About the session
This session (at the new Social Hub, highly recommended!) brought together a group of managers from Care Visions children’s services. This provided a valuable opportunity to bring together leaders from residential and fostering services, something they don’t often have the chance to do. Ahead of the session, we shared some questions to gather views so we could design the session accordingly. Questions included commitments to young people, shared goals as practitioners, what’s working in terms of therapeutic approaches and training, as well as areas for development.
Energy for change, problems and tensions
The session covered where people get their energy for change and provided space to dig into the areas for development (good things people wanted more of, things in tension and different views). We offered some framing about recognising the difference between problems (things to solve) and tensions (things to manage) before moving on to the group discussion about the survey feedback.
Moving from what to how
Activities provided an opportunity for the group to prioritise areas for development and agree what to work on together. The afternoon focused on moving from the what to the how. We provided further inputs about why the who is important (designing with people accessing support, including decision-makers early etc) and planning for impact (what outcomes will we measure? how can we build something sustainable?). Towards the end of the day, we paused to reflect and plan together the best use of the remaining session time. Rather than stick to our facilitation plan, we asked ‘what would be most helpful to you now?’ By the end of the session we’d moved from some high level conceptual ideas to a set of actions.
Shared understanding
In closing the session, we asked the group to share something about their experience of the day. Overall, what people valued most was the opportunity to be together, to learn from each other, develop shared understanding but also learn more about the differences across residential and fostering services. They valued time to reflect away from day to day practice and putting some shape to their ideas. We look forward to supporting this group further in the coming months.
