Relationships Matter - ideas that support relational practice

Published in News on 22 Apr 2015

Over 2014-'15 the Innovation and Improvement programme ran a project called Relationships Matter which:

  • Collated evidence that indicates how relationships are positively supported during times of transition in people's lives. You can check out this evidence and contribute to this ongoing collection by adding your own evidence.
  • Prototyped ideas that practitioners and young people could engage with so young people can continue relationships with significant people in their lives as they leave care.

The ideas respond to several different obstacles people experience, posed as questions such as:

Let us know what you think about each of these ideas by following the links in each question and posting your comments. We'd love to hear how relevant these obstacles are to you. What do you think of the ideas? Could you test any of these ideas, and if so how would you go about it? And finally, what have you already done in response to a similar obstacle?

At the end of the JAM everyone involved (young people, practitioners and staff from national organisations) collectively decided they would like to continue to work together and support one another with their ambitions to put relationships center stage. Supporting young people who are leaving care to develop and be able to continue relationships worth significant people in their lives has to be key. Iriss has committed to support this new Relationships Matter collective to come together. We are it the process of working together to understand how to go about this in 2015-'16.

If you are interested in developing and testing ideas that better enable relational practice, please get in touch with Gayle or Ellen from Iriss. Or if you would like to follow this work, sign up to the Iriss mailing list, visit the Relationships Matter website and follow #RelationshipsMatter on Twitter.