The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames undertook a discovery project to better understand the adult social care invoicing and debt recovery process. The aim was to explore both how residents experience billing and recovery processes and how internal systems, ownership structures, and operational practices shape those experiences.

Adult social care charging can be difficult for residents and families to understand. Charges depend on financial assessments, care arrangements, and personal circumstances, and invoices may be issued sometime after care begins. Residents often encounter this system during already stressful situations involving illness, care transitions, or family responsibility. When communication is unclear or delayed, this can lead to confusion, anxiety, and disputes about charges.

Operational teams also experience challenges. The invoicing and recovery process involves multiple services across the council, including adult social care operational teams, finance, collections, brokerage, and direct payments teams. Information is stored across several digital systems, including IAS, Contract, and Business World. As a result, staff often need to manually reconcile information between systems, investigate cases across teams, and respond to enquiries without having a complete picture of a resident’s situation.

The discovery combined staff shadowing, interviews with operational teams, system analysis, and learning from peer councils. This work revealed recurring patterns behind many debt recovery cases. These included unclear early communication about care contributions, residents receiving unexpected or backdated invoices, fragmented data across systems, manual reconciliation processes, and uncertainty about ownership when residents or families sought explanations.

To understand these issues more clearly, the team used journey mapping, storyboarding, and service blueprinting together to reconstruct anonymised real cases. This approach allowed the team to visualise both the resident journey and the operational systems supporting it.

Journey mapping, storyboarding, and service blueprinting were used together to understand both the resident experience of adult social care invoicing and the operational systems that shape that experience.

The work began by reconstructing anonymised real resident journeys using examples drawn from operational cases. Journey mapping was used to visualise how residents move through the service over time, from initial care assessment through care provision, invoicing, and debt recovery. The maps documented key stages, resident touchpoints, communications received, and emotional responses at different points in the process.

Mapping also captured the information residents needed at each stage, as well as the questions or concerns that commonly emerged. Particular attention was paid to the period before invoicing occurs, which often includes discussions about financial assessments and care contributions but may not clearly communicate future costs.

Storyboarding was used alongside journey mapping to illustrate specific moments within these journeys. For example, storyboards depicted situations such as a resident receiving an unexpected invoice months after care began, a family member contacting the council to challenge charges, or staff attempting to investigate a case across multiple systems. These visual narratives helped operational teams understand how administrative processes are experienced by residents and families in real life.

To complement the resident perspective, service blueprinting was used to map the operational structure supporting the invoicing and recovery process. The blueprint visualised the relationships between front-stage interactions with residents and back-stage activities performed by different teams.

The blueprint documented roles, systems, handoffs, and decision points across the service. It mapped the involvement of adult social care operational teams, finance staff responsible for billing, collections teams responsible for debt recovery, brokerage teams arranging care packages, direct payments teams, and external partners.

The mapping also examined how information moved across systems including IAS, Contract, and Business World. This revealed fragmented data flows, inconsistent categorisation of cases, and points where staff needed to manually reconcile information between systems. In some situations, staff had to consult multiple teams to understand a resident’s situation or determine who held responsibility for resolving an issue.

By combining journey mapping, storyboarding, and blueprinting, the team could connect residents’ experiences directly to the operational conditions that produced them. Journey maps and storyboards showed where residents experienced confusion or distress, while the blueprint revealed the organisational and system-level factors contributing to those outcomes. The outputs from this work were translated into user needs, operational needs, and opportunity areas that could guide service improvement and inform planning for the next phase of work.

Using journey mapping, storyboarding, and service blueprinting together enabled the team to understand the invoicing and recovery service as a connected system rather than a set of isolated processes.

Journey mapping revealed how residents experience the service over time and showed that many issues originate earlier than expected, often before invoices are issued. Residents may not fully understand how care contributions will translate into charges or when invoices will arrive.

Storyboarding helped bring these experiences to life, making the journeys easier for operational teams and stakeholders to understand. Visualising specific situations helped staff recognise how everyday administrative processes can create confusion or anxiety for residents.

Service blueprinting complemented this perspective by revealing the operational complexity behind the service. Mapping roles, systems, and handoffs showed how fragmented systems and distributed responsibilities shape both staff work and resident outcomes.

Together, the three methods created a shared visual language that supported cross-team discussion. Rather than focusing on individual tasks or organisational silos, teams were able to explore how the service operates end-to-end and identify opportunities for improvement.

The combined approach helped stakeholders move from describing problems to identifying practical improvement opportunities, including clearer communication, improved data capture, earlier engagement with residents, and better coordination across teams.

1. Real cases create shared understanding: Using anonymised real journeys helped operational teams recognise familiar situations and align around the reality of resident experiences and the operational drivers behind them.
2. Segmenting journeys reveals different support needs: Probate cases, situations involving fluctuating capacity, and disputes about charges created distinct challenges for residents and staff, highlighting the need for tailored interventions rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.
3. Prevention opportunities appear earlier in the journey: Mapping the stages before invoicing revealed that many problems originate during assessment and early communication about care contributions.
4. Service experiences are shaped by operational systems: Blueprinting showed how fragmented systems, unclear ownership, and manual reconciliation processes contribute to delays, confusion, and repeated investigations.
5. Connecting experience and operations reveals root causes: Combining journey mapping and blueprinting helped shift discussions from individual errors to structural issues in communication, system design, and governance.
6. Visual artefacts support cross-team dialogue: Journey maps, storyboards, and service blueprints created a shared reference point that enabled adult social care, finance, and operational teams to discuss challenges and opportunities more openly.