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What is innovation coaching? Join our new training programme

14 May 2024
Angharad Dalton

Have you thought about using our innovation coaching service, but you’re not sure what it is? Join our innovation coaching training to build your confidence in innovation coaching tools.

We launched our innovation coaching service in September 2023. Since then, our innovation coaches have been supporting individuals and teams to make positive changes in social care across Wales.

Innovation coaching uses innovation tools and a coaching approach to improve social care and help individuals develop by supporting them to identify goals and try out new ideas.

We offer up to 12 hours of free tailored support to individuals or teams.

Since September, we’ve been supporting a broad range of innovations, including work to:

  • integrate health and care pathways
  • reconfigure adult services in a local authority
  • implement new models of practice in children’s social care and learning disability services
  • improve systems for people receiving Direct Payments.

Our work takes a coaching approach to addressing sector needs and challenges.

Since launching, we’ve focused on working flexibly to get an understanding of the best way to package and offer our support, to enable people who work in social care to make best use of it.

We’ve learned a lot about how we recruit to the service and work with clients, and we’ve experimented with how we deliver the coaching.

Testing these different methods will help make sure the service meets the needs of the sector effectively, now and into the future.

We’ve had positive feedback from people who’ve used the service, but we wanted to find new ways of explaining it and showing what it can do for the sector.

Our new innovation coaching training will show you how to use the tools and techniques we use in our coaching sessions.

The training has been split into four parts.

Parts one and two will focus on coaching and will:

  • help you to better understand the benefits and uses of coaching tools
  • introduce you to a range of coaching tools that you can use in your work
  • help you understand how to develop good coaching relationships
  • provide opportunities to practice using tools to coach others.

Parts three and four will focus on innovation and show you how to use innovation tools to:

  • help you get a new perspective on the complex challenges you face
  • put people accessing services at the heart of service improvements
  • think of new ways to solve problems
  • try out ideas in low-cost and low-risk ways.

The training will allow you to get a taster of what innovation coaching can offer, as well as an opportunity to take the tools away to try yourself.

We hope that our innovation coaching training will help spread the awareness and use of helpful innovation and coaching practices, super-charging the innovation that we know occurs naturally in the sector.

If you’ve read this far, we’d love to see you at our training. 

It’s open to anyone who works in social care in Wales. It’ll be particularly useful for:

  • people with responsibility for improving care services
  • people who are interested in the existing innovation coaching offer but want to know more about it
  • people who’ve taken part in innovation coaching and want to push their skills further.

We're currently taking bookings for our June and September courses.

Book your place

Visit our Eventbrite page to book your place on the training, or find out more about the training here.

Blog written by:

Angharad Dalton

Angharad Dalton

Innovation Coaching Manager

innovationcoaching@socialcare.wales
I am the Innovation Coaching Manager and I look after our new innovation coaching service and coaching team. We support people working in social care who are trying to improve the way they provide care by helping them to test new ideas, develop new ways of working or adapt what works elsewhere. My background is varied, but the golden thread that runs through my career is a focus on making life better for people. I’m vice-chair of Cwmpas, and previously worked as a programme manager for Nesta, supporting public service innovation in Wales. I’ve also developed health policy for the Institute of Welsh Affairs, and pioneering story-centred digital inclusion outreach work across Wales. I was part of the founding team behind The National newspaper, Trade School Cardiff, and part of Think ARK – a social design collective.