Earlier this month, as part of a project we are working on in the ethical commissioning space, we met with a team of care home managers. The session really made us think about the circumstances that these providers are operating in. Common across the sector, but no less of an individual challenge for these providers, is a crisis in workforce recruitment and retention; the difficult environment created by squeezed budgets and limited resources; and the pressures placed on staff time by a combination of these factors, and the bureaucracy that continues to be a challenge for the social work and social care sector.
But the session also made us think about some of the themes we see in other areas of our work in Iriss; and how the experiences of the care home managers and staff relate, mirror, or chime with other areas of the social work and social care system.
Repeating the Story
We heard from providers the frustration they feel as they need to provide very similar data to various different organisations. Information is often duplicated, and reporting templates are time consuming to complete. There was a sense that this lack of consideration on the time it takes for providers to undertake this reporting, can make it feel as though their time, and the service they provide, isn’t valued.
This prompted us to think about the parallels this has with what we hear from supported people; that telling your story several times, in different places, to various people can be a challenge in and of itself. Repeating difficult circumstances can make you feel like no one is listening, or that what you’re saying isn’t being properly recorded; and at worst, it can be a deeply emotionally difficult experience. Those in social work recognise this, and so attempts are made to reduce the number of times that people need to repeat their story.
It stood out to us that the system doesn’t recognise how a version of this might play out for providers. Participants also shared with us that monitoring and reporting and inspections can feel deficit based; as though they are conducted on a basis of mistrust and to find out what is going wrong; rather than an asset based, ‘let’s look for what’s working’ approach. We know that social work and social care takes an explicitly strengths based approach to working with people, recognising the negative impact that people feel when they are mistrusted. Again, we reflected that a version of this dynamic might play out at an organisational level.
Feedback Loops
We heard that reporting often feels disconnected from the outcomes of the individuals that providers support. People don’t know what change the data they provide makes to practise; or if, or how it is linked to improving care for supported people. This gap in the feedback loop is a barrier to reporting feeling meaningful. Rather than being part of a wider picture contributing to positive outcomes for people, reporting can feel burdensome and disconnected. We noticed the parallels this has with what we’ve seen in recording outcomes for supported people. Recording centred around people’s outcomes can make the recording process feel much more meaningful for the staff undertaking it. And, when this meaning is clear, when the impact of capturing this data is clear, there is greater staff buy in. It feels less like a burden, and more like an important way to make sense of the individual and where they fit in the care provided to them.
This conversation rang bells for us, across our Iriss work, and got us thinking beyond what we discussed in the room. It prompted us to think about how contextual challenges might play out in different parts of the social work and social care system. Where do they link? Where are they different? Can we understand better, and work towards solutions, by examining some of these parallel or related experiences? That is one of the strengths of the work we do at Iriss; we deliver at a project level, and at the same time, have the opportunity to explore with breadth and depth, where our projects sit, and interact with the wider social work and social care landscape. Not all of our questions will have definitive answers; but over the course of our project, we are going to keep these themes in mind, and share our learning and perspectives. Stay tuned!
Are there themes or challenges you see in your context, that you think are mirrored, or have a version of them playing out in other places? Tell us at hannah.martin@iriss.org.uk and ellen.daly@iriss.org.uk
