The Challenge
How might we increase the capacity and impact of the service, without losing the personal element that makes it so impactful?
The Objective
To co-create an enhanced Peer Support Service that enables Myeloma UK to deliver more impact, by increasing both the capacity and diversity of the people supported and the volunteers involved.
The Approach
We undertook 1-1 interviews with 12 peer buddy volunteers and service users, followed by co-creation, stretching, building and prioritisation workshops with a diverse range of staff and volunteers to find ideas to help increase the capacity and impact of the Peer to Buddy Service. We created digital prototypes and ran User Testing with volunteers and service users. By mapping the user journeys we identified 4 points where we could free up capacity:
How might we make it easier to recruit and train peer buddies?
How might we make the matching process quicker and less manual?
How might we help buddies and users arrange their own sessions?
How might we help buddies share resources directly?
The Impact
To each identified point we introduce an idea including benefits and insights from testing and a pilot plan per idea. Our future vision: A best-in-class Peer Buddy Service that reaches hundreds of people affected by Myeloma
Buddies go through a self-paced training module supplemented with group sessions and feel confident and ready to support.
An automated matching system helps shortlist buddies by user preferences, leaving those final touches to the coordinator.
An online platform allows buddies to add availability and users to book and reschedule sessions as needed while maintaining personal boundaries.
Users can directly receive links to follow up resources via a no-reply email from their volunteer buddy.
"We presented to the rest of our department yesterday, updating them on the findings for the sprint, but also the process. They were all amazed by how much was done in such a short time and really enjoyed seeing the video too. Thank you so much for your work during the project, everyone in the core team has feedback that they really enjoyed working with you and the process felt impactful and smooth! We are making plans to implement the findings and will definitely keep in touch about progress!"
Gizelle Madurai
Head of Experience