Circles of Need®
Introduction
For a long time now the team at Aperia have been concerned that the customer’s perspective has been largely missing from the way that public services are designed and work and alongside this, that the customer needs that give rise to service solutions have not been considered in a holistic way. In response to these concerns and now very much in line with current thinking in central and local government , we have developed an approach that gives authorities and their local partners an opportunity to deliver a dramatically improved customer experience and equally importantly very significant efficiencies and reduced costs to the public purse.
We’ve called our approach Circles of Need®. It involves a process that examines service provision from the point of view of the identified needs of a customer segment. It takes as its starting point the assumption that we all have the same basic needs but differing abilities to meet them ourselves and that public services are there to bridge this gap to an extent that is determined by our public policy. We have developed a schema of needs (derived from academic work) and a way of segmenting our customer s that allows authorities to tailor their work with us to the specific priorities that face them in their communities.
Working from the needs of a particular customer segment our method allows authorities to identify quickly the duplication, overlaps and complex inter-relationships between the services that are provided by public and third sector agencies (and their private sector partners if included in the work) and in the process generates both the case and the desire for change.
And the case is a powerful one. In one authority where they looked with us at the situation facing a newly unemployed family man, they discovered that there were 38 different services designed to meet just two of his most pressing needs and that in order to access the best package of services for his circumstances he would have to complete 19 separate application forms, be the subject of 20 different eligibility processes and 17 different assessment processes involving 14 agencies. In all of our experience of working on different customer segments, this complex picture of inefficiency and ineffectiveness is replicated.
With the current imperative to create more efficient public services, now is the time to start rectifying this situation and we are confident that our approach will enable authorities to do this in a realistic but also genuinely transformational way.
Our approach is designed to transfer skills to authorities rather than create dependencies on our Company. It is therefore a significant value for money exercise for authorities with a strong business case for engaging with us. In addition we can offer programme management to support the change programme that follows if authorities need additional capacity. If you believe that we may be able to support your authority through this approach, please contact us
South Lakeland Older People Case Study - August 2009
Notts Worklessness Case Study - September 2009
Leicestershire Victims of Repeat Anti-Social Behaviour Case Study - April 2010
Circles of Need® is a registered trademark of Aperia Limited. The Circle of Need methodology for understanding unmet needs, customer groups and service delivery mechanisms was developed by Aperia in conjunction with Chorley Council. The original Circles of Need® report produced with Chorley can be downloaded below. This report sets out the early thinking on a needs led approach to transforming public services. Developed alongside Chorley Council working also with South Ribble, Ribble Valley and Fylde Councils and the Connected Cumbria Partnership the thinking set out here was the launchpad for our Circles of Need® methodology. Readers should note that the academic basis for Circles of Need® as well as the methodology itself have moved on significantly since the publication of this report.
Report on Modelling Citizen Need - September 2007