Reimagining childcare: designing a personalized home-based service

Childcare shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all solution. Every child deserves personalized attention in a nurturing environment that feels like home.

That's the driving force behind my collaboration with the Ministry of Social Affairs to pilot a new childcare service called Sousedské dětské skupiny. By offering care in the welcoming homes of motivated caregivers, we're creating a service that puts children and families first.

How we're doing it?

I'm collaborationg with a department for social innovations at the ministry. The main aim of the project is to evaluate how the service proposition meets client's needs and to investigate how it could be improved in future.

Organizing workshops to get insights from childcare professionals
Understanding user needs by conducting interviews or ethnography research
Iterative development and testing of supporting documentation
Piloting a core service proposition in an isolated sandbox
Adjusting service parameters based ond feedback from key actors and leadership

*Early process storyboarding allowed the team to align on the service workflow*

What did we learn?

There's a high demand for home-based childcare services. Balancing out client's and system needs is a tricky task that has no simple solution.
Consistent communication is key to work with public effectively
Day-to-day life at the ministry is resilient to innovation and discards data easily
Piloting a service in a sandbox yields valueble data and allows us to focus on problematic aspects
Identifying relevant stakeholders inside the ministry is a must for success

*Conducting a workshop with pilot project participants and childcare specialists*

Key outcomes

The main aim of the project was to identify if a service meets customer's and system needs before it is officially institutionalized. We managed to come up with several suggestions for further improvement and identified several bottlenecks that need to be mitigated for service to have a higher chance for success.

🚀 Designed and co-facilitated a 6 month long pilot programme simulating the service before active legislation.
📈 Evaluation of a service proposal agains customers' needs. Identification of problematic aspects and suggestions for further improvement
👷🏼 Compiled a set of suggestions based on research and pilot programme progress. It served as a base for tweaks in service parameters configuration.
🚨 Risk analysis focused on service adoption chances based on data gathered from multiple sources.

*Blueprinting a pilot project workflow helped the team to align on key milestones of household approval process*

Conclusion

Leading innovative efforts in a public sector is a long and complex journey. Having a strong alignment with top management and key stakeholders is a key ingredient in a ridid structures that are resistant to change.

Including potential service users during research and prototyping service aspects was a valuable source of feedback. People react well when approached by the ministery and are able to tolerate some imperfections along the way.