Aberdeen Pathfinder

Transforming support for people who experience Domestic Abuse in Aberdeen City using the Scottish Approach to Service Design 

Project aims and objectives

The overarching aim of the project was to understand how Technology Enabled Care (TEC) can play a role in supporting the delivery of multi-agency services for people, aged 18+ who experience domestic abuse.

Throughout the project, our objective was to explore this problem space openly and collaboratively with citizens, practitioners and allied stakeholders by using the Sottish Approach to Service Design (SAtSD). We also promoted our experiences of using a user-centred design approach, by contributing to a wider community of practice and sharing insights and research developed throughout the project.

During our discovery phase, we designed and carried out the following activities with stakeholders:

  • Stakeholder recruitmentAberdeen City Journey Mapping
  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Interviews: one-to-one and group
  • Secondary research (lit review)
  • Journey mapping
  • Stakeholder survey (general and academic)

Engaging with different practitioners and services (specialist and universal) we were able to start to visualise different stages of the support pathway (stakeholders perspective) and align insights to each of these stages.

During the define stage, we used the following activities and tools to collate, refine and review the insights we had collected through our discovery stage:Aberdeen City Service Map

  • Sense-making workshops (online)
  • Journey mapping
  • Insights log
  • Insights documents
  • Synthesis wall (virtual using Miro and in the office)
  • Secondary, desk based research
  • Partnership working 

Findings from the research:

The problems and opportunity areas that emerged from all the different types of research undertaken are summarised by theme in the diagram below:

Aberdeen Output Diagram

Current Status

  • The partnership worked with Snook for the Develop/Deliver phase. Snook is a design organisation, which has undertaken previous work with SafeLives on Tech vs Abuse.
  • Further work was undertaken with stakeholders to sense-check the insights collected and prioritise activities. 
  • The Pathfinder team continued to seek ways of engaging specialist staff from support organisations and engaging people with lived experience of domestic abuse in a sensitive and supportive way.
  • A refreshed Steering Group was formed with partners from Aberdeen Health & Social Care Partnership including  Social Work, Wellbeing & Technology Enabled Care; Subject experts from NHS Grampian & the Violence Against Women Partnership including a Housing Representative; Adult Public Protection; ACVO; Safe Lives; Representative from Snook.

 

Contacts – to find out more

Craig Farquhar, Senior Project Manager, Aberdeen City Health & Social Care Partnership - cfarquhar@aberdeencity.gov.uk 

Peter McAndrew, Senior Project Manager, Aberdeen City Health & Social Care Partnership - PeMcAndrew@aberdeencity.gov.uk

Lucy Simpson, Development Officer, Early Intervention and Community Empowerment, Aberdeen City Council - lumcnicol@aberdeencity.gov.ukÂ