Designing ‘test-and-learn clinics’ to spread experimentation in the early years
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/designing-test-and-learn-clinics-to-spread-experimentation-in-the-early-years/
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/designing-test-and-learn-clinics-to-spread-experimentation-in-the-early-years/
Test, learn and grow approaches - where rapid iterative testing is used to develop and improve - are at the centre of the government’s drive for public service reform.
In Nesta’s fairer start mission we are experimenting with a new way of supporting local teams to test and learn. Our ‘test-and-learn clinics’ are designed as a scalable model to help local authorities adapt evidence-informed practice to meet local needs quickly. The objective is to provide support that is just intensive enough to equip local teams to do the work of test and learn themselves, so that a small team could support over 20 local authorities a year - rather than two-to-three, as we’ve done previously.
Through these clinics, we’ve seen local authorities improve their offering to children and families and overcome challenges, as part of their work to deliver on the government’s Best Start in Life strategy.
Here are four things we’ve learnt about developing a scalable model through our first cohort of test and learn clinics.
In our clinics, local authorities are guided through a step-by-step process to map problems from parents’ perspectives, identify engagement barriers and evidence-informed solutions, and plan a light touch experiment.
Local teams are supported through a combination of structured online workshops and tools and templates to use between sessions. This enables rapid progress without intensive hands-on support from Nesta. While the process is highly structured, outputs are owned by local teams and adapted to local needs:
Nesta’s central role was to act as a coach through the test and learn process while local authorities were responsible for bringing local knowledge, engaging families and practitioners, developing test materials, and running the experiments in practice.
Setting and communicating clear expectations allows us and our local authority partners to fully own our respective parts of the programme.
It was valuable to have multiple disciplines represented across Nesta and local teams. The Nesta team included expertise in design, behavioural science and partnership management, which allowed us to provide rounded advice in clinic sessions. The deep contextual expertise of local team members across leadership and practitioner roles provided the buy-in, insights and operational capacity needed for successful experiments. This isn’t necessarily about having senior leaders join the clinic sessions, but instead ensuring the people in the room have the authority to change the relevant parts of the system and involving those individuals who’ll be delivering the test.
We designed test-and-learn clinics to be a safe space for local teams to get into the details of what’s not working well. Achieving this is less about the structured process instead lies in setting a collaborative tone and positioning ourselves as partners with a shared mission and complementary skillset. Participants’ feedback demonstrated that they valued the space we provided and the scaffolding our input gave to conversations. We combined space for exploration with focus and action, to move from ideation to experimentation.
The rhythm of clinics and our presence as external partners also provided a form of accountability. Clinics created regular checkpoints that galvanised progress on a topic that was very important to local teams, but between managing service delivery and statutory reforms was not always the most urgent priority.
"The check-ins and the test and learn, talking through those ideas in a safe space and just narrowing it down to a real specific that could be tested, was really useful."
Lynda Kilduff, early years consultant, Trafford Council
"We're in the middle of SEND reforms, families first reform, some areas are new to family hubs as well. So the fact that we had to meet you and had to do the work meant it was done. Otherwise, it becomes one of those things that you really want to do, but just never get round to having the headspace."
Chris Thursfield, family hubs group manager, Telford and Wrekin Council
We translated our methodology into a set of lightweight, reusable guides and templates including structured experiment design sheets and learning logs so local teams could take these away, adapt them and use them for future challenges.
Having guided teams through the test and learn process, and provided reusable tools, they quickly adopted the language and behaviours of test and learn, and independently developed plans for future test-and-learn cycles.
"We found that when you came to do that last session in Blackpool, it was really, really helpful because the whole team was there. It really got everybody thinking about all those different variables and what we could change, how that would look and what our next test and learn is going to look like."
Lisa Burgess, family hubs team leader, Blackpool Council:
We’ll be running a second cohort of test-and-learn clinics later this year, testing our assumptions of scalability by growing the cohort size from three to eight local authorities. Get in touch if you’re interested in finding out more about our methods, or being involved in a future cohort.
This blog represents work, learning and insights from the team who delivered the first cohort of Nesta’s test-and-learn clinics on parent engagement: Cynthia Voza Lusilu, Ghazal Moenie, Umesh Pandya and Tim Shakespeare.
We’re grateful for the teams in Blackpool, Telford and Wrekin, and Trafford for their involvement in the programme. This programme would not have worked without their professional expertise, local insight and ability to move at pace.
