Thoughts

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.  

School drop-out rates have never been a focus in England in the same way as they are in the US. So why is Innovation Unit so determined to bring Big Picture Learning across the pond?

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.

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.

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.

PRESS RELEASE: The life chances of disadvantaged young people in Doncaster are set to improve thanks to £1.8 million of Government funding.

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.

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.

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.

What’s in an acronym, and how do ‘brands’ create permission for educational change?

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.

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.

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!

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:

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.