The aim was to collaboratively ‘learn by doing’ by rapidly developing and testing tangible concepts that help address key challenges related to Nesta’s fairer start mission. The intention was to: 

1. make something to test assumptions
2. engage in research and testing with parents
3. work with new colleagues

We identified three challenges that were of interest to our fairer start mission and suitable for tackling in a sprint format. All three challenges aimed to reduce the mental and emotional burden involved in navigating early years support systems, focusing on parents’ ability to: 

• assess the quality of childcare settings
• understand and navigate support, including childcare entitlements and parenting support
• find available and appropriate childcare

Working in three teams of four or five people, over two days we rapidly interrogated these problems, refined initial concepts (and in one case threw it away and started again), built prototypes, ran user testing sessions with real target parents and ultimately tested key assumptions, generating learnings to support our mission work.

Some of the fairer start’s mission priorities involve improving parenting support and access to quality early childhood education and care. The sprint began with three challenges that teams worked on across the two days. Each team has shared what they did, what they learnt and what could happen next below.

1. Choosing a childcare provider: can a decision-support tool for choosing childcare - going beyond Ofsted grades - help parents with low prior knowledge meaningfully assess and compare local settings? 
2. Expanding local childcare provision: can a caregiver registration and matching platform expand discoverable quality childcare options in areas where Ofsted-rated provision is scarce or unaffordable?
3. A stigma-free front door to support: can a conversational AI tool act as an engaging, stigma-free front door that helps low-income parents of 0-5 year olds understand what support they’re entitled to, self-assess their needs and find the right childcare and parenting programmes for their family?

We'll be sharing a deeper dive into each project over the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for updates linked above.

If you would like to know more about what we did and what we learned, or are interested in trying something similar, then please contact us at [email protected]