Effective Practices: The ‘WHAT’
The WHAT – involves reaching consensus and developing a well-conceived view about what exactly is to be implemented, and ensuring that the effective practice or the innovation (e.g. a programme or a practice that varies from the standard or is new) is described in a clear manner. Effective practices must be teachable, learnable, doable assessable and scalable.
This section describes the rationales, the vision for change and the strands of work in Dundee. It summarises the practice change aimed at strengthening early support and intervention and the voice of children, young people and their families.
The vision for change in Dundee
Our work in Dundee began with a series of focus groups and interviews with local leaders, managers and practitioners, and a review of local data and evidence, to understand how support for children and families could be strengthened. This exploration stage found that some of Dundee’s children and families had wellbeing needs that were not being met by universal health and education services, but which did not reach the threshold for specialist and/or social work support either. Left unmet, these needs would often increase, resulting in concerns escalating and families having to navigate greater challenges.
The importance of identifying and responding to early wellbeing concerns became the focus of the ANEW programme and led to a vision for change where:
- Children and families are seen as experts on their own lives, their voice is heard as part of any planning process, so that they contribute to identifying what supports they need and when they need them;
- Universal services (e.g. health visiting, education practitioners) are well placed to build relationships with children and families, so that unmet needs can be understood and responded to in a timely and coordinated way;
- Relationship and strengths-based practice underpin any decision-making processes about a child’s or young person’s life, as this values the resources and capabilities of each family, builds trust between families and practitioners, empowers families and strengthens their resilience;
- Early support for unmet needs is available to all families to help navigate and overcome challenges at an early stage.
Dundee’s change design – three strands and important practice change Dundee’s vision for change led to three strands of work:
Strand 1
Team around the Child meetings were recognised as key for understanding and responding to children’s and families’ wellbeing concerns and needs, and the ANEW programme has sought to enhance these meetings. Changes were made to how meetings were prepared for and chaired so that children, parents and carers became core members of the Team around the Child and thus equal partners in planning and decision-making alongside practitioners. The practice changes included:
Before the meeting:
- Offering children and young people the possibility to have and choose a Meeting Buddy to support their participation;
- Protecting sufficient time for the Meeting Buddy to build or strengthen their relationship with the child and provide tailored support for their participation;
- Where parents/carers choose to make use of similar support, they are offered their own Meeting Buddy, different from their child’s;
- Informing the child and the parents/carers well in advance about what practitioners plan to share at the meeting.
During the meeting:
- Having the child's views expressed first in the meeting, followed by those of parents/carers, and then of practitioners;
- Using more informal meeting rooms, creating a welcoming environment and minimising interruptions;
- Allocating sufficient time in the meeting to discuss what is working well for the family and what progress is being made;
- Checking in with the child and the parents/carers throughout the meeting to involve them as equal partners and ensure their understanding of the meeting. The Meeting Buddy attends the meeting to continue to provide support when needed;
- Writing up the Child’s Plan in the meeting, so that it is visible to all (such as on Smart Board, Flipchart or A3 page) and that all meeting participants can contribute to and understand the Plan.
After the meeting:
- Giving copies of the Child’s Plan to the child and the parents/carers to take away at the end of the meeting;
- Holding a debrief meeting between the Meeting Buddy and the child/adult they support to ensure understanding of what was agreed.
The 'Meeting Buddy' role was first developed by Children First for Child Protection meetings, and the ANEW programme testedand adapt it far early support.
A Meeting Buddy is an adult (but not the chair of the meeting) who is trained, coached and enabled to support voice and participation. They offer support before, during and after each Team around the Child meeting, to help children and, in some cases, parents and carers to:
- understand the process and their rights;
- decide how they can and wish to engage in the process;
- contribute to the meeting in the manner they are most comfortable with;
- understand the outcomes and what willl happen next.
National impact
The practice changes developed in the ANEW programme were highlighted by the Scottish Government as part of GIRFEC policy refresh and presented in a practice exemplar that shows how the approach has been used in Camperdown Primary, one of the ANEW sites in Dundee.
Strand 2
The second strand focused on clarifying the function of the named person and strengthening the support available to practitioners holding this function. This was a need identified through the exploration that took place in the first stage of the ANEW programme, which found that the workforce had responded well to the complex asks made of them through GIRFEC, but questions persisted about how GIRFEC aligned with and complemented other asks derived from a rather complex policy landscape.
Working with NHS Tayside health visitors, family nurses, team leads and managers, and Dundee City Council teachers, educational psychologists and managers, we drafted and tested a ‘practice profile’ – a document that articulates what a practitioner in a named person function should be ‘saying and doing’, and describes what high-quality practice looks like. Importantly, we reviewed wider health, early years and education professional practice standards and policy documents (a list of which can be found in the Additional Reading). This helped to ensure that the practice profile was felt as supportive and core to practitioners’ wider job role, rather than a layering of an additional task.
What is a ‘practice profile’?
A practice profile is a tool that helps a practice to be taught, learnt, used and assessed. For this, the practice profile must be consistently used for training, supervision (coaching) and practice development.
The ‘GIRFEC Practice Profile for Health and Education professionals holding the Named Person function’ was launched in September 2021 during an online event with approximately 350 staff with named person and lead professional functions.
The practice profile has been well received and considered a valuable resource by those involved in its testing and subsequent use.
The core components of the GIRFEC practice for professionals holding the named person function, articulated in the ANEW programme:
[to check and hopefully include quote/video on the practice profile]
Strand 3
The third strand of the Dundee design was to develop a system which enables practitioners, including those in a named person role, to access supports and services that can help meet the needs of children and families.
This was achieved by developing the ‘Fast Online Referral System’ (FORT) in Dundee, supported by a partnership between the voluntary sector, Dundee City Council, Health and other partners. FORT maps public and third sector services across Dundee, hosts an online service directory and provides a referral tool for practitioners. FORT is designed to host a wide array of supports for children, young people and families, including information, advice, and early intervention and prevention services. Similar systems have been developed in other local authority areas in Scotland.
CELCIS supported Dundee in exploring and better understanding the need to strengthen access to support for children and their families, and possible solutions. The Dundee Implementation Team played an important role in setting up the FORT partnership which advanced the third strand. Only the delivery of the first two strands was directly supported by CELCIS.
Additional readings: [downloadable document]
More details about the first two work strands of the Dundee change design
This document highlights the challenges and the need for change identified in the ANEW programme in Dundee, with a focus on the first two strands supported by CELCIS. It describes the approaches taken, who was involved and the impact of the change.
Summary, key learning and reflections:
- The evolution of the ANEW programme in Dundee highlighted the importance of identifying and meeting children and families’ needs at the earliest stage. The focus on enhancing wellbeing was identified as one of the key components for preventing child neglect. Implementing this requires increasing early intervention and the capacity of universal and preventative services.
- Participation of children and their families in planning and decision making is a process, with the preparation stage vital. Meaningful participation requires protected time, tailored support, relational practice, and disrupting the power imbalance between professionals and children, their parents or carers, as well as amongst professionals.
- GIRFEC named person practice sits within a layered and complex policy landscape, which made the coordination and alignment of the named person tasks with the ones derived from other key national education and health policies and developments a must. The alignment involved understanding the complementarity, overlap and difference across policies. The aim was to work out how to integrate the practice changes in practitioners’ wider job role and avoid layering on the named person tasks as additional ones. A similar approach is recommended when introducing and describing any other practice.
- Some of the functions introduced by GIRFEC require supports to be put in place to help practitioners gain clarity of what is expected of them. Functions cannot simply be ‘layered on’ and embedding new ways of working requires defining and articulating which practices are effective in meeting the needs of children and families.
