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.

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.

Second workshop

The second workshop was held at the 3 Villages Community Hall in Arrochar (all the workshops will be held here – great venue!). We had a smaller turnout this week due to holidays and work commitments, but despite this, saw a mix of practitioners with different backgrounds and knowledge, as well as care leavers attend. In response to being asked the week before to give people an opportunity to get to know one another, we did round-the table introductions where people introduced themselves, shared a little bit about what they did at work, and a little bit about a personal interest not related to work. Lauren from Snook drew what she heard so you can see us all in the image below.

This session worked by using the tools and language we had been introduced to the week before, but this time they were applied to the Leaving Care service.

First activity

We broke up into two groups for the first activity; Chris, a Youth Worker from The Forum and The Debate Project, facilitated the session with care leavers, and Pamela from The Forum, facilitated the session with the practitioners. Different activities were planned for each group, and as I was only one in the care leavers group, Pamela from the Forum ha agreed to add a comment about what happened in the practitioners group. Everyone is welcome to add their recollections(!).

Care leavers group

The people in this group created a persona of a care leaver. A persona is a person made up using specific detail that the people in this group were able to draw on from their experience to create this persona.

We created Jemima Bairns, who was 16, lived in foster care, was pregnant and had been bullied at school, which led to her not doing so well in education. We decided that Jemima was a shy girl who was wary of people but had lots of friends. She identified more with adults than young people (as that is who she has most contact with), has support from her boyfriend (Jack) with the baby, likes to go out on a Friday night and tends to be too proud to ask for help.

We agreed that Jemima’s life felt hectic and that she feels lonely, scared, anxious, excited, stressed, lost, relieved, worried and, in blunt terms, that she was s***ing herself about moving on from her foster carers. We thought she might need some kind of maternity grant, moral support, support from throughcare, more staff around and have someone to hold her hand when leaving care. Other things we thought Jemima (as a care leaver) might not have that other young people have were, connections to other young people, connections to other young mums, not being able to return home after she had left, and was likely to face a riskier future.

By creating Jemima, we were able to talk about different care leavers experiences but focus upon Jemima. For the rest of the day, she became our reference when we were talking about this transition. However, she was also used to stimulate debate between both groups when the practitioners were invited to join our group and look at what had been created. The practitioners asked questions about what was written about Jemima, told us their own experiences of working with care leavers and pointed out things that were new to them. For example, one practitioner mentioned that she had never thought about the possibility that care leavers might be more comfortable talking to adults than young people of their own age.

Practitioners group

The practitioners were asked to do a similar thing to the care leavers. Pamela will post a comment at the bottom of this email to explain this part of the process.

These are photographs to show what was created during their conversation.

Second activity

When the first activity had come to a close, we all got together to deepen Jemima’s life story by mapping it along the lines of a journey. We as a group had already decided upon some of the things that had happened in her life, so this part of the workshop was used to flesh out which services she came into contact with and how the contact was made, supported her (or did not), and was delivered.

I think this activity allowed for a lot of knowledge sharing between everyone in the room. We were able to explore the ways in which services linked to care leavers, if that contact was facilitated by a worker, or if was expected that care leavers should make contact with certain services themselves.

We also learned about the different systems services use to provide support to care leavers, where and when the service starts and stops providing that support. Some healthy debate was had around why these systems were used, and, if and how that could change. One practitioner acknowledged that some elements of their database system could be changed to ensure care leavers stay on their database for longer.

We only got half way though the journey map as the discussion was so lively, and the problems and ideas that people encountered compelled them to share their perspective with others. You can see what we completed in this session below.

During the discussion, Snook wrote up the insights they had into the situation, noted down some of the problems that were arising, and opportunities they saw for change.

Debate and discussion

I think it’s fair to say there was quite a lot of sharing of perspectives and learning going on about the different systems that services use to support care leavers. One of the things that really stood out for me was when one of the practitioners shared the collective fact (after the first activity) that on reflection most of the practitioners didn’t feel they’d managed to ‘get their lives sorted’ until they were about 25-30 years old. It was noted that at the moment we are asking care leavers to establish themselves and their lives between the ages of 16-21.

Another reflection from practitioners was that they had not realised that young people may feel better able to speak to adults rather than young people of their own age, as they have so much contact with adults.

As might have been expected, changes in policy and better resources were spoken about by participants: the age of leaving care needs to be higher, accommodation resources that create a step change to living independently need to be established, and being able to return to care when needs be (as other young people are able to do) was highlighted.

So next week we are working towards finishing the map and thinking of ideas that can respond to some of the problems highlighted in the map.

(All photographs are courtesy of Snook on this post)

First workshop

Location

The first workshop was held at the 3 Villages town hall in the beautiful setting of Arrochar. Argyll and Bute local authority covers a large geographical area, spanning the islands of Coll, Tiree, Mull, Islay and Jura, as well as the mainland town from Campbeltown in the south to Oban in the North. Arrochar is somewhere in the middle of the west of the region and we were really pleased that people were able to make it from all the different areas.

People

The first workshop had a great turnout – 4 young people and 12 workers/managers from services such as throughcare and aftercare, social work, social care, education, health and housing, and from both the public and voluntary sectors.

What we did

The session lasted for 3 hours. We split into two groups and were introduced to a lot of thinking about designing services and new ways of working.

Firstly, we were able to explore what prototyping was and (although I can only speak for my group), discovered that is is just a word for doing things differently from the way we normally do things so we can test it out. So for example, a woman in my group spoke about using a ham haugh in her soup instead of a stock cube (which she didn’t think was successful, and won’t be doing again). Another woman spoke about trying out new outfits for a wedding – which I am happy to say was a success!

We also discussed what we feel like when we prototype. Thoughts (from my group again) can be seen in the photo below.

Then everyone had a go at prototyping by choosing two objects from a selection and figuring out what kind of services we could provide using those two objects as inspiration. Everyone then shared their ideas and we voted to choose an idea that each group could work on.

This was when we were introduced to the idea of blueprinting a service, which involves telling a story about a service through the eyes of someone using a service. This is assisted by breaking the service down into stages and exploring how a person feels at each stage. We took each idea and told the story of someone using this new service, made notes about this person’s experience and placed them on a large sheet of paper, which broke the experience for a person down into stages (see below for an example).

Working through this with everyone aimed to share a process of working together that explores and works-up new services for people. These methods of working are going to be used again in future sessions but will be more relevant to leaving care services (rather than being conceptual about how people can design services together). This first workshop seems to have given everyone an experience of how to use these ways of working together for future sessions.

What people thought of the workshop

At the end of the session we asked everyone involved to provide feedback – what was good and not so good about the workshop, and what we could do better next time.

Some of the things that people found good about this session included: the group interaction, that it made people think, created a relaxed atmosphere where everyone contributed and were able to come up with creative ideas, and that it created the opportunity to meet new people. It was also considered lively, interactive and interesting, and participants enjoyed the challenge of speaking in front of people. They also liked the idea of designing a service, and thought it was a creative way of explaining the process we will be working through in future workshops.

Some of the more negative comments included: not enough time for introductions, the acoustics in the room made it hard to hear and was distracting, and there was too much sitting around and too much listening. These are issues that will be addressed in the next session. Including more breaks, being more active, encouraging everyone to get hold of the camera/video camera to take their own photos/videos, and having plenty of fizzy juice (!) are also on the next agenda!

Reflections on the workshop

These are my reflections and I’d like to encourage others to add their own, as well as share their point of view about the process we all experienced.

From my perspective, the people that came together to work with us on this project don’t often get the chance to work together practically. They mostly work in a consultative form with each other and/or young people. This project works differently in that everyone is in the same place at the same time to create something together. This brings with it challenges as well as opportunities. Working together is not as easy as doing something on your own, so the group dynamic and relationships are really important to focus on. However, there is also a real desire from the people who are involved in the project to try this process out and create something that will benefit young people.

Following on from that point, the opportunity that comes from working together is that having so much knowledge in the room, be it experiential, service or process related, means that there are many possibilities, lots of perspectives and boundless ideas that we can think about and work through together. An aim of this process is to flatten any knowledge hierarchies so that everyone’s ideas – because they are coming from people with experience of providing or receiving leaving care services – are just as valuable in identifying ideas and coming up with ways of responding to people’s experiences.

All comments are welcome,

Gayle