Rainbows Hospice for Children and Young People
Evolving and embedding a human-centred culture to drive service, people and charity excellence.
About Rainbows
Rainbows exists to support babies, children, young people and their families in life and in death. They create lasting, precious memories and provide care and support wherever a family needs them – in the hospice, at home or in hospital. For families facing the unimaginable, Rainbows provide compassionate and dignified support during dying and bereavement. Helping families to navigate their grief while honouring the memory of their child.
The Challenge
Rainbows was at a turning point, facing both opportunities and complexities:
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A new senior leadership team brought fresh perspectives, necessitating alignment across the organisation.
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The existing strategy was nearing its conclusion, creating a need for a cohesive vision moving forward.
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Diverse groups—including clinical teams, retail staff, central support staff, volunteers, and trustees—did not feel connected to one another or equally valued, making a unified culture essential.
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The organisation aimed to decentralise services, strengthen community integration, and establish itself as a centre of excellence in palliative care.
To address these challenges, Rainbows sought a partnership with dragonfish to co-create a unifying set of values and behaviours. This initiative would support the broader strategic goals of aligning culture, fostering inclusion, and preparing for sustained growth.
Our Solution
Dragonfish implemented a multi-phase, collaborative approach to support Rainbows’ cultural transformation. This began with an Initial Discovery phase, which involved a comprehensive culture survey and conversations with staff, volunteers, leaders, trustees, and families to gain a deep understanding of the existing culture and aspirations for the future. The Collaborative Development phase focused on hosting focus groups to co-create a set of values and behaviours that resonated with all stakeholders. A Culture Launch, Activation, and Embedding Roadmap was then designed to ensure successful implementation and integration of the new values.
The success of this initial work led to an extension of the partnership, which included leadership workshops, a team toolkit, a culture and strategy playbook, and upskilling internal champions to embed the new culture, as well as tools to track progress and measure long-term impact.
Additionally, with the launch of a new strategy planned for April 2025, dragonfish provided strategic guidance and support to the CEO and leadership team in shaping their purpose and strategic priorities. This meant acting as a strategic advisor and trusted partner to facilitate leadership discussions and enable decisions.
The Outcome
The launch event created a catalyst for the values and behaviours to start to live and breathe within the organisation. One colleague commented that,
‘Our launch event was a fantastic example of our One Team value in action. We all came together to connect and carry out activities with people we may not have worked with before.’
This activation was mirrored in many stories shared within the leadership workshops, whereby colleagues were already noticing a difference in the day-to-day environment across the organisation.
This was also demonstrated in the results of an employee engagement survey, released shortly after the values launch. This survey showed a 15% increase in overall engagement, compared to 6 months prior.
The results illustrated an increase across most areas, with key improvements in;
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Morale (+28%)
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Feeling appreciated (+24%)
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Recommend as a place to work (+17%)
Ninety seven percent of employees felt proud to be working for the organisation and felt that they were making a difference.
This survey was also the first engagement survey to involve volunteers, who recorded a 92% engagement score.
“What we liked most about the dragonfish approach was that although they shaped the journey to, and activation of, our new values and behaviours, we never felt led, the project and the results were very much owned by us. They also took the time to really understand our organisation, its challenges and aspirations. This meant that our colleagues and volunteers were able to commit to the co-creation process and embedding of the values, trusting that they were authentic and aligned with our existing culture and aspirations.
Since our launch event we have seen a real engagement and proactivity around incorporating Our Values into everyday actions and conversations. We have even asked the children, young people and families that we support to explore what Our Values mean to them.”
Julia Bates, Director of People, Rainbows Hospice
“Dragonfish were a true culture partner along this journey, supporting us to create a set of values and behaviours that would set us up for success in delivering a new strategy. They recognised our strengths and our goals, and put these into a simple culture framework that everyone across our colleague and volunteer community could connect with. These values mark a real shift in our culture and will be lived by everyone at Rainbows. They will help us all to make a difference to the babies, children, young people and families that we support.”
Jane Burns, CEO, Rainbows Hospice