As a Development Lead with Iriss, I spend a lot of time thinking about time. When you’re planning projects, the quarters of the year can pass quickly, in a flurry of workshops, blog pieces, meetings. I am sure in the busy working world we live in, almost everyone can relate to the sense of living in the future; you’re looking ahead to important checkpoints and key deadlines, and suddenly December has melted into March. Your time can feel both limited, and in high demand.
And, I’ve noticed that time is something that this sector does a lot of thinking about too. We can think about it in terms of time and task, and the ways that centring this has restricted person centred working. Social workers need to have the time to be able to build the relationships that we know are central to supporting people effectively, and we hear over and again how important this is to practitioners.
We know that all good work needs supportive scaffolding; from having regularly scheduled, unhurried support and supervision; to space for informal, reflective conversations with colleagues; to adequate opportunity for conversations with supported people and the necessary recording work. There needs to be time for all of that.
And to underline this importance, we see the value that carving out time to meet with others; to create and imagine; and to consider and reflect; has for the partners we work with:
Really valuable taking time out to consider change and meet like minded people
Great to have time out to think meaningfully about change and plan how I can effect change in a positive way
I've loved the space to think big and conceptualise the things I haven't had space to do in current role
Many of our partners are working in squeezed contexts, with high demands and supported people in real need of their services. So at Iriss, we take responsibility for making sure that we give our partners the space they need to think through projects. We can hold and direct some of the project work, and create opportunities for partners to carry out activities alongside us.
In our Iriss projects, we’ve tried to build in this time for ourselves. We’ve done it in our project plans, where we begin with taking time to explore the work, considering what the context is; what the literature tells us; whose voices we have heard, and whose we need to hear from. We give ourselves, and our partners time to build relationships, so that we have a complete understanding of what we’re aiming for, and how we’re going to get there. For the past three years, we’ve built on this as a team, and designated a specific week for taking the time to pause, reflect and plan.
It’s not lost on the team that we’re fortunate to have the space to step back from delivery in this way, something that could be tricky for front line services to do; but we also see how necessary it is, in order for us to deliver valuable work to the sector. It’s time for us to knit together the learning from our broad range of projects; an opportunity to share knowledge among the team, and build new understandings and ideas; and space to plan our work effectively. Our ‘Learning Week’ is part of the scaffolding that allows us to do our best work, supporting the social work and social care workforce in Scotland.
