Giving Compass' Take:

•  Building Connections Fund, a joint initiative by the government, the National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op Foundation, discusses how they collaborated to utilize co-design practices to reduce loneliness. 

• Co-design can help empower people to make decisions and be confident in working toward social problem-solving. How can co-design be replicated throughout the social sector? 

• Read how co-creation informs better social programs.

At the start of 2019, we were asked to lead the learning and evaluation partnership for the Building Connections Fund, a joint initiative by the government, the National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op Foundation to reduce loneliness.

One of the big lessons from this project is that loneliness affects all kinds of people and in different ways. At Christmastime many charities will be campaigning for action on loneliness, so what can we learn from the Building Connections Fund about what works?

As part of the Building Connections Fund’s wider work to tackle loneliness, 144 short-term grants were awarded to co-design projects aimed at tackling loneliness among young people. Many of these projects tried to maximise community spaces by refurbishing or repurposing underused facilities.

We conducted a qualitative evaluation of these projects. Here’s what we learnt about what co-design achieved, and how you can maximise and evaluate the benefits of working in this way.

Co-design is when an organisation and its stakeholders work together to design or rethink a service. We found that co-design created valuable conversations which changed how young people thought about and understood loneliness.

Our evaluation found that co-design:

  • Enabled young people to influence service-delivery, so charities could improve their work to tackle loneliness.
  • Led to changes that aren’t specific to loneliness. For the young people, participating in co-design often resulted in increased confidence and empowerment. This in turn impacted other areas of their lives, such as school work, behaviour, and interpersonal skills.
  • Influenced how charities approach their work, by generating useful insights and ideas, and improving decision-making about service-delivery.

Read the full article about using effective co-design skills by Will Hanford at NPC.