Supporting Rape Crisis to create service improvements to their 24/7 Support Line to further meet the needs of frequent users
Illustrations created by Emma Philip and Tyla Mason for Rape Crisis
Project aims:
Rape Crisis run a 24/7 Support Line for victims and survivors of sexual abuse. With a service recommissioning process coming up, they wanted to better understand the behaviour of ‘frequent users’ and explore ways in which the service could be redesigned to better support them.
Consolidating existing insight
How to support frequent users of the service is an area the service delivery partnership had been exploring for a while. With a small budget for this project, it was important to start by consolidating the evidence the team already had to ensure any additional research was filling gaps and deepening existing knowledge.
User research with staff
People using the 24/7 Support Line frequently are often in a vulnerable position, therefore it would not be appropriate to involve them directly in research at this stage. Instead, we gathered a small group of support line workers and managers to work with us on this project. We started by speaking to each of the staff members individually to hear about their experiences of supporting frequent users, as well as the challenges they face in delivering the service.
Illustrations created by Emma Philip and Tyla Mason for Rape Crisis
Articulating the needs of both staff and service users
With a service recommissioning process coming up, it was important to articulate our research as user needs that the service delivery partnership could go back to. As a team, we worked to tell the story of our findings using user needs as a mechanism for clarifying, on both sides, what was needed for frequent users to be best supported by the 24/7 support line and for staff to be comfortable and effective with their service delivery. This was especially important as some of the solutions related to better use of technology and the project didn’t allow for in depth work in this area.
Co-designing solutions
The staff we worked with were full of ideas because they work on this service day-to-day. We captured these throughs through the research and found we were uncovering a spectrum of possible solutions, from small targeted changes to bigger redesigns of the service. The service delivery partnership were already thinking about and working on some of the ideas that surfaced so we used the design time we had with staff to start to prioritise the smaller ideas while building important context and considerations around the bigger solutions. We also ran expert interviews with people in other charities who have grappled with similar challenges but are further ahead with their service redesigns.
“Working with Charley was an extremely positive experience. She is an expert user researcher, and has a clear commitment to ensuring services are accessible and inclusive for all.
She brought a calm, positive and proactive approach to the work and ensured that our projects remained on track. I would recommend Charley to anyone needing user research expertise in a project or service.”
- Siriol Davies, she/her, Head of Service Delivery, RCEW
Impact and outcomes
The service delivery partnership were left with clear priorities to move forward with and a group of committed staff to continue to co-design solutions with. We also packaged the work up and told the story to funders of the service. This provided evidence for both parties to work with when recommissioning the service in future.
Thank you to the people who took part in the research.
Client: Rape Crisis
Services: Service Design, User Research, Design Research
Team: Charley Pothecary and Emma Parnell from Joy