Reflection and Action Learning Forum
In 2022, SPRAG was successful in an application for The Promise Partnership funding to develop a Reflection and Action Learning Forum (RALF), a regular, reflective and safe space for practitioners and managers to come together to focus on practice relating to restraint and co-regulation of children in their care and the adults who care for them.
Hosted and facilitated by CELCIS and the University of Strathclyde, an oversight group of SPRAG members will collaboratively support this project between 2023-2025.
In this video, members of the forum speak about early impact, what has been rewarding and any challenges they have faced in year one of supporting the roll out of RALF.
About the Reflection and Action Learning Forum (RALF)
The RALF model was co-designed with SPRAG members as part of the group’s overarching commitment to help bring about a change in culture with regards to restraint and restrictive practice across the residential child care and the wider care sector.
The aim of RALF is to provide a practical and evidence-based approach that supports members of the residential child care workforce to develop the necessary habits and skills associated with genuinely reflective practice, even when some behaviour exhibited by children or young people can feel challenging.
RALF Content and Delivery Membership of the RALF forum offers:
- Structured, facilitated spaces that use reflective processes to challenge and creatively expand members’ perspectives and problem-solving capabilities
- The opportunity and ability to develop new ways of thinking around responses to children and young people's distress and the efforts to reduce or eliminate the use of physical restraint
- Training and support to become facilitators to provide Reflection and Action Learning Forums within cross-organisational groups of staff working in Residential Child Care across Scotland.
- The opportunity to apply to become facilitators. This will be a cascading model with an ambition to multiply these forums as the approach evolves.
- The opportunity for facilitators to become members of a facilitator community of practice with focused sessions attended by experts in action learning and reflection, as well as one-to-one relational conversations with skilled members of an oversight group.
- The ability to influence the present and future RALF model and levels of impact through ongoing data capture and analysis
Contact the team at CELCIS@strath.ac.uk for more information.