6th workshop

Start of the day

This workshop followed quite a similar format to workshop 5. Everyone got together at the start of the day and fed back what they had learnt about their idea in the intervening week. They also discussed and what they would be working on in their group.

Some of the groups had been able to meet with young people who were/had left care, others had not so the feedback was mixed in terms of being useful when taking the ideas forward to respond to care leavers needs.

Working in groups

After this everyone started to work in their groups, developing the idea, making changes and having new ideas.

Evaluation of ideas

Each of the groups were also asked to fill in sheets that related to evaluating the development of their idea so far in order to reflect and track this information.

They were also asked to consider how they would evaluate their idea in the future as well as discuss barriers they might experience in the ideas development and how these could be addresses.

Pitching the ideas

To finish the day (and to round up the last workshop) a ‘Dragon’s Den’ was created where each group had to pitch their ideas to the Dragons, explain why it responded to care leavers social and emotional needs, and explain how it was going to be developed. This was a way of sharing the work that had been completed that day with the rest of the group, and also a fun way of rounding off the session that placed care leavers voices about the quality of the ideas and hope for their development at the fore. Unfortunately we only had 1 Dragon that was a care leaver, so three was a a lot of pressure to provide thoughts on each of the pitches but the feedback was welcomed by each group.

What next..?

At the end of the session we all had a chat about how the people that were involved would like to continue to take the ideas forward and to work together on their development. Some people wanted to continue to work in the same format but meet less frequently and ensure care leavers were more involved, others were keen to use the more traditional format of a working group at which care leavers are represented. After discussion the group decided to work in the traditional format.

5th workshop

Start of the day

To start the day we all start together and shared what had happened after we had taken the mocked up version of our ideas out of the room and tested them with care leavers. Someone from each of the 4 idea groups was asked to feedback on what had happened in the last two weeks using the mocked up idea, how this made them feel and what they thought they needed to get out of todays’ session to move the idea forward. The group at this stage supported one another with support, advice and suggestions.

Unfortunately no young people were able to make this session so feedback and discussion (although useful) greatly missed their voices. This also had an impact on the rest of the day as practitioners were not so keen (rightly so) to develop the ideas without care leavers feedback and perspective.

Catch up on the ideas

Talk Talk (formally known as ‘Proactive not Reactive’ and ‘Link’)

This team was lead by a Service Manager so the testing involved one staff member from each of the 6 area teams identifying care leavers who had used/were using their service. They had arranged to call them once that week and see how they were going in their new place. Each time someone phoned they had managed to speak to a young person.

The Service Manager felt he had had a positive response from service staff around the idea and said no issues had been raised by young people they had spoken to on the phone. On reflection he thought care leavers may speak to through a Throughcare and Aftercare worker if they did have any issues. Other comments from people in the room were that just talking to a young person is good enough, and should not be undervalued, whether they had something to say or seem to appreciate it should not matter too much.

Some things to note about this idea from the testing were that it was felt the success of the communication would depend on the young person and what stage they were at in their life. However it was noted this was just the beginning of the testing phase and through it was a useful idea both to keep lines of communication open with care leavers so that they don’t feel isolated and well as help to develop the service using their feedback.

Lots of ideas were given to this team by people round the table around taking the approach and other services developing it too, however there was some concern that each care leaver may be flooded with calls which some people thought might not be necessary, however others thought that even if a young person does not pick up at least they know you have called and through about them that day.

My Family Pack

A Throughcare and Aftercare worker spoke about the Family Pack. She said that she had worked with one young person from the project on the pack, and shown it to other care leavers to get their feedback too. She had found this difficult as care leavers are located all over Argyle and Bute and she was disappointed she had not been able to develop the pack further in the past two weeks.

She said she was disappointed with the feedback she had received. Most young people had said that they thought they had outgrown doing this kind of work with their Throughcare workers and that he/she would already know a lot of the things covered in the pack, so they found it rather repetitive. However interestingly when the pack was shown to residential workers they seems to think it would have a place in children’s homes to support young people to think about contact with their families when they are first taken into care. Also one care leaver on the project had mentioned to a residential worker where she lived that the pack she was working on would help her get the access she wanted with her family.

I found the feedback from testing this idea interesting as it was one of the most popular ideas in the workshop, so goes to show the important the of testing an idea quickly is before it is developed further.

The feedback received about this ideas may also be due to the fact that Argyle and Bute have 2 Throughcare and Aftercare workers for the region. Therefore it may be understandable that workers may already know this information. This may not be the case in other regions of Scotland where young people can have several Throughcare and Aftercare workers due to local authority boundary changes, restructuring and staff turnover.

Where is my free internet

This group were unable to test the idea out with any care leavers but did speak to a number of young people. One member of the group mentioned that she had found it hard to bring up the idea in conversation or ‘tag it onto the end of a conversation’ they were having in relation to the service she was providing.

Some of the feedback was that service staffs seemed to think this was a good idea more than young people, and it seemed to be a tool that could be used once (as the towns in Argyle and Bute are relatively small), so once internet resources had been identified the tool may not be used again.

However what seemed to happedn (possibly as a result to fthis) was that other resources were included in the map, such as a the community centre and library. It was also used to ask young people to make their own networks with in the towns.

This groups felt quite disappointed that their idea had not taken off once it left the workshop space, but saw opportunities to learn from the ‘mistakes’ or assumptions they had been engaging with, and were pleased they had more time to develop it more.

Digital Pathways

This group seemed to take a more traditional approach to developing the idea with more research and connecting into the working groups that are established in Argyle and Bute to develop ideas. They had been working by email in the last two weeks to create a pitch for their idea, planning a testing site for the work and identifying possible funding streams.

Working on ideas

So afte the fedback session everyone broke up to work in their groups.

Developing Talk Talk

Developing the Friends and Family Pack

Developing ‘Where is my free internet?’

Developing Digital Pathways

Tasks

Whilst working on developing their ideas and getting them ready for the next two weeks of testing each of the groups were asked several questions, the answers to which they would be able to use to tell someone outside of the workshop about their ideas and why they were developing them. The questions were:

Describe your new product/service
How does it relate to the social and emotional needs of care leavers
How is your product or service different from what already exists
What are the three main barriers to the implementation of your product/service across Scotland?
How could you bets introduce your new product/service to your colleagues?

Finally each group was asked to start thinking about evaluating their idea sand it’s development. To do this they were given a sheet of paper with four columns which they were asked to answer the questions – I want to understand…, The way I will I do this…, Explain what success looks like in week one…, Explain what success looks like in week two…

Thanks go to Snook for the photography

Fourth workshop

The fourth workshop was all about developing the winning ideas. We voted on the ideas we liked by placing sticky dots (two dots each) on our favourites. The top four ideas were:

Where is my free internet?
Electronic Pathways
Family and Friends Pack
Proactive not reactive

(see the last blog post for an explanation of each of these ideas)

We then talked as a group about why we had voted on each of these ideas, and spilt into smaller groups that included people with energy around particular ideas, and would have the ability to take the ideas back into services to test.

Prototyping

Lots of Blue Peter style materials were made available for use. As there were two process-led ideas (‘Proactive not reactive’ and ‘Electronic Pathways’) and two product-led ideas (‘Where is my free internet?’ and ‘Family and Friends Pack’), the materials were used in different ways by different groups.

There was lots of doing and making this week so most of the pictures should speak for themselves. Anyone from the groups that wants to share what they were doing please add a comment.

Where is my free internet?

This group developed a map that could be given to care leavers in different localities to tell them where free internet access is. These are some of the first prototypes of the idea.

This prototype is going to be floated in front of young people to see if they like the idea and figure out if they would engage with it.

Electronic Pathways

This group created a plan to introduce an electronic version of Pathways in Argyl and Bute and considered how a USB may be the best way to do this in an electronic format. They are contacting the people that need to give them permission to take this idea forward and bring together a working group to pilot it after the project is completed.

Family and Friends Pack

This group created all the items that would be in the Family and Friends pack, considered how a worker and young person would use the pack, the kind of conversations they wanted it to stimulate, and how this would enable care leavers to be provided with monetary support to make journeys to visit friends and family. The prototype is being shown to a young person who has to travel to visit his friends and family to get feedback on the idea and the prototype.

Proactive not reactive (now called ‘Link’)

This group created a script that would enable them to test out whether young people would like services to be more proactive and are using the script to phone young people who are receiving support at the moment to figure out how this would be integrated into their service.

Feedback

All the groups then fed back what they had created to one another and discussed how they were taking the prototype forward in the two weeks until they meet again. Some groups were able to think about the success of this prototype, what it would look like and how they would evaluate it. There will be more posted on that and the feedback and development of the prototypes in the next post.

Thanks again to Snook who took most of these photographs.

Ideas

So – as promised following the last post – here is a round up of the ideas we came up with. In no particular order…

Computers for Care Leavers

This idea arose out of other ideas which were hinged apon young people having access to the internet. When discussing these ideas a common cry was – “But care leavers don’t usually have access to the internet, in residential homes or after they leave care”. When this was explored further we identified that young people do tend to have access to the internet using their mobile phones (generally not smart phones), which they commonly use for social networking. Having a computer was seen as an opportunity to use the internet in different ways, for example looking up what they could do in the new area they moved too, for jobs, college courses, working on their CV or as a social networking tool to keep in contact with friends and family.

So how do you connect care leavers with a computer? FreeShare were presented as an option, where people give away a whole nature of different items including computers. I think the idea was to link up the people who provide resources to care leavers to FreeShare, who in turn could connect freec omputers with those who need one. There is also an organisation in the UK dedicated to getting people online which could be partnered with to specifically support care leavers access the internet.

Inevitably when it comes to technology and the internet people talk about care leavers privacy and safety online. However the young people immediately countered this perspective by saying they are online on their mobiles, why is this any different, and why should their access to the internet be any different from any other young person who has moved away from home?

For more information about making the internet more accessible to young people in and leaving care please see:

Shirley Ayr, social care consultant’s, experience of supporting councils embrace social media in the UK.
DR. Danah Boyd, researcher at Microsoft’s, persepctive of what adults have done with information they did not previously have access too.
Research into all manner of technology use in social care systems – specifically page 5 – Child Welfare in the Networked Society.
Ways that child saftey can be enhanced online.

And in general:

Where is my free internet?

Following on from this idea, the discussion centered around how care leavers would access the internet in other ways (if they did not have a computer at home). Thinking about a young person who may leave care and be placed in a location they have not previously lived, this idea reviewed all the possible places people can access the for free.

Electronic Pathways

This idea, also to do with technology, wanted to look at ways in which Pathways (the process and folder of forms that assist workers and young people to plan their leaving care package) could move away from a paper based form and become electronic. The rational behind this idea was that after a young person has written and signed the forms in Pathways everything feels very final and “set in stone”. Life is more flexible than that and young people’s aims, ambitions and life circumstances are likely to change. An electronic version that could be updated and shared between a young person and their worker was presented as an idea to change the current process. People also felt it would be more empowering for young people to have electronic access to this file rather then have their worker keep it or a copy of it.

Family and Friends Pack

One of the experiences a young person on the project shared with us was being from one town in Argyll and Bute (where his family live), living in a residential school in a town in another Local Authority (130 miles away from his home town and where his friends and workers live), and moving to a different town after leaving the residential school (90 miles from his home town and 35 miles from his residential school). As this young person has £50 a week to spend as he likes it is not enough to cover travel to visit friends and family. Even though this is something a Leaving Care team are likely to provide it seems young people are not aware they can ask for help to visit friends and family and it is not prompted in any materials care leavers receive.

The Friends and Family pack idea is a resource that young people and their workers would be able to use together to plan and incorporate keeping in touch with friends and family into the their leaving care plan.

My Money

This idea arose out of the conversations young people were having naturally. There was a lot of discussion around what kind of support they were getting, realising they could access other types of support and discussing how they were supposed to live on £50 per week. Some of the young people in the group were aware of the Local Authorities criteria scale in terms of provision to care levers and an animated discussion arose about what kind of support you would want if you knew what was available. My Money was a way of making that information more transparent and encouraging care leavers to personalise the support they were provided. This made me think about the personalisation/self-directed support agenda for adults who use services – interesting to see link to how young people are thinking care packages could be provided.

Online Diary

This idea didn’t really get fleshed out too much in the workshop (please someone correct me if I am wrong) but we had a discussion around when you update your status on Facebook it gives an idea of how you are feeling and what you are doing or interested in finding out about. Being able to see this kind of information could instigate connecting up with young people in ways that surpass the need to speak to them because of functional matters.

We never got down to the nitty gritty about how this would work, there are obviously complex issues around access, privacy and what someone does with the information posted on a Facebook. However it is interesting to note it is a medium we use every day to support and share our social and emotional needs and concerns, and there is nothing like this used by services at the moment. One of Dana Boyds’s thought provoking posts about using Facebook with young people give food for thought as to how this communication medium could support relationships.

Design your own Pathways

Pathways is the process and folder of forms that assist workers and young people to plan their leaving care package. Most local authorities in Scotland have adapted these materials to suit their locality and to enable young people to engage withe process/materials better. This idea was about taking Pathways for Argyll and Bute and making it relevant to different ages, similar to the GIRFEC agenda which aim to work towards a child centred approach.

Proactive not reactive

I think this idea came from a conversation that happened in workshop 2 but carried on through the other workshops. The conversation was about the fact that most services engage with young people to provide health/housing/educational support. Once a young person is deemed to have successfully been provided that support they are generally removed from a case load on the service database, meaning the service provider does not tend to get back in touch with them unless their is a problem (i.e. they lose their house, become unemployed or become unwell).

In thinking about service provision from an emotional and social perspective, people recognised that a) once you have reached a positive destination, i.e. got your own house or started a job, things can change, and b) care leavers may not necessarily have support from family/friends in these areas to support positive growth. This idea therefore came about by thinking what could services do to support this situation that doesn’t currently map onto their service process? The idea is that instead of letting care leavers “drop off’ their case management systems after they have reached their positive destination, the service will check back in with them to see how their house/job/health is going. This aimed to pre-empt any changes to that positive destination by offering assistance. Even if this assistance is not required, it would remind the young person that someone is thinking about their needs and is there for them to help should they need it.

Success stories – share them!

Some young people in the workshops felt that there was always a negative portrayal of care leavers built up in the press or in peoples minds. They felt that this did not set aspirations high for the young people i.e. they may think that success after leaving care is not possible. This idea was to share success stories so aspirations were raised and others were able to see a ‘route’ into the future after care.

Support.com

This was an idea two of the young people who attend the workshops have been working on with Argyll and Bute council and wanted to push forwards. SUPPORT is an acronym (I’m afraid I can’t remember what it stands for but will post it in a comment) and is a website that aims to enable other young people in care to see what life is/was like for them. Similar to Success Stories idea but also including advice and information online.

Throughcare Worker support

Contrary to what the title of this idea might suggest this idea is about supporting other workers who come into contact with care leaver but don’t necessarily work with them. The idea was to provide these workers with more information about care leavers so they are better equipped to respond to their needs. There is a Linkedin group for professionals working with vulnerable children and young people, which shares good practice and is a space to discuss problems. It is run by Shirley Ayres, a social care consultant, and may be of assistance to those who are intersted in this idea.

Why work at the weekends

There was quite a lot of discussion around this idea. It revolved around encouraging young people in care to get weekend work so they could experience earning and dealing with their own money. It would also give them some some work experience and skills before they leave care to add to their CV and help them think about what kind of job they would/would not like to do. This is a process lots of young people who are not in care go through when they are growing up and not having this experience seemed to lead people to the conclusion that it disadvantaged young people in care. From a social and emotional perspective this was considered a good way to build up confidence and a different circle of friends and acquaintances too.

What being an adult means…

There were two sides to this idea. One was that it would be a good conversation to have to dispel the myth that once you leave home/care that you have become and adult and you can do everything on your own. This was something that came up in workshop 2 amongst the practitioners who shared their leaving home journey and reflected upon their route to living independently. They considered the amount of times they lived back at home/borrowed money/change college course, and the people they relied upon until they “got on their feet” between the ages of 25 – 30. Simply acknowledging this journey, that it is not all plain sailing and involves assistance was considered a healthy conversation. Also considering what being an adult means to different young people and workers was also thought to be valuable to know.

The other side of this idea was considering what an adult means in comparison to what a being a young person means and how service work with adults compared to young people, i.e. taking greater responsibility and understanding consequences of decisions better.

Where is the ‘me’ in meeting?

This idea was also in response to a young person experience, where she was told two housing options that were open to her when she left care but didn’t feel part of that process of choosing or deciding upon why these two options were right for her. Discussions were had around why she didn’t feel she had been part of the meeting when workers felt that she had been, and it lead to conversation around processes, inclusion and how to approach decision making collaboratively.

Round up of the ideas

There are a great variety of ideas here which there was a lot of energy around. Most of them are either ideas for processes or products. There were also ideas that people would like to change about the system, i..e leaving care at 18 or 21 and being able to go back to the place of care you left (should you need to) – and even through the scope of this project does not extend to these ideas does not mean they should be forgotten about.

Third workshop

Well today was all about ideas!!!!

We started off by introducing ourselves as there were some newcomers – they were included in our ‘who and where’ diagram. We then continued to work on the journey map that we started last week. I think it is fair to say it took a while to get back into this activity and provide feedback, however the discussion certainly warmed up by the end of the workshop, with ideas flying about thick and fast.

The outcome of the map was that several ideas and problems were identified and posted on post-it-notes. We split up into two rooms – care leavers in one and practitioners in another – and each person was invited to take two post-it notes – one idea note and one problem note back to their group (the picture below wasn’t the post-it-notes we used, everyone was too quick off the mark to take them off the wall so I didn’t get a photograph in time, but hopefully provides an idea of the process). We then discussed in our groups how we could respond to the problems we had chosen.

Care leavers group

In our group, it was hard to talk about ideas because we were constantly talking about problems. I think this is a natural thing to do as everyone seems to experience quite a few problems and has energy around discussing their effects. Smaller groups were a good place to find out about what those experiences had been. We had to remember to get past talking about problems and thinking about what we could do to respond to those problems – how would we like it to be instead so we were able to explore our ideas.

Our group didn’t really follow the post-it-notes we had taken off the wall. We used them to start a new conversation after we felt one idea had been worked up, but generally we were able to identify enough problems by just talking about experiences.

One of the main topics of conversation was around money – how much people got for working, to live off, how to pay bills, how to travel to see friends and family after being placed miles away from where they live, and how to access or earn more money. This was interesting for me because the project is focused around social and emotional needs, but it seemed that for the young people, knowing about and having money was really important as it dominated the conversation. As a result, a couple of our ideas looked at how we could make information about money more readily available, what kind of information this might be, and how care leavers would access or find it.

That is just a snapshot of one of the ideas, I’m not going to share any of the others as we are yet to share them with the rest of the group. Next blog post will reveal all!

Practitioners group

Similar to last week, I am only able to talk about one group as I wasn’t in the other. Pamela from the Forum has kindly agreed to add a comment to this post to share what happened in the practitioners group.

Sharing our ideas

As we had worked in groups, we reconvened to share our ideas. The practitioners presented their ideas to the young people who were able to comment on them, and the discussion led to a fleshing out of each idea from a concept to how it could work in practice, as well as things the young people would change about the idea and how these changes could become part of existing services.

A really interesting discussion was held around the inclusion of young people in conversations that involve decision-making about their lives, more information being shared between practitioners who do not work with care leavers on a regular basis, and services being more proactive about keeping in contact with care leavers.

Summary

There was some really interesting debate and perspectives which the group was actively involved in and willing to share. Not everyone agreed on all points, so there was a lot of discussion around the ideas, their possibilities and potential. I was really pleased with the honesty and willingness of people to share their thoughts and am looking forward to the progression of these ideas next week.