Rainbows

Rainbows supports babies, children, young people, and their families through life-limiting illness, dying and bereavement. The work is hard, it’s sacred, and it’s done by an extraordinary mix of people: clinical teams, retail staff, central support, volunteers, trustees. New leadership had arrived. A new strategy was on the horizon. But underneath it, a problem the leadership team named honestly — these groups didn’t always feel connected to one another, or equally valued. To decentralise services, deepen community presence, and become a recognised centre of excellence in paediatric palliative care, Rainbows needed something the strategy alone couldn’t deliver: a shared culture.

We started with the people doing the work. A full culture diagnostic — survey plus conversations with staff, volunteers, leaders, trustees, clinicians, and families — gave us the truth of where Rainbows already was. From there, we ran focus groups to co-create values and behaviours that staff and volunteers could recognise as their own, not handed down from a leadership team. We designed a launch, activation and embedding roadmap, then stayed for the harder part: leadership workshops, a team toolkit, a culture and strategy playbook, internal champions, and measurement tools to track progress and impact. As the new strategy launch approached in April 2025, we worked alongside the CEO and leadership team to help shape purpose and agree strategic priorities, acting as a strategic adviser and trusted partner.