A Fresh Look at Loneliness and Social Isolation

Taking a fresh look at

LonelinessTurning Problems Into Opportunities Paul Taylor - Innovation Coach - Bromford Lab@paulbromford

Bromford

Formerly a housing association

Now Becoming a people association

Bromford LabInnovation Lab established 2014 to introduce:

Joined up problem definition

Fail fast experimentation

More agility into testing

Organisational headspace for creative thinking

...and we aim to kill

bureaucracy

*or at least tame it

Once you’ve eliminated fear of failure

You can imagine pretty much anything

Our Wicked Problem

Every 12 weeks we focus on one BIG thing that has emerged as

something important to customers and colleagues

Currently it’s turning loneliness from a problem to an opportunity

ProvocationIs social isolation partly a result of how the citizen

services sector has organised itself?

We created a narrative of lonely

older people

And a narrative of perma- connecte

d younger people

What if we stopped misery mapping and looking for deficits and weakness?

What if , instead , we asked every single employee in the social sector to look for assets and strengths?

What if we created physical and virtual bump spaces to encourage conversations?

Do we need a Tinder for loneliness?

Can Co-Living Solve Loneliness?

What if we just gave people

greater influence over who lived next

door?

Is Anti-Social Behaviour really just a sign of loneliness?

What if we just stuck a GoPro on a goat and let it loose in a community?

What if everyone became a coach and

community connector?

Conclusions So Far

We are in danger of rushing to technology as a solution

Overlap of digital resources is creating a difficult to navigate environment

Bromford doesn’t need to digitise the service

We need to humanise it and be unafraid in not following the crowd

We need to tap into existing community networks not create them

The opportunity for innovation lies squarely in the removal of practice, procedure and policy that inhibits

conversation and creativity

We need to build in

obsolescence for much of our service.

Are we brave enough to

design ourselves out

to solve loneliness?

[email protected]@paulbromford@bromfordlab

Credits

Special thanks to all the people who made and released these awesome resources for free:✘ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival✘ Photographs by Unsplash