at this year’s MCA Awards for our health and social care project My Care, My Way in partnership with PPL and West London CCG.

As part of the Named Social Worker programme, Innovation Unit, SCIE and the Department of Health & Social Care hosted a webinar to explore what it takes to deliver person-centred care.

The six pilot sites have been busy implementing their approaches to Named Social Work over the past few months. Here’s some of what has been happening…

In this first contribution to Education Week’s Learning Deeply blog series, Valerie Hannon and Amelia Peterson explain why education systems need to rethink what it means to be educated.

A new research report looks at ways to ensure the successful uptake of innovations in healthcare to relieve the NHS’ financial and operational pressures, say Will Walburton and David Albury.

Innovation Unit and The Health Foundation have joined forces to call on system leaders and policymakers to do more to create the right conditions for innovations to scale in the NHS.

PRESS RELEASE

New research published today calls for new approaches that ensure more tried and tested healthcare innovations reach those who could benefit.

We are delighted to have been named in the Financial Times Leading Management Consultants 2018 list in the ‘Innovation, growth and new business models’ category.

We are delighted to announce that Heather Rolinson has joined Innovation Unit as Director of Innovation Consultancy. Heather takes on the role that was previously filled by Matthew Horne, who is holding the post of Chief Executive whilst Sarah Gillinson is on maternity leave.

Innovation Unit are excited to be working alongside Save The Children UK to conduct deep, ethnographic research with a families living in poverty across the South East.

Everyone deserves great care and support for themselves and their families at the end of life. We know this doesn’t always happen.

Congratulations to Guardian Public Service Awards 2017 overall winner Hertfordshire County Council for their Family Safeguarding model, funded by the DfE’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme.

Today, 24th November 2017, our Chief Executive Sarah Gillinson is sharing insights from Better Endings, a year-long innovation programme funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, as part of a session on ‘Applying design thinking in end of life care’.

Innovation Unit Australia is looking for superstar social innovation senior project leaders, senior service designers and other researchers, practitioners and changemakers.

Interested in person-centred care, learning disabilities and social care? Join our free webinar on 6th December to hear from speakers across the social care system.

Congratulations to Ella Walding for winning Service Design Network’s International Service Design Award for her project helping the Maltese Government to apply design thinking and make change happen.

We’re delighted to announce that Innovation Unit support and services are now available across the UK public sector through a pan-government framework agreement.

We’re always looking to learn from others about what it takes to take innovation to scale. Human-scale at Scale is a report based on a 10-week research fellowship, funded by Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. It explores how student-centred approaches to learning can scale and spread beyond their site of origin.

Human-scale at Scale is a report based on a 10-week research fellowship, funded by Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. It explores how student-centred approaches to learning can scale and spread beyond their site of origin.

A building revolution is taking place across Australia. State governments and education systems are commissioning new school builds in response to population growth and the changing demographics of both regions and metropolitan areas across their jurisdictions. 

Calling all business owners, entrepreneurs and community changemakers – do you have an idea that will make healthier food choices easier for children and young people on the high street?

How can we make our high streets healthier for children and young people? Innovation Unit announces the three London high streets we’ll be working in to tackle childhood obesity. 

Innovation Unit starts an exciting research project working with UNICEF, in partnership with the Aga Khan Foundation and Aga Khan Education Services, to envisage the opportunity for digital learning in and across Africa.

Delivered by Innovation Unit and the Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE), six local authorities will now be supported to design, implement and evaluate a named social worker approach.

Innovation Unit Australia has formed an exciting new union with New Zealand’s Innovate Change, as the two organisations signed an official partnership agreement today.

At Innovation Unit we marked World Mental Health Day 2017 with a small, informal workshop which brought together a group of passionate advocates to consider new solutions around mental health.

PRESS RELEASE: Innovation Unit has joined together with SCIE to create a briefing which looks at how to mobilise learning from new ideas so that more children, young people and their families can benefit.

Over the last year, we’ve been working on an end of life innovation programme, Better Endings. Based in Lambeth and Southwark, and funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, we’ve been exploring what radically better end of life care could look like.

This time last week we took part in a conference hosted by North Yorkshire County Council to share how the No Wrong Door model has helped rethink care for adolescents.

Vicki Purewal, who leads our work on Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge, responds to the key question raised at an Institute for Government (IfG) and Joseph Rowntree Foundation panel event at the Labour Party conference fringe earlier this week.

Coach4Care is a service that improves the resilience and well-being of those who are caring for someone at the end of their life using coaching methods from experienced caregivers.

The third instalment of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) series from Amanda Begley explains why health innovators must adopt the core principles of the NHS Constitution, ensuring that the patient is at the heart of everything they do.

We’re in the prototyping phase of Better Endings and need your help! Join our conversation challenge and help to test a kit that is designed to help you have more meaningful conversations with your loved ones. 

This digital platform helps young people and adults find resilience when someone in their family is dying or has died.

The ageing of the baby boomer generation brings both excitement and anxiety. Excitement about how this rebellious generation may change the way we look at older people, and anxiety about the social care support they will need in the future.

Innovation Unit to start work on exciting new project to tackle childhood obesity on three of London’s high streets.

Congratulations to our Service Designer Un-Jeong Ko, whose team won BBC Radio 4’s The Fix with their policy design to encourage people to cut down on excessive drinking.

We are recruiting to three senior posts that will complete Innovation Unit’s talented and committed leadership team.

Innovation Unit is looking for three interns to join the team.

Take a look at our more recent work
Learning and innovation partnerships
Our work in Bermuda

We all recognise the scale of the obesity problem, and that stigma attached to being overweight makes it difficult for people to ask for support, so why aren’t more health professionals identifying the problem and taking action that can help?

Last year’s pilot scheme shares findings and prepares to roll out further.

In her second post, Stacey Quince, Principal at Campelltown Performing Arts High School (CPAHS), reflects on the journey her school – and her system – is taking to transform the purpose and nature of learning.

In the first of two posts, Stacey Quince, Principal at Campbelltown Performing Arts High School, reflects on the journey her school is taking to transform the purpose and nature of learning.

Between 2016 and 2018, Innovation Unit and the Social Care Institute for Excellence supported nine local authorities to develop, implement and evaluate a Named Social Worker approach.

Innovation Unit CEO Sarah Gillinson shares her response to our recent event ‘Learning to Thrive’

In a changing world, we must find a common vision that unites us.

How can we build trust for healthcare innovations that have the potential to change lives for the better?

A special event co-hosted by Innovation Unit, Webb Memorial Trust and Compass to discuss what it means to thrive in a changing world.

How can we use edtech in schools and what does it mean for school design?

What does it really take to reap the promise of technology? Five experts judge the value and role of technology in education.

When children are exposed to certain kinds of conflict between their parents it affects their mental, emotional and physical well-being, when they are young but also in later life. The importance of improving family relationships is clear. What is not clear is who should help, and how?

PRESS RELEASE

Valerie Hannon’s new book, being launched in the UK on 28th June 2017, challenges us all to rethink the fundamental purpose of education for our time.

It is early days, but I think the data will indicate, as in the US, that our divided politics reflects a more culturally divided society.

Just a very quick note from me before the day gets going to acknowledge the latest seismic event in our elected politics!

In 2014 the Department for Education (DfE) announced a two year, £100m innovation fund to support 53 bold new approaches to transform outcomes for children and young people in care. The success of the programme led to a second phase beginning in 2016, with £200m committed over four years.

Sarah Gillinson, asks ‘what can the UK learn from the transformation journey made by Goodstart in Australia?’.

Professionals arrived to do the job they were sent to do – take bloods, give drugs, request a hospital bed at home. They didn’t take the time to understand that what Dad wanted most was to be outside, to feel the sun on his face.

This Foster Care Fortnight, we celebrate three fantastic examples of work happening across England, Scotland, and Wales.

It’s Dying Matters Awareness Week: A time when we are all encouraged to talk about death, in the hope that it will help us to ‘die better’ than we would in silence.

Today we launch Innovation Unit Australia. On both sides of the world, we are seriously proud and excited to have got to this point.

Innovation Unit Australia will offer disciplined approaches to social innovation aimed at tackling the increasing inequality experienced across Australia and further strengthening our international capacity.

We’ve been talking to patients, their families, doctors and community services in Lambeth & Southwark to see how our health service can better deal with death. Here’s what we found out:

Thrive: schools reinvented for the real challenges we face argues that, given the real challenges we face in the world today, it is essential we ask what job we want schools to do?

On Thursday 25th May 2017 we’ll be holding a roundtable event in London for a select group of early years leaders, innovators and experts.

How local authorities can reduce parental conflict to improve outcomes for children.

City and Hackney CCG Innovation Fund wins major patient experience award Innovative commissioning programme celebrated for working directly with local communities to transform health and wellbeing outcomes.

Positive interactions between social workers and families are essential, but too often policies and practices act as a barrier.

Social innovators from around the globe came together to explore how social innovation can have even greater positive social impact in the coming decade.

Having a named social worker means having the opportunity to develop relationships that really work.

Three examples of great innovations that are inspiring and we believe can make a real difference to mental health outcomes for everyone.

Innovation Unit creates new solutions for thriving societies. To be clear about what this means   we need to be clear about the impact we hope and expect to see in the world.

We take a closer look at our experience on the ground in Australia in designing and developing school models that are fit for the future, and what we can learn about education around the world.

Everybody deserves great support for themselves and for their families at the end of life. We know that at the moment this doesn’t always happen.

Thinking about new solutions for how we ‘do’ education, schools and learning has never been more important, but neither has it been more difficult.

We’re in the midst of a major, global upheaval of norms and values that we have taken for granted as the aspirations of Western democracies. We must create serious, sustainable impact with and for communities that have been left behind.

This EEF evaluation is an important contribution to the knowledge base about what it takes to implement new practices in English secondary schools.

The truth is that the education sector is still not as close as it would like to be in really understanding when and how Project Based Learning has an impact on student outcomes.

We all know that relationships matter. We are social beings. Our quality of life, indeed our happiness, is directly related to the degree to which we feel connected to others.

What should the future of schooling in England look like and how can we make it happen?

To go beyond improvement and begin the process of reimagining and redesigning ‘school’,  a certain kind of leadership will be required.

We believe that the Troubled Families programme failed to recognise and respond the important evidence of relationships within communities, as well as families.

In 2014, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the winners of its first European Mayors Challenge, an ideas competition that encourages cities to come up with bold, inventive, and shareable responses to today’s toughest problems.

Social prescribing is a way of linking primary care patients to sources of appropriate, non-clinical support in the community (Kinsella, 2015). This webinar explores how three different models of social prescribing work in practice.

An interview with Paul Miller today who leads strategy and partnerships at Bethnal Green Ventures – an accelerator programme for people who want to change the world using technology.

Build a better future for all: create great public services that build agency and enable communities to thrive

This is a practical guide for getting started and growing asset based care at scale.

The Wigan Community Link Worker (CLW) service has been jointly commissioned by Wigan Borough Clinical Commissioning Group and Wigan Council with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing of local people through better connections to appropriate sources of support in the community.

This report produced in partnership with the RSA and the support of WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) explores how school systems can create the conditions for successful innovation that transform outcomes for all learners.

The world is becoming profoundly more knowledge-rich, and networks, in response, are now an increasingly significant organisational form. Characteristics of network-based  knowledge and learning systems are paradigmatically different from the prevailing  orthodoxies of the past.

By us, For us: the power of co-design and co-delivery is one in a series of learning products which explain why People Powered Health works, what it looks like and the key features needed to replicate success elsewhere.

Cultural Education in London: making the case for change presents the process and outcomes from a workshop held in Spring 2013 with colleagues from creative and cultural organisations around London.

Around the world there is a growing global movement towards achieving the vision of 21st century education. 10 Ideas for 21st Century Education presents our view of what this vision looks like in practice.

The Innovation Unit and the Pen Green Research Base were commissioned by the DfE (then DCSF) to organise a series of Think Tanks to ask some fundamental questions about children’s centres and their future.

Both collectively and individually we are heading for an uncertain future. The world is changing quickly and education must change with it.

The Business Case for People Powered Health is intended for leaders, managers and practitioners across the health and social care system.

Learning a Living is a timely, engaging and original contribution to the debate over the relationship between education, innovation, work and the workforce.

A guide on project-based learning and advice for teachers, published by the Learning Futures Special Initiative in partnership with Innovation Unit.

This handbook is designed for secondary school leaders who want their students to be much more deeply engaged in learning, their staff to be more engaging practitioners, and for their schools to be rich in engaging learning opportunities for the whole community.

In this paper, Valerie Hannon, Alec Patton, and Julie Temperley set out a comprehensive view of the context within which education systems and system leaders operate, and offer a practical approach to building in current and emerging innovative practices

PLACE: Building a learning community without going to school is a case study part of a set of free, open-source publications.

In 1995, Big Picture Learning burst upon America’s languishing public education system. This brainchild of two daring educators, Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor, has grabbed the hearts, hands and minds of young people, inspiring them to become: Lifelong learners. Productive workers. Engaged human beings.