Danielle Madsen and Margaret Fraser on Change by Design

October 2, 2015 in events, people, practice

Danielle and Margaret from TACSI, the Australian Center for Social Innovation, spoke about their work with the Family-by-Family program.

Their presentation focused on the child protection system in Australia, which they described as a crisis with 125,000 reports and 64K at risk of serious harm. They asserted that radical change was necessary. In their view, child protection hasn’t failed because of individuals, it’s failed because it’s the wrong system.

Family-by-family worked with 100 families interfacing with the child welfare system and engaged in a co-creation process. Sharing families vs seeking families vs family coach. The organization seeks to save $7 for every dollar spent. They prototyped this system over 14 weeks of iteration.

They identified four key design elements:

1. Families as change makers
2. The family coach
3. Brand is less bureaucratic
4. Evaluation iPad app

A longitudinal study evaluated the families to find that the participants stayed in contact after their initial engagement. This helped to reduce the incidence of social isolation across the community.