Taking a community-led approach to fraud resilience
Neighbourhood Watch is the largest voluntary crime prevention movement in England and Wales, with a membership upwards of 2.3 million. Many associate it with helpful ‘curtain twitchers’ reporting burglaries in their local area.
But their work goes way beyond this; in fact, they see their remit as being a broader commitment to fostering wellbeing and connection within communities.
NHW came to us looking to extend their reach, as well as their ability to create resilient communities through addressing fraud in a way that could easily be adapted to the different infrastructures and needs of varying types of community.
A systems approach to tackling fraud
We started by mapping the system of support around the people affected by fraud and analysing the data on these types of crimes. This helped us get an understanding of who’s doing what to help tackle the problem.
Older and vulnerable people weren’t the only potential users of the solutions we would develop. Volunteer groups, the police, and a range of bodies that collect data on where and when scams and fraud are taking place would also be involved.
After conducting desk research, we kicked off the project with a co-design workshop with people who had been victims of fraud and local NHW volunteers.
Next, we conducted contextual interviews, visiting elderly residents in their homes with the support of local volunteers so they felt safe. We undertook research in areas outside of the Aylesbury area where our work was also focused. It was important to ensure that what we were designing was scalable to different regions of the country.