What makes you, you? Empowering innovation through real stories

At SCIE’s recent all-staff away day, we took a creative approach to inspire fresh ideas. Drawing from the popular “Dragons’ Den” TV show, we held a session where teams from across the organisation pitched solutions to social care challenges. But this session wasn’t just about pitching. What made it stand out was the involvement of people with lived experience. They shared their personal stories with SCIE staff, and these stories became the spark for innovation.

People’s real-life experiences of care formed the foundation of the staff design activities. Staff groups began by listening to people’s first-hand accounts of their daily challenges. This helped the groups move beyond theory to connect on a human level with the problems to be solved, spurring creative thinking in the process.

The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. One person shared, “I really felt listened to. I could tell the staff were really engaged with my story and wanted to find a solution that could work”. Another said, “Staff were very respectful of me, I’ve never been part of something like this before, it was very fun”.