Working together to strengthen practice in residential child care: Key learning from our change journey
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In the final post in this series, Marc Blyth, Lead Learning Co-ordinator at Aberlour Children's Charity Sycamore Residential Service, which provides residential child care across Scotland, looks at what helps sustain change and strengthen residential child care practice.
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Have you ever been so excited to try something that you end up biting off more than you could chew? Well, that’s how our work at Aberlour Sycamore felt when we moved into using our practice profile*, which is a tool that describes high-quality residential child care practice. As I explored in my first and second blogs, we spent a lot of time getting our young people, house teams and our systems ready for change. We then carried out observations of practice and offered feedback to support our teams strengthen their practice. We recently facilitated some reflective sessions with teams across our organisation including managers, our leadership team and our programme team, and we have seen how positively this work has impacted those involved.
Change can be really hard, and sometimes it can feel like an uphill battle, so I want to share some of what we found helps to make change happen. An example - planning to do observations at 9:00 am on a bank holiday isn’t likely to be a great choice when the young people in that house enjoy sleeping in late!
Change requires time, but data will help
When we planned the observations, we estimated how much time it would take. Our internal observers were at the heart of this work, able to feedback high-quality, positive and developmental feedback to their colleagues on shifts. However, we underestimated how long it would take to record that feedback and collect the necessary data. We had to be flexible, we took this information and made some changes to rotas, shift planning and added adjustments to help internal observers have the time they needed to carry out the recording.
And why was recording so important to us? Well, because the data gave us a wealth of information about the development of individual team members, of each house’s culture, and how we respond to our young people’s needs. We used the data to identify patterns across a number of shifts, and spent some time to really understand what all that meant. Our teams would initially struggle to discuss what they had done well, dismissing positive feedback as ‘just doing the job’, but we know that the job can be complex and demanding, and the data allowed us to evidence their strengths and areas for development. The data also helped us to plan the next stages of the programme.
Be prepared to be flexible
I’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned a lot. So, here are some thoughts and advice: don’t be afraid to make mistakes, to get things wrong or to scrap the best laid plans. This is residential childcare - uncertainty is our only certainty. We went into this programme carefully and considerately, and within a few weeks we could already see the need for adjustments. So, we adjusted along the way but kept steady to the goals.
Engage with the science behind change
Underpinning what we did was learning from ‘implementation science’ and we worked with colleagues at CELCIS on this journey. The theory and the language around this approach to implementation can be a lot to take in. Starting with theoretical information just didn’t work for us. So, we agreed with CELCIS to focus on the bits we needed to know right now, and the things that felt more familiar and immediate. This really helped to demystify implementation. What do we need to think about this week? How do we get that done?
Change requires capacity and commitment
Implementation is about making change stick and doing things differently, for the benefit of ALL our young people. For me, the commitment to carry this forward can’t be underestimated. This work cannot be done on top of someone’s day job, it needs leadership and a team with time and capacity. Our team was supported by the project team at CELCIS, offering some outside expertise and additional capacity. For me, no team can be entirely self-sustaining, it needs support from the wider organisation. This partnership across the organisation and with CELCIS proved to be a really effective way of moving this work forward, developing our understanding of what it takes and sustaining the momentum.
It’s not been an easy process working towards sustaining change, we learned a lot along the way, and we are striving to continue to grow and spread this work throughout our organisation and achieve our vision of providing warm loving homes where everyone laughs, learns, grows into their future and is treasured always.
*PP definition: A practice profile is a tool through which the essential functions or core components of a practice can be identified. It also describes the key activities, and the ‘saying and doing’ associated with that practice. If it is used consistently, and is integrated in training, supervision and continuous practice development, the practice profile enables a practice to be teachable, learnable, doable, and assessable.
Read the first blog post from Marc in this series
Read the second blog post from Marc in this series
Further information about this Aberlour Sycamore’s change programme carried out alongside CELCIS can be found here.
The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and may not represent the views or opinions of CELCIS or our funders.
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