After our group formed, we quickly got to work! The first step was to collectively articulate what Humanising the System seeks to design for. After a lot of discussion we agreed on ‘Creating a relationship-centred culture, providing the right resources, support and education that endables care-experienced people to grow and thrive. A system that works.’ That gave us something to anchor to as we moved on to the next step: preparing for qualitative research interviews.
Gaining insight
Preparing for interviews meant we needed to come up with questions that would help us further understand barriers Falkirk Council staff have to the Humanising the System design targets (creating a relationship-centered culture and providing the right resources, support and education that enables care-experienced people to grow and thrive.) Getting to grips with the right questions would guide us in deciding who we wanted to interview and why. During a lovely Saturday morning together at Marie’s house (thank you, Marie!) we created our discussion guide and a plan for outreach to people we wanted to interview.
Members of Humanising the System spent time carrying out 6 in-depth interviews with 4 Social Workers and 2 teachers. Team members planned outreach to staff to take part in interviews based on their personal networks and who they thought would already have a good understanding of what Corporate Parenting is. When someone agreed to take part in an interview, team members provided them with an information sheet about Relationships First alongside a consent form, which had to be signed or verbally agreed to before conducting interviews.
Each interview was printed out so we could collectively pull out patterns, quotes and ideas from interview transcripts. We agreed a colour coding system and set ourselves away with highlighters!
