Building and embedding our community management approach

in 2021/22 we worked with a supplier to help us develop our approach to community management and launch the Evidence Community on a digital platform. This brought about a step change in how we view communities and our role in supporting and enabling them. The supplier worked with us to develop guidance on when and how to establish a community of practice.

We have additional communities planned that will underpin our support for social care innovation and data. To help us further build and embed our community management approach we are looking for an expert supplier who will:

• support us to conduct user research to develop the purpose and scope of additional communities
• provide coaching and mentoring to develop our community managers and the communities we establish
• coach and support other Social Care Wales staff to develop skills in meaningful engagement with community members (this will include a range of staff who won’t be community managers but will contribute to running communities and embedding the approach across the organisation)
• provide us with insight and analysis of running a community, and ongoing resource and skills requirements
• provide regular overviews and analysis of metrics and emergent themes
• develop impact/success measures for the community
• develop guidance for maintaining thriving communities
• support us to expand community management to incorporate data, improvement, and workforce development teams, building communities around themes most meaningful to people working in social work and social care.

Project deliverables include:

• a range of established communities, each with a clear purpose
• a team of community managers equipped with the skills to establish, maintain and grow communities
• a directory of assets including:

>playbook on maintaining thriving digital communities

>guidance on metrics analysis

>sprint review slide decks (outlining the journey, completed work, risks and mitigations)

>sprint retro boards (with synthesised analysis of blockers and enablers that help us understand how we work best as a team)

>tools for content flow and tracking

>guidance on skills building for the community manager role (including workshop outlines, exercises, indicative reading and practical experience)