Events – Innovate

June 22, 2015February 3, 2017

Steps to Success

Recently Gayle and I, alongside Eilaine from Hot Chocolate Trust, ran a workshop at the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (SIRCC) “Steps to Success” conference in Glasgow to explore “preserving and promoting positive relationships”. This was off the back of IRISS’s Relationships Matter project and the same workshop I ran at the Parenting in Scotland Conference earlier this year.

Personal Stories

It was wonderful to attend an event that embraced the importance of personal stories wholeheartedly, with young people reflecting and sharing their personal experiences with the delegates in the most beautifully, heart wrenching way – I’m not sure there was a dry eye in the room. I have so much respect for the young people for sharing their stories with everyone – it’s difficult to share your life story with anyone, let alone a room full of strangers. Wonderful!

Recognition of the importance of sharing and highlighting personal stories appears to be growing at events I’ve been attending lately. Scottish Care; Parenting Across Scotland and The Co-Prodction Network (and now SIRCC) are just a few organisations that have made this the primary focus of their events and it’s wonderful to see. Long may it continue! (as long as it continues to be done in a person-centred and non-exploitary manner!)

Preserving and Promoting Positive Relationships

Our workshop was in the afternoon of the first day of the conference.

We started by inviting delegates to list what they hoped to get from the session.

Through this key themes of interest emerged:

Learn/Understand
Give Young People an Understanding
Hear from Young People
Talk About Relationships
See Evidence of the Impact of Positive Relationships
Raise Awareness of the Importance of Positive Relationships
Hear Some New Ideas

This allowed us to capture people’s expectations and to reflect on these throughout the session. We hope this helped to shape a session that had something for everyone!

Following an introduction to IRISS and the Relationships Matter Project, we showed delegates a video created with a young person at Hot Chocolate Trust. In this video the young person reflects on how Hot Chocolate supported them by demonstrating positive loving relationships.

We then invited the delegates to reflect on this video by asking them to respond to three questions: 1. how the video made them feel; 2. Listen to what the video is saying; and 3. Think about how the video makes them react.

During this process the group worked in pairs to reflect and discuss how the video made them feel and react.

We then invited discussion through the wider group so that learning and experiences could be shared.

Following this we invited them to return to their pairs and think about love. Where was it shown in the video? How does love translate in a professional context? and What is their “pledge for love” in 2015.

This allowed the group to think about how love (and loving relationships) can take many forms and, importantly, that you don’t need to say ‘I love you’ to let someone know how you feel.

We captured the discussion on activity cards on which delegates wrote their responses including their pledges to make love their big focus for 2015.

Some of these ‘pledges’ are detailed below:

To treat people as I wish to be treated myself!

Tell the people that I love, that I love them!

It’s ok to show, demonstrate and tell young people that you love them!

Free hugs!

When the going gets tough be there no matter what!

Encourage my team to be confident in their actions/showing love!

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Think about your own ‘pledges’ to make love the big focus for 2015 and share them with us on twitter @irissorg #RelationshipsMatter.

Thanks, Fiona

April 1, 2015September 4, 2018

Creating Loving Relationships – Parenting across Scotland 2015 conference

On 12^th March I was fortunate enough to attend Parenting Across Scotland’s 2015 Conference “Creating Loving Relationships” – don’t you just love the title?! – alongside colleagues from Hot Chocolate to present the Relationships Matter project I had been co-leading with Gayle Rice [*].

The PAS 2015 conference, Creating Loving Relationships, focused on relationships.

Increasingly, the importance of relationships within families is being recognised. Children don’t come alone; they come as part of a family, with complex and intersecting relationships. We need to recognise this, and support the whole family.

Being a parent isn’t so much a job as a set of intersecting relationships. Like all relationships, being a parent has its good times and its bad times, and most families will have times when they need some help. It’s important that the relationships between families and professionals are nurturing, and help families to forge loving relationships within the family.

**Charis Robertson (Assistant Director, Hot Chocolate) beautifully summarised the presentations throughout the day**

When arriving at the conference I was welcomed by an array of stands displaying how we can all work together to support young people in and leaving care. There was a general buzz of happiness in the air as people discussed the inspiring conference theme.

The conference was opened briefly by Clare Simpson (PAS Project Manager) before she handed over to Fiona McLeod (MSP, Acting Minister for Children and Young People) to welcome everyone to the conference.

Fiona focused her discussion on the need to support families (and Dads!) to provide loving relationships so that Scotland can become the best place to grow up for children.

“We want Scotland to be the best place to grow up…we’re gathering the evidence of what works so that children have the best chance” Fiona McLeod (MSP).

Following Fiona’s welcome we were in for a wonderful and inspiring presentation from Dr Suzane Zeedyk (University of Dundee) about “Our human need for love: why it’s a the problem and why it’s the solution.”

Screen Shot 2015-04-01 at 14.42.34 This presentation was genuinely one of the most moving presentations I’ve seen and I’m sure I wasn’t alone with many people wiping their eyes throughout.

Suzanne spoke openly and honestly about the need for us to focus less on policy driven agendas and more on what matters to the young people that these policies are in place to support.

“I’m worried, worried that we care more about policies than relationships” Suzanne Zydeco

She raised concern for the ‘second skin’ developed by workers when working on difficult cases and the need for them to remember why they got into their line of work in the first place.

“Nurseries are scared to cuddle ‪children in their care for fear of inappropriate contact. This needs to change!” Suzanne Zeedyk

Next Dr John Coleman (OBE, Research Fellow, University of Oxford) spoke about “New knowledge about the adolescent brain” and how, if we really want to be person-centred and meet the needs of young teenagers then we should start understanding what works best for them. For instance did you know that teenagers would actually function better at school and obtain better test scores if classes started at lunchtime and finished later? No – me neither!

After this series of inspiring speakers it was time for a break and some reflections about all we had learnt so far before hearing from Dr Judy Corlyon about “A reversal of misfortune: who are the poor relations now?”

This presentation focused on the shift in recent years to grandparents having more money than parents and the struggles faced by young families as they work hard to support and care for their families.

“It is not long ago since many retired parents relied on their adult children for financial and practical help. Now it is the adult children who are more likely to find themselves

needing help as they struggle with benefit cuts, low-paid employment and expensive childcare” Judy Corlyon

Next we had a round table discussion to help us reflect on what we had heard so far. Screen Shot 2015-04-01 at 14.43.25

The table I was at focused on concerns that fear and policies were driving change when really we just need to think and act in more caring ways towards the young people we work with and support.

There was a focus on the need for evidence* to champion more person-centred approaches in practice and, of course, we thought hugs are great!

*there is a selection of evidence available on the Relationships Matters Website.

Then it was time for a quick (and super yummy!) lunch before setting up our workshop: “Where is the love? Thinking about what love looks like for professionals”

During our workshop we discussed the JAM event we ran in January as part of the Relationships Matter project and what Hot Chocolate would be doing in 2015 to champion loving relationships with the young people they work with and support.

We then asked our participants to reflect on this before completing prompt cards that questioned how they would translate ‘love’ into a professional context and what their pledge would be to make 2015 the year of love.

Participants were very engaged in this activity and there was a lot of group discussion about how they we could all champion love in 2015:

“being able to connect with others in a positive way”

“give something of yourself”

“more hugs and cuddles”

“I want to be courageous about making love my priority”

“not being afraid to talk about love”

Following the workshops Professor Phil Wilson (Centre for Rural Health, University of Aberdeen) gave a presentation about “Challenging the inverse care law: Can parenting support be fair for everyone?”

This presentation focused on evidence which suggests that parenting support isn’t always offered and taken up in proportion to need.

“The higher the risk/need, the lower the likelihood to access it” Phil Wilson

The conference concluded with an amazing presentation from John Carnochan OBE QPM (Independent consultant and expert on violence prevention) about “It’s relationships, that’s all, relationships”.

This presentation was especially moving and an inspiring way to end a great conference. John focused his discussion on the need for us to (re)connect with each other as fellow humans and to care for and protect children, young people and adults.

“We are wired for connection…sometimes it’s as simple as putting your arm around someone” John Carnochan

He spoke of his concern that we focus on policies rather than care and support and asked a very thought provoking question that seemed to resonate with everyone in the room:

“Why do we need a policy to ‘get it right for every child’ surely that should be obvious and we should just do it?Maybe we don’t really like kids, but simply tolerate them…we’ve professionalised the whole bloody world and we’ve abdicated our responsibility as humans” John Carnochan

I found this conference one of the best I’ve been to. The selection of speakers were inspiring and thought provoking and I am so pleased to see a conference that bravely focused it’s theme on love and loving relationships. I am hopeful for 2015 and a new focus on love over policy.

The answer to fear is love…this needs courage but we can do it together!”

Thanks, Fiona Munro

[*] This project is now being taken forward by Gayle and Ellen Daly in 2015.

March 6, 2015March 13, 2015

Space Unlimited – Changing Schools

On Wednesday I attended an event run by Space Unlimited about their work ‘Changing Schools’. I did so with great interest and enthusiasm as working with young people is a key part my background and continues to be a strong passion of mine.

Location: The event took place at House for an Art Lover in Glasgow (nice venue!) and lasted about 4 hours.

Attendees: There were about 30 people in attendance. This group included Space Unlimited Staff; Teachers and pupils from some of the schools involved in the project; and a selection of guests (i.e. people not involved in the project from IRISS (me!), Education Scotland, Care Inspectorate and so on).

Layout: Space Unlimited had drawn two large (4m+) diagrams of their process and pinned these along the wall. As they presented they added key aspects to the drawings so that they were built up by the end of the day. I found this really useful for visually bringing everyone in the room up to speed with their process from the point of planning to the point of action.

Very quickly I felt like I had a grasp of the work they had done, the process they had gone through and their outcomes.

Program: They started the day with an introduction to their ‘Changing Schools’ project.

In summary, Space Unlimited had been visiting schools to bring together teachers and pupils over three days to enable them to work well together and develop pupil/teacher committees.

The facilitators split the group into 4 smaller groups and sent them to separate rooms. Each group consisted of two people from Space Unlimited (facilitator and note taker); two pupils (min); one teacher (min) and three guests (min).

On the floor Space Unlimited arranged quotes from teachers and pupils involved in the project. They then asked those involved (teachers and pupils) to select one that resonated with them the most, followed by the guests.

Each person then took it in turns to talk about the quote they had chosen (40 mins total).

I really liked this method. It gave everyone a voice and something to talk about. Having a chance to read all of the quotes was very valuable also and a garret way to give the guests insight into the project from the participant’s perspective.

I was encouraged to hear quotes about feeling empowered, respected and listed to. The young people (age 13-14) were extremely confident and vocal about their experience with Space Unlimited. When I asked them about it they said they weren’t this confident until they worked with Space Unlimited and were able to see that their teachers cared about them and wanted to listen to them.

“Working with Space Unlimited allowed me to see my teachers care about me.” pupil.

There was a lot of discussion about how the schools could get other teachers/pupils engaged. There was concern that without Space Unlimited returning that it wouldn’t be possible. Pupils felt that they had become so confident that they were at the same level as the teachers and so new pupils would need to repeat that process. They referenced this as being similar to asking English speakers to join a group of Spanish speakers – you need someone to teach you both a shared language. That was what they thought Space Unlimited had done.

There was concern from the teachers that if they left the school they were currently working in that the learning would go with them but may not remain in the school they left.

After this session was a break, during which everyone was invited to write a topic to discuss in the next session. These were stuck on the wall and then everyone had to write their name next to one topic that interested them most.

Only 6 people wrote cards. Three of the people were pupils. I joined the group who had selected my card “how can this approach be embedded”. I wrote this based on the discussion at the start of the day as I felt it hadn’t been resolved and was a key part of the process.

Each of the groups were joined by one person from Space Unlimited (note taker).

Unfortunately there were no pupils in our group. In fact, most of the pupils ended up in the same group.

Our group talked a lot about how to build on and embed the process without Space Unlimited. There was talk about it being difficult to motivate teachers on the value of working with pupils in this way and having to give up their lunchtime or after school time to facilitate the pupil/teacher discussions. Workload was also discussed a lot.

I tried to bring the conversation back to outcomes for pupils and teachers and also (from a policy level) how this approach meets the outcomes of the Curriculum for Excellence. Although the teachers and guests in our group all agreed that enabling teachers and pupils to work together as equals was key, they were concerned again about the views of their colleagues. We did not resolve how this could be embedded.

After this session we returned to the larger group and one person from each group was invited to feedback their discussions.

I was really pleased to see that the pupils wanted to speak first and did so with great confidence.

The event ended with lunch and an opportunity to speak to the people involved. I spent this time with the group of pupils and two of the teachers. The group was extremely positive about their experience with Space Unlimited. The pupils all took the opportunity to talk to me with one telling me they were surprised someone outside of their school was also so interested in their story as well as their teachers.

“I’m surprised that someone other than my teacher would want to hear about what we are doing.” pupil.

This was a fun and engaging event and was really successful in quickly bringing everyone in the room to the same level of knowledge about the project – or at least to a level where the guests could happily engage with the participants. I really like the approach Space Unlimited took. In particular I like the large-scale visuals of their process and the quotes from participants and, of course, the opportunity to speak to everyone involved about their experience.