You might start by individually reviewing the cards before getting together in person or online.

Using the cards, your knowledge and your relationships, start by determining if co-design is needed and if you should lead or support it. If you’re not sure you might need more information.

Consider what roles are inside and outside your current scope of practice [read more on scope of practice].

Then, use the cards to explore what needs to be in place and who will do what. Talk about accountability, self and collective care.

You might use the cards with the planning tools ↪ that we created with NSW Health.

Learning to plan, lead, coordinate and sponsor co-design takes time.

You might use the cards to identify:

• What’s my/our understanding of the practices in the set?

• Where am I/we strong?

• Where do I/we need extra skills or knowledge?

• What is inside and outside my/our current scope of practice? read more on scope of practice

• Where could I/we strengthen our/my practice of care in co-design?

You might use the cards to explore:

• What are we doing well?

• What are we forgetting?

• Where are we excluding people?

• Is there a lack of hospitality, honesty, clarity or safety? Where?

• How might we need to resource the work differently?

You might use the cards in supervision or coaching to identify:

• Areas for conversation

• Strengths and skills

• Progress, skill-building and good work to celebrate

• Areas for growth or learning

• Something else.

While co-design is popular there’s still confusion about what it is and how to do it. It can be stressful and overwhelming to lead or support co-design.

Sometimes co-design processes lack care. A lack of care negatively impacts inclusion and can undermine the quality of what is designed.

So, we’re sharing our strategies for care and inclusion.

The original Model of Care for Co-design (2020) was created by deep practice reflection by KA and using the principles of trauma-informed care.

The Expansion Pack was co-created. Here’s what we did first:

• Asked some of our collaborators to help (Morgan Cataldo, Rachael Dietkus, Nicole Barling-Luke, Sue Muller).

• Did a public call-out on social media and in our newsletter for contributors.

• Reflected on our teaching and learning since the original model came out in 2020.

• Reflected on what we’re learning through recent practice and projects (such as making All of Us with communities and NSW Health).

• Reflected on what we’ve been learning over the past decade of trying (and sometimes failing) to make trauma-responsive practice part of co-design.

From the public call-out, we chose six cards that didn’t duplicate the original set, were actionable, about care and relevant to co-design. We let everyone who wasn’t successful know why, thanked them and offered a small gift. We then invited the successful authors to join the other collaborators in a shared Google document. Giving everyone lots of choices about how they took part we:

• Had one-to-one conversations with authors to imagine and edit the cards.

• Asked each other questions and made suggestions in the Google doc.

• Had small group conversations with some of the authors to build on each other’s cards, see differences and similarities.

• Reviewed and critiqued each other’s cards without any pressure to make changes.

After everyone was happy with their cards and comfortable enough with the other cards we then:

• Edited them for consistent language and to make them as straightforward as possible

• Professionally proofread them

• Worked with our buddy Nina on the visual design

• Chose a local printer with sustainable practices including renewable power

We then had several more rounds of feedback with everyone on the visual design and words on each card.

Finally, we offered everyone choices about how they stayed involved (or didn’t) in launching the card set. For the authors that wanted to, we designed a series of events to tell the stories of who we are and our cards.

You, we hope.

Currently, the Model of Care (2020 & 2023) is used by thousands of people worldwide in many different contexts - in public and community health, housing, Indigenous-led work, justice reform, environment, social justice advocacy and many more places. The Model of Care is helping people with their university teaching, improving the practice of facilitators, designers, managers and design agencies, supporting diversity, equity and inclusion work and more. We’ve taught the Model of Care across Australia (especially in public health) and in the UK.

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW 📍USA

Rachael (she/her) is a social worker and designer with deep areas of specialized practice in trauma, systems, and social care mentorship, policy, and supervision. She has worked on cause-driven social justice work in the federal government, higher education, and social sector. Rachael is also the founder of Social Workers Who Design, where they work with organizations worldwide to strengthen ethical, responsible, and trauma responsive design research practice. Read more on Rachael’s website (Social Workers Who Design).↪

Morgan Cataldo 📍Australia

Morgan dedicates her professional life to developing and advocating for participatory practice and peer education as essential levers for creating true, lasting, powershifting systemic change in services for historically excluded communities. Bringing 15 years of experience, Morgan advises, coaches and consults with organisations across Australia and internationally who are seeking to understand the role of power in their everyday work and how they can design and shape more meaningful policies, programs, and services by partnering with people with lived experience relevant to their purpose. Morgan holds a degree in Social Science and serves on the Board of The Constellation Project.

Lucy Flores 📍USA

Lucy Flores (she/her) is a design strategist and the founder of Studio Magic Hour, a collaborative design studio focused on advancing equity in the food system. Previously, she helped launch FoodCorps, a national nonprofit in the U.S. dedicated to cultivating joy, health, and justice for kids through nutritious food, in partnership with schools and community. She is a former Equitable Design Fellow at Hopelab, and a member of the Design Justice Network, Equity Army, and AIGA.

Nicole Barling-Luke 📍Australia

Nicole is an experienced strategist, designer and deliverer. She is the Portfolio Lead at Regen Melbourne, bringing a critical and joy-informed approach to activating organisations and citizens in Greater Melbourne. Nicole identifies as both a social innovation generalist and facilitation enthusiast. She has previously worked with global practitioners to improve the public sector's capability, creativity and courage.

Sue Muller 📍Australia

Sue (she/her) is the founder of The Better Together Collective↪ and publishes With Us - a celebration of doing with, not for. She has worked in health, mental health and wellbeing for over a decade, in management, leadership, advocacy, and advisory roles. Her experience includes local health services, state bodies, federal government, national consultancies, private companies, university research projects, and joint ventures.

Leah Lockhart 📍UK

Leah (them/they/she/her) is a design researcher and facilitator living in Glasgow. Leah has worked with public services and community-based organisations across the UK for over 20 years. Leah is a worker/owner of fractals co-op, a small, playful and nurturing design collective.

Ang Broadbridge 📍UK

Ang is based in the North East of England and has delivered research and evaluation projects in the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector for over 15 years. She leads a maternal mental health project at Ways to Wellness and has many interests that cluster around social research, health and care, advocacy and peer research. In her spare time Ang is a mentor for young women at a local secondary school. Find Ang on twitter @angbroadbridge

Rusty Benson 📍Australia

Rusty Benson is an experienced social designer known for his empathic, collaborative, and reflexive approach to designing with people. He's known as an exceptional facilitator and relationship builder who can connect with people at all levels of an organisation to drive change and champion design. As a process-driven designer, Rusty thrives in complex systems and environments, with a strong ability to connect the big picture and detail, people and systems, and identify levers for change. He has hands-on expertise in Service design, UX design and Co-design, with a passion for nurturing and developing design proficiency across individuals and teams. Rusty's reputation as a designer is built on consistently delivering outcomes that positively impact organisations, partners, individuals, and communities.

Maria Tchan 📍Australia

Maria (she/her) is an evaluator, facilitator, and clinician. As the founder of Iota Impact, she supports organisations and their people to measure and communicate their impact in a meaningful way. She has worked extensively with vulnerable and under-represented populations across metropolitan, regional, and remote Australia, and is passionate about community-led approaches to mental health and primary care programs. Maria lives and works on Wallumedegal country.

Red Nicholson 📍Aotearoa

KA McKercher 📍Australia

There are 39 practices in the set with hand-drawn art by Nina Sepahpour.↪ The cards relate to strategies for before, during and after co-design.

Each card features a summary on one-sided and further information on the other side.

In the card sets expect to find practices around:

• Assessing the fit

• Designing welcomes

• Increasing access

• Improving communication

• Incorporating trauma-informed practices

• Promoting safety

• Increasing collective care and self-care for co-designers and facilitators

• Designing better endings

• And more