Same Difference?
This paper is a case study of the key strategic decisions we take at Revolving Doors Agency when replicating our innovation. It shows that our replication journey is distinctive to the type of social problem we are trying to address. It finds seven key learning points that come out of our experiences. Revolving Doors Agency (RDA) focuses on a group of people who, often for complex reasons, fall between the services that might otherwise have supported them. These services include health, housing, drugs, benefits and adult social care.
Early on, we developed and tested a new model of support, ‘Link Working’. This was designed to offer flexible outreach support to people who were repeatedly arrested and imprisoned but were often disengaged from any other system. The Link Working model soon demonstrated that it could transform outcomes for highly excluded people, and cost savings were also observable across the system.
This remarkable success led to expectations that the model would and could be replicated. However, as this paper shows, our replication journey is distinctive to the type of social problem we have been attempting to address. This paper outlines some of the challenges and choices that faced us from this point and describes how we responded.
We draw seven learning points from our experience:
- Where unmet need results from gaps in commissioning, there has to be simultaneous focus on developing a model and shaping/informing the commissioning system
- Considerable investment is needed in ‘filling the credibility gap’ between innovative ideas and the external reality
- Clarity should be reached on whether new delivery expertise is needed by the system or whether existing expertise can be channelled
- A disciplined focus on ‘good enough’ outcomes is required so that the value of innovation gets replicated and preciousness is avoided
- Replication exists on at least two levels: replicating a delivery model and replicating the process of establishing and embedding that model locally
- A culture of constant enquiry is needed to avoid the illusion of a ‘silver bullet’
The journey towards replication is likely to require considerable willingness and capacity to change organisationally.
Perhaps the most important transferable learning is the importance of very close partnership relationships with funders in order to hold and manage the many risks. Without these, not only would the capacity have been wanting, but the organisation would not have had the confidence to keep taking difficult but necessary risks.
