Sharing power: Co-production and children's services

By Ryan Wise, SCIE Practice Development Manager 

"Co-production isn’t a fun term even though it sounds like a you’re on a film set". 




The words from Tia, who attended a recent workshop at SCIE thinking about what co-production currently looks like and could look like in children’s services. 

Language is important and perhaps the term co-production is something that doesn’t come up because of what Tia has shared. I have often come across voice, participation, engagement when thinking about co-production in the children's and families world. For me, co-production in a nutshell is about sharing power. Co-production is breaking down barriers and enabling equality through children and families being an active part of the design and delivery of services. This for me is the crux. 

Register for free online webinar on co-production and children / families. Thursday 7 November 1pm.

We often share power in practice in how we work with families but how do we do it organisationally? We may know of children in council care or act on the feedback we receive from children and families but does this go far enough? How does the community and its citizens help change and develop the service?  

SCIE are interested in supporting organisations to develop and embed ways of sharing power with its citizens. SCIE believe that the time is right; developing co-production compliments positive moves towards being more relationship-based and collaborative in practice. As professionals let's talk to our citizens: What do children and families in your area think about ‘co-production’? Perhaps it doesn’t have to have a name? The key question SCIE are interested in is: “What steps can you take or are you taking to include children and families in the design and delivery of your service?

Read Ryan's SCIE blog about the work Camden Council are doing with relationship-based social work.

NCASC 2019 >>>

Why we are all talking about strength based practice?

By Fran Leddra, Principal Social Worker and Strategic Lead, Safeguarding and Adult Social Care, Adults, Housing and Health, Thurrock Council - and Chief Social Worker England. 

Fran joins SCIE at NCASC on Friday 22 November - 9.30 - 10.30 in FW26 for a session on strengths-based approaches

It’s interesting how strength based practice is seen as the new ‘buzz’ topic in adult social care, everyone is talking about it, our plans are changing to accommodate it and we are embracing a new language to accompany it.  But of course it’s not new, and people have been writing about it for many years ; Weick (1989) and Saleebey,(1992) articulating what we are trying to achieve today in our practice along with many others.

The difference now is that social work is getting back to its roots of good human relationship focused practice where we empower the person and disempower the problem.  This has always been at the heart of our profession but somehow we lost our way with systems and processes that restricted our creativity, reduced our skills to tick box assessments  and focused on all that was wrong so we could help ‘fix’ the problems.  The difficulty with trying to ‘fix’ is that it assumes we know best, that we can solve the issue and that the individual is a passive recipient.  

When we move away from problem-solving to listening, understanding, walking alongside people and focusing on what is strong and what a good life looks like, we have a totally different conversation.  We have also listened and learned from experts by experience and have been influenced by Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).  This is helping us introduce innovative new community based support and a different offer to traditional services.  We may still have a way to go, but it really does feel we are moving in the right direction. 

I’m inspired by the many stories I have heard in how the resurgence of strength and human relationship based practice is really making a difference to people’s lives, not just in the short term, but building resilience for the longer term.  Social work is leading this transformation, resulting in a recognition of the important space we fill across health and wellbeing partnerships.   Lets keep the buzz going! 

Fran tweets @franlc>>>

NCASC 2019>>> 

Changing the story: An NCASC blog

By Neil Crowther for Social Care Future #socialcarefuture

Don’t we all aspire to live in the place we call home, with the people and things that we love, doing what matters to us in communities where we all look out for one another?  

Isn’t that what great care and support helps us to achieve? By combining greater investment with reforms to unlock the already abundant resources and power to make change in communities across our country we can look forward to this future.

New report: Talking about a Brighter Social Care Future

That’s the vision our growing movement aspires to, but it faces a major hurdle. In new research, to be published next week, we find that our vision isn’t the story of social care presently being told to, heard by and understood by the public.

Where we see care and support as offering a springboard, the dominant narrative paints it as a safety net.  While we seek to generate ecosystems of reciprocal community support, care is talked about as a one-way street, with ‘vulnerable people’ ‘looked after’ by regulated personal care services. We have great stories of how great support transforms people’s lives, but the story told and heard is of a broken system in crisis, dangerous to those who use it.   We point to the huge value to society of what comes of great support, yet the story out there is of a spiralling financial burden that needs to be contained.  

Why is framing important? As Professor George Lakoff has explained: ‘Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. In politics our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies.  To change our frames is to change all of this.  Framing is social change.’

Our new report is the first stage of a project to reframe the narrative around great care and support.  Next we will be commissioning more research to understand the current landscape of discourse and opinion, to get into the mindsets of target audiences and to work out the most persuasive ways to enlist support for our goals. 

To change social care we need to change the story about social care.

Neil Tweets @neilmcrowther

Social Care Future >>>

All session at NCASC 2019 >>>

At NCASC let's resist entering a council of despair

By Ewan King, SCIE Chief Operating Officer 

We should avoid a council of despair, and focus on the positives. At this year’s NCASC we will be talking about the positives in social care. 



This week the government was yet again criticised for dragging its feet on social care reform. To be fair, this headline could have written at the same time last year, and the two previous years: it’s not news! But it doesn’t help with the mood surrounding the sector, and the sense of despair. But despair we mustn’t.

For we are seeing some positive changes in the sector, and a positive story emerging of what social care be if we all work together? We need to grasp these opportunities while we can, and build on fragile areas of success.

In the face of great odds, some local areas are developing and spreading innovation, based on the principles of asset-based, or strengths-based thinking, and person centred care. In Camden for instance, this has meant that all decisions care and support are made in collaboration with people who use services, building on their strengths and local networks rather than the ‘problems’ they are perceived to have. In cases where people’s lives have become stuck, Family Group Conferences, a real innovation in adults social care, are used to help families find solutions to the barriers they face.

Come to SCIE, Shared Lives and TLAPs session on the Social Care Innovation Network and Sarah McClinton, Director of Adult Social Care at Camden, will tell you more. Later that week, our session - Towers of Strengths - will provide a platform for lively debate about the strengths-based practice, with presentations from Bradford, Nottingham and the Chief Social Worker. 

The positive story I refer to is embodied by Social Care Future, a social movement committed to the positive reform of social care. For the last two years, it has been galvanising people around a new commitment to build a better, more ‘human-shaped’, care system. Much of its work to date, including a new narrative - based on the ‘reframing’ of debate about social care away from the language of crisis, to one based on its positive potential - will be presented at the Social Care Future on Wednesday morning, which SCIE is pleased to support. Come along to hear the President of ADASS, Julie Ogley, Clenton Farquharson and others, talk about how we can turn values about social care, into practical action.

The challenges facing social care may be considerable, but we should resist entering a counsel of despair. Do make time to attend these sessions, and we promise you will leave with a lift in your step.

Ewan tweets @ewandking >>>

All sessions at NCASC 2019 >>>