Frequently Asked Questions
Jargon Buster
Care Leaver
The broad definition of a care leaver is any adult who spent time in care as a child (under the age of 18). Such care could be in foster care, residential care (mainly children’s homes), or other arrangements outside the immediate or extended family. The care could have been provided directly by the state (mainly through local authority social services departments) or by the voluntary or private sector (e.g. Barnardo’s, Aberlour, Semab and many others).
Care Experienced
The term ‘care experienced’ refers to anyone who has been, or is currently in care. This care may have been provided in many different settings, such as:
- Kinship care – living with a relative who is not your mum or dad.
- Looked after at home – with the help of social work.
- Residential care – living in a residential unit or school.
- Foster care – living with foster carers.
- Secure care – living in a secure unit.
- Adoption
Care System
The care system is a group of people and organisations which seek to care and support children and young people who are and have been cared for by the state.
Co-Design
Collaborative Design is when people who use services are involved as equal partners in the design and planning of services with the idea that this will ultimately lead to improvements and innovation. It is also known as generative design, co-creation, participatory design or co-operative design.
Quite often words describing co-production are mixed up with words describing co-design. The ladder of co-production seeks to make a clear distinction.
Co-production is when people who use services are involved as equal partners in designing the support and people using services, families and communities play an active role in shaping, implementing and delivering this support.
Co-Design Crew
Our Co-design Crew is made up of citizens between the ages of 16-26 who have experience of continuing and leaving care and a range of Corporate Parents from Falkirk Council, from Corporate and Neighbourhood Services, Development Services, the Community Trust and Children’s Services.
This Crew has a range of skills and interests, from coding and programming; caring for their dogs; rock climbing; teaching people to drive; photography; caring for family members; working as coaches; first aid trained; aspiring politicans; book lovers; adoptive parents; mothers and fathers; foster carers; hair stylists; scout leaders; amazing bakers… phew! The list is endless! What made them all suitable Crew members is they care about young people leaving care, understand the power of realtionships, recognise the strength in vulnerability, and are willing to learn together.
The purpose of the Co-Design Crew is to:
1) Use their research findings to catalyse new ideas
2) Build on their key ideas and prototype them so they can be communicated to get immediate feedback
3) Develop these ideas by testing them and figuring out their feasibility
Members role’s involves being a: systems leader; asking curious questions; active listening; participatory research; sensemaking; prototyping and testing.
Co-ordination Crew
Our Co-ordiantion Crew is made up of staff from Falkirk Council and from the social research and design organisation Designed by Society.
The Co-Design Crew purpose is to have a:
1) Strategic oversight of the project
2) Carve out a path to enable the project
3) Reconnect to the project and stay on track
4) Build a picture of the work as we go to report to the Life Changes Trust and Falkirk Council
The role of members is to be: systems leaders; enablers; supporters; connecters; facilitaters; safeguarders and sensemakers.
Corporate Parent
Corporate Parents are the public bodies named in law as having responsibilities to young people who are looked after and care experienced. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 says that 24 public bodies have a responsibility to understand the lives of Scotland’s looked after young people and respond to their needs as any parent should.
Interdependent
Human beings are intricately connected and interdependent. This is often undervalued as independence remains the stated end goal in preparing young people for leaving care.
Rather than suggesting that human beings are constantly dependent on others, interdependence conveys mutual support, reciprocity and a strong, reliable social network with a multitude of different connections.
Some of the connections may be temporary, some may have a strong and lasting impact, some might be considered positive and others problematic or even toxic. Irrespective of any attributes or judgments we may use to describe certain relationships, there can’t be any doubt they are part of each person’s the universe.
Learning Reviews
A Learning Review in this project is an independently commissioned learning and evaluation tool. The appreciative approach to the review creates space for learning, and an asset-based approach highlights strengths so these can be built on as the project develops. The learning review in this project also shares project challenges and tensions to support reflection and development.
Leaving Care
In Scotland, the average age for leaving care is between 16 and 18 years old, but the average age for leaving home is 25.
In the UK people are living with their parents for longer than they used to. In 2017, the first age at which more than 50% of young people had left the parental home was 23. Two decades earlier, more than 50% of 21-year-olds had already left home.
Leaving Care Service
Leaving Care services are services which coordinate and provide continuing care and aftercare services by working in partnership with care leavers and being suported by Corporate Parents.
Aftercare
Anyone who was looked after on or after their 16th birthday can access Aftercare services. Aftercare is for everyone, including if you have been looked after at home.
Aftercare means getting advice, guidance and assistance.
This guidance and support from your council can continue until your 19th birthday and can be accessed up to a young adults 26th birthday if needed.
If a young person receive Aftercare support that ended and they need it again it can be requested up until their 26th birthday.
Council’s may continue to provide support when a young person is over 26 if they think it is needed, but they don’t legally have to.
Continuing Care
Young people have the right to Continuing Care if they were:
- born on or after April 1 1999, and
- last looked after away from home, such as in kinship, foster or residential care.
This means they have the right to stay in their care placement up to their 21st birthday. This is to help them have – at a pace that suits them – a more supported move from care to living more independently.
If a young person accesses Continuing Care they must officially stop being looked after. For example, they would need to end your supervision order.
Outcomes
Outcomes in this project are the impact or end results on people who have enaged with this work.
Outputs
Outputs in this project are the tangible products that are delivered by conducting this work.
Participation (generally)
There are many different types of participation and levels of engagement.
Participation with young people
The most commonly referenced participative model when adults and children/young people work together is Harts Ladder from UNICEF.
Service Design
We are engaged in a community lead service design project where the community is people who have experience of leaving care in Falkirk and Corporate parents from Falkirk Council. Together they are applying service design principles and practices which include:
- We explore and define the problem before we design the solution.
- We design service journeys around people and not around how the public sector is organised.
- We seek citizen participation in our projects from day one.
- We use inclusive and accessible research and design methods so citizens can participate fully and meaningfully.
- We use the core set of tools and methods of the Scottish Approach to Service Design.
- We share and reuse user research insights, service patterns, and components wherever possible.
- We contribute to continually building the Scottish Approach to Service Design methods, tools, and community.
Systems Leadership
Systems Leadership is a way of working that shares the burden of leadership to achieve large-scale change across communities. It goes beyond organisational boundaries and extends across staff at all levels, professions and sectors. It involves people using services, and carers, in the design and delivery of those services.
Systems Leadership recognises that leadership is not vested in people solely through their authority or position; so it involves sharing leadership with others, coming together on the basis of a shared ambition and working together towards solutions.
This way of leading involves six dimentions:
- Ways of feeling– about strong personal values
- Ways of perceiving– about listening observing and understanding
- Ways of thinking– about intellectual rigour in analysis and synthesis
- Ways of relating– the conditions that enable and support others
- Ways of doing– behaving in ways that lead to change
- Ways of being– personal qualities that support distributed leadership
Project Information
Aim
Enable young people who have left care and members of the workforce from Falkirk Council to design leaving care services that privilege love and place relationships at the heart of service provision.
Focus
Workforce Development
The idea being, if members of the workforce are better supported to maintain nurturing relationships with young people as they leave care then this will better support positive transitions for young people into adulthood.
Objectives
1. Co-design Leaving Care services in Falkirk with care experienced young people and representatives of relevant sections of the workforce so that love and relationships are at the heart of service provision.
2. Create opportunities for young people with care experience and a range of children’s and adults service providers to learn about Service Design and Systems leadership together and be supported to create their own Co-Design Crew.
3. Deliver 6 to 7 service design projects in Falkirk, focussing on improving Leaving Care services by privileging relationships.
4. Implement several service designs that respond to young people’s relational needs and have been created in response to gaps in the existing system.
5. Provide young people and members of the workforce with the opportunity to develop a replicable service design practice so they can continue to work this way past the life of this project and take these transferable skills to other services and workplaces.
6. Enable Falkirk Council staff to experience a participatory practice that is new to this context so they can evolve the way they design and develop leaving care provision.
Mindset
We are working collectivley to:
- Share concern with improving outcomes for care leavers
- Be curious
- Be open
- Appreciate complexity and diversity
- Mix traditional learning and exposure to a diversity
of ideas and experiences.
This mindset is played out by reflecting on the professional style each person engages in rather than a set of technical competencies a person ‘achieves’.
Approach
We are working in a way that shares the burden of leadership to achieve large-scale change across communities. It goes beyond organisational boundaries and extends across staff at all levels, professions and sectors. It involves people using services, and carers, in the design and delivery of those services.
Systems Leadership recognises that leadership is not vested in people solely through their authority or position; so it involves sharing leadership with others, coming together on the basis of a shared ambition and working together towards solutions.
This way of leading involves six dimentions:
- Ways of feeling– about strong personal values
- Ways of perceiving– about listening observing and understanding
- Ways of thinking– about intellectual rigour in analysis and synthesis
- Ways of relating– the conditions that enable and support others
- Ways of doing– behaving in ways that lead to change
- Ways of being– personal qualities that support distributed leadership
Principles
This project aligns with the service deisgn principles shared by the Scottish Governement. They include:
- We explore and define the problem before we design the solution.
- We design service journeys around people and not around how the public sector is organised.
- We seek citizen participation in our projects from day one.
- We use inclusive and accessible research and design methods so citizens can participate fully and meaningfully.
- We use the core set of tools and methods of the Scottish Approach to Service Design.
- We share and reuse user research insights, service patterns, and components wherever possible.
- We contribute to continually building the Scottish Approach to Service Design methods, tools, and community.
Theory of Change
Our theory of change (ToC) describes and illustrates how and why we think desired changes will happen on this project.
It links what we are doing (activities or interventions) to our desired goals, so we can identify all the conditions (outcomes) that need to be in place for the goals to occur.
Some aspects of our theory of change are assumed, as this is a participatory project and we don’t know what participants will highlight and identify. These assumptions have ben inserted in our ToC to support our current understanding. As participants identify contextually relevant findings these assumptions will likely change, shape this work and the impact it will have.
Theory of Change v1
Theory of Change v2
Governance
This project sits under the Transformational Enabler Worksteram of Falkirk Council of the Future Governance structure.
The project is also a sub-worksteam of Falkirk Council Champions Board.
Funder
The Life Changes Trust is an independent charity with a vision that all care experienced young people and people affected by dementia in Scotland see a positive and permanent shift in their quality of life, well-being, empowerment and inclusion.
The Life Changes Trust’s Programme Strategy for Care Experienced Young People for 2014-2023 has five mutually supportive priorities. These priorities are based on the views and priorities of care experienced young people. Workforce Development is a theme under Priority 3 of the Programme, and has a focus on strengthening the knowledge and skills of the paid and voluntary workforce so that they are more able to meet the needs and aspirations of care experienced young people.
The specific aims of the funding are to:
1. Support the paid and voluntary workforce to put love and relationships at the heart of the care system.
2. Build a sense of shared purpose and understanding between care experienced young people and the adults who support them.
Interpretation of important words
Love
‘Love’ can be a confusing word. We use it to describe how we feel about people, animals, food, objects, activities, nature, actions and behaviours – a whole range of things!
“I love my rabbit”
“I love spaghetti”
“I love tennis”
“I love mountains”
“I gave this to her because I love her”
“I love him”
And it’s not always easy to understand the varying degrees of feeling we may attribute to what we’re talking about.
Society can also be subtly highly prescriptive about love. That to love someone means we are in a romantic and sexual relationship.
In this project love is an attitude and a behaviour. A parental attitude that says ‘I chose to look out for your interests like I would my own child’ and behaviours which show this.
Relational based practice
There are lots of ways people define what ‘relational based practice’ means. Professor Gillian Ruch (who teaches and researches relationship-based and reflective practice at the University of Sussex) suggests,
“There is no ‘one way’ of ‘doing’ relational based practice… at it’s best [this way of working] offers people… a supportive and understanding relationship which will enable them to resolve difficulties and to feel enhanced rather than undermined in the process” (Ruch et al. 2010)
However, relationships as interventions are not only a medium, they also model a message that others may mirror. The message being that it is possible to deal with life’s crises, and positive human relationships are one of the ways to make this possible.
The Leaving Care Team at Falkirk Council work in a relational way and have taken time to describe their practice to people who may not have heard of this way of working before.
Relationships
Relationships are one of the mediums through which people make sense of themselves and their history. It is also one of the ways people plan and engage with learning and development.
Continuity in relationships can be key to know someone well enough that through your relationship you can support a persons development, their sense of self and belonging, and to support and celebrate their wellbeing and life changes.
Just like people interpret ‘love’ differently, the same can be said about how people describe ‘relationships’. And what do we mean by relationships anyway, relationships with yourself? With another person or animal? With an object, a place, or a time? It’s another movable feast!
To give us some structure, on this project we are starting to think about relationships as between two people, one being a person who works to deliver a public service and the other being a person who accesses a service, and we’ve started to use a model to help us think about relationships and how we can better enable them.
Vision
Our vision is for all services in Falkirk Council to be designed so corporate parents can care for care leavers like they would their own children.
How can we connect?
Contact Us
Dr Gayle Rice from Designed by Society and Evelyn Kennedy, Service Manager – Workforce Development from Falkirk Council are co-leading this work and can help you in the first instance.