What does the Corporate Management Team at Falkirk Council think of our service designs?

We met with Falkirk Council’s Corporate Management Team to share details on each of the three service design proposals and learn about the actions arising from this work they intended to take.

Our audience included 10 members of the team who direct and oversee Council services:

    • Kenneth Lawrie (Chair and Council Chief Executive)
    • Bryan Smail (Chief Finance Officer)
    • Colin Moodie (Chief Governance Officer)
    • Douglas Duff (Interim Director Development Services)
    • Karen Algie (Head of People, Technology and Transformation)
    • Kenny Gillespie (Head of Housing and Communities)
    • Maureen Campbell (Chief Executive, Falkirk Community Trust)
    • Patricia Cassidy (Chief Officer, Integrated Joint Board and Director, Health & Social Care Partnership)
    • Robert Naylor Director, Children’s Services – Social Work and Education)
    • Sara Lacey (Head of Children & Families and Justice Social Work Services and Chief Social Work Officer)

Over an hour of presentation time was dedicated to audience participation. This allowed for questions about the proposals and for the Co-Design Crew to pose questions to the audience. Feedback about the proposals was generally positive and a lively discussion ensued about how to best support the radical cultural change this work asks of the Council. This blog posts shares some of the feedback, parts of the discussion, and actions that were agreed.


Feedback

“How could we disagree with any of that really, it seems like what we should be doing if we’re honest… it seems like the service designs are all so connected, it’s a joint endeavour and it all fits together very neatly. We need to humanise the system and build a sense of safety and confidence so people feel and can be nurtured. Having the heart on sleeve behind that means we can help top up the mugs of our staff, some of the mugs are pretty empty after the year we’ve had, we need to slowly and meaningfully build this up over time… it’s hard to do because of busyness and pressures, but by taking time to build these relationships and build this network, it would bring so much strength to the organisation” (Kenneth Lawrie, Chair of the Corporate Management Team and Chief Executive of Falkirk Council)

 

“There are very basic true human values and truths at the heart of these proposals, they are hard to disagree with” (Colin Moodie, Chief Governance Officer)

 

“It takes a village to raise a child and we’re talking about community more than ever since COVID-19. We need as professionals to stop thinking with our job hats and take full advantage of our staff wanting to adopt this approach. There is great practice in Falkirk already, there are great placements already and employers who want to do this stuff and do more. We need to think more about how we engage with our communities” (Douglas Duff, Interim Director Development Services)

 

“These videos and presentations have been really powerful and interesting…so much for us all to think about! We need to ensure we keep the momentum going on this and get others involved too” (Karen Algie, Head of People, Technology and Transformation)

 

“Thank you all, these are tremendously uplifting films” (Robert Naylor Director, Children’s Services – Social Work and Education)

 

“What’s been achieved by this project has been nothing short of groundbreaking. You’ve taken Falkirk forward and I’m really proud of that” (Sara Lacey, Head of Children & Families and Justice Social Work Services and Chief Social Work Officer)

 

Discussion

At the outset of the presentation Evelyn Kennedy highlighted this work involves engaging in cultural change whilst also developing the workforce. She drew from The Promise, noting the Independent Care Review and the Co-Design Crew were asking Falkirk Council to support the

  • Creation of a culture where finding and maintaining safe, loving, respectful relationships is the norm’ and where,
  • The focus on protecting against harm shifts to involve protecting all safe, loving, respectful relationships.

There was general agreement about this direction. Conversation focused on thinking about how to best support this cultural change, observations were made about the complexity of operationalising some changes, and links were made to service and Council agendas.

 

How can we support this cultural change?

“I really like these proposals. One of the things that interested me, and I feel strongly about is permission. All big organisations can be bureaucratic, and people feel restricted as a result. As Chief Exec I’ve been open about that and one of the positives from COVID-19 is that people have just got on with things, done the right thing and sought less permission. That should be a good stepping-stone to create the culture of doing things now without permission. What more do we have to do to help people seek permission less?” (Kenneth Lawrie, Chair of the Corporate Management Team and Chief Executive of Falkirk Council)

 

“I agree, we need to break through some bureaucracy and be innovative, question is how we let people know they have permission to have relationships out with services; how do we help young people form these relationships and how do we support people maintain these relationships over time? How do we affect this as a cultural change rather than historically what we’ve always done?” (Robert Naylor Director, Children’s Services – Social Work and Education)

 

Charlotte from the Co-Design Crew highlighted a need for senior management to model being corporate parents, to provide examples and create a ripple effect. Kenneth replied that,

 

“As a leader, I’m always looking for the best ways to create ripples, people seem to be happier to have restrictions and boundaries; we need to think about how we can get around that. Permission, openness and nurture seems to be the right approach for not just Falkirk Council but in our communities and society”

 

Observations were made about the complexity of operationalising some changes

“A lot of this will relate to a highly regulated workforce, we’ll need to think about how this rubs up against of the nature of relationships that are anticipated by the regulator and professional requirements, and how we’d work those out”(Colin Moodie, Chief Governance Officer)

 

“How do we make sure that if there’s permission it turns into real activity? How can make sure staff feel safe and feel permission to take risks to humanise the system? How far can we go to give a real sense of permission while making sure staff feel safe and protected? I think this project work can help us take these next steps, a policy would give people a touch stone and language of permission, and because of The Promise, we’re probably in the best place possible to ask regulatory bodies for extra support” (Sara Lacey, Head of Children & Families and Justice Social Work Services and Chief Social Work Officer)

 

“I think as more people see this, as they see staff approaching this with mutually beneficial outcomes, they would feel safe, there are things we can definitely do, if we got the whole workforce in one go it could be diminished. We need to go slowly and embed the culture” (Robert Naylor Director, Children’s Services – Social Work and Education)

 

 

“If people are able to share more about their interests, these relationships develop naturally. Young workforce has less inhibitions about sharing and as we get older, we get more inhibitions. Thinking about the induction programme, we need to think about it the way you’ve presented it. Everyone here is bought in. We don’t want to inhibit the young workforce and put our inhibitions on them” (Maureen Campbell, Chief Executive of Falkirk Community Trust)

 

“What occurred to me was how we would ensure a collective overview of the range and types of relationships that would potentially be developed? How would we know if a young person was engaging with 2/4/8 employees? There could be regulations around how that would work but that’s not within the framework of the culture change we want to achieve…”(Robert Naylor Director, Children’s Services – Social Work and Education)

Making links to service and Council agendas

“We need to extend this thinking into communities. One of the group’s key messages is to learn from and with citizens. How would we share our corporate parenting messages with communities? How can our communities get involved and influence our work? There’s an untapped opportunity here” (Kenny Gillespie, Head of Housing and Communities)

 

“Things like sports club and Boys Brigade are at the heart of communities. There’s a disconnection with how we’re connecting with young people in these groups and with our young care leavers. These groups are not encumbered by policy and procedure. We need to understand our communities and our connections and build on them. Structures often inhibit us, we need to make things easier for older young people especially, it won’t cost us more and it needs a rethink” (Maureen Campbell, Chief Executive of Falkirk Community Trust)

 

Actions

“A swift action we could take would be to deepen and broaden an understanding of what corporate parenting is and embed a few simple messages… we also need an action plan with short, medium and longer term activities and we need to take collective ownership for it”(Sara Lacey, Head of Children & Families and Justice Social Work Services and Chief Social Work Officer)

 

“We have a good and pragmatic workforce, so we need to make sure they know why we’re doing this and how. We can use leadership forums to share our messages and use the videos as a leverage to get people involved… we also run inductions every quarter so every employee should have the opportunity to engage with this message and there is the scope for this to be built in” (Karen Algie, Head of People, Technology and Transformation)

 

“The most obvious things we can learn is to invite people to learn from a range of departments and services… learn from groups of people… Relationships First is a great example of where people are involved from all levels and there is no hierarchy involved”(Robert Naylor Director, Children’s Services – Social Work and Education)