Care Journeys Project Acorn: co-producing People I Tolerate, a care-experienced youth group [Part 01]
In March 2021 Plymouth Care Journeys started a two year co-production programme called Project Acorn — because from tiny acorns mighty oaks grow. The purpose of Project Acorn is to test peer-to-peer methods of reducing loneliness for and with care-experienced young people. We divided the two year programme into 4 test and learn cycles. This series of posts is our learning from our first 6 month cycle.
Barnardo’s Care Journeys (Children In and Leaving Care) Core Priority Programme, set out in our Corporate Strategy, invests in transforming our services in a vital area for young people moving towards adulthood.
The overall ambition of Care Journeys is to change the system so that care experienced young people are as or more likely to be in a positive destination, compared to their peers who have not been in care.
As part of the Barnardo’s Innovation Lab team, my role is to support other teams in Barnardo’s to use design-led and creative processes to improve children’s services. My role in this cycle of Plymouth Care Journeys’ Project Acorn was to support the co-creation process between young people and children’s services practitioners. This series incorporates the perspectives of both young people and practitioners who were involved, to provide an open and host picture of what we learned.
Post 01: Care Journeys Project Acorn: co-producing People I Tolerate, a care-experienced youth group
Post 02: What we learned about co-production and reducing loneliness
Post 03: What’s next and recommendations for reducing loneliness at scale
Why we’re focused on reducing loneliness for care-experienced young people
“You kind of grow up thinking I’m going to be lonely. I’m not going to have any friends. I’m not going to have any family. And you grow up thinking that you have to do it all on your own.” — Acorn co-producer
In our Plymouth Care Journeys 2019 Discovery research care-experienced young people asked us to prioritise reducing loneliness because they say it as a key issue preventing them from being in a positive destination — a self-defined ‘good place’ in their lives. This encompasses work, training, mental and emotional wellbeing and safety both online and offline.
Later, a December 2020 Coram Voice, Brightspots Survey of 169 young people in Plymouth recorded that 30% of Plymouth care- experienced young people reported feeling lonely ‘often or always’ — three times that recorded by 16–24 year olds (10%) in the general population. (ONS, 2018b) and more than care-experienced young people in other localities (30% vs. 22%).
Our approach for Project Acorn was informed by co-producing services with care-experienced young people across the first Lockdown which showed the potential for peer-to-peer services to reduce loneliness and build informal healthy relationships between care-experienced young people.
The Project Acorn cycle 01 co-production team
The Project Acorn co-production team included 5 care experienced young people including a care-experienced trans person, a young mum, an unaccompanied asylum seeker as well as care-experienced young people who’ve had lived experiences of mental health services. Everyone brought different perspectives on loneliness and their care-experience. All our care-experienced co-producers were compensated for their time and engagement with the project in a way that didn’t affect any benefits that they might be receiving.
The practitioners in the Project Acorn team included Helen Fox, a Plymouth City Council Personal Advisor who was seconded into Project Acorn and Carin Laird, an experienced youth worker from Barnardo’s who has been co-leading this work with me.
The team agreed to work together two days a week in the Plymouth Care Journeys space. I joined remotely for parts of each day to focus in on certain activities. The hybrid model is tricky to achieve, especially when working with young people in groups so we definitely recommend as much face-to-face working as possible.
What the co-production process looked like
Put your wellies on and wade in
Prior to coming together as the Project Acorn team practitioners spent time with every young person and organised remote social activities like making pizza together in our own kitchens. This slow relationship building is vital to building trust between young people and practitioners before beginning to work together.
This time is often underestimated and undervalued in relational service delivery like youth work.
“…you cannot go in blind to this kind of work…You have to invest the time in the relationship outside of the time you have with them so that they do feel like you value them. I think you have to be prepared to do stuff that isn’t anything to do with the group. I think you have to be prepared to put your wellies on and wade in.” — Carin Laird, experienced youth worker, Care Journeys
“So like everyone make their own pizza…I’m glad mine turned out really good, because I put in a bit more time. And Irit was on the video call. Yeah. So it was really nice to be honest.” — Project Acorn co-producer reflecting on a pizza making session Carin organised to help everyone get to know each-other before Acorn stared.
Creating an inclusive environment
Alongside making time for relationship-building we were able to make various adjustments to make sure our co-production team were able to attend and feel comfortable. This included allowing for a one young person’s therapy dog to accompany them to sessions, reimbursing transport costs as well as ensuring food and sanitary supplies were readily available.
Another consideration is inclusive online environments. For example, ensuring that young people know they can turn their cameras off or that they don’t have to reply to messages straight away.
The Care Journeys space has a lounge area and an open kitchen for everyone to make tea and coffee whenever they like. Feeling comfortable together and in the Care Journeys space were basic conditions needed for beginning the co-production process together.
“…if she couldn’t have gotten sanitary supplies she wouldn’t have come in that day. You know, she’d have been at home really embarrassed, but it’s about just being able to say, we’ve got you. It’s okay. And this stuff is here for you” — Carin Laird, experienced youth worker, Care Journeys
Bringing lived experience and research together
We started by discussing previous research on loneliness in Plymouth as well as considering data about Plymouth to paint a picture of the broader context and getting the team to circle the things they thought were relevant to us. On reflection I don’t know how useful the bigger picture information was but it was an attempt to acknowledge that care-experienced young people don’t exist in a vacuum and could have ideas that link to local issues or strengths too.
As trust grew we began talking about some of the young people’s experiences and used conversational tools to map out the basis for some ideas that might resonate with other care-experienced young people.
Deciding on the idea — People I Tolerate
From these activities and discussions about lived experiences the young people in the Acorn team came up with 5 ideas and got feedback on them from two care-experienced young people within the target age group. This turned out to be useful both in terms terms of the ideas as well as a recruitment tactic as both young people who gave feedback stayed engaged.
The Acorn team voted on the care-experienced youth group idea. They came up with names for it and put their top three to another vote with a group of 16 year olds. That’s how we landed on People I Tolerate — a youth group run by care-experienced young people for 16–19 year olds in and leaving care.
Co-designing the plan
Next, the Project Acorn team needed to figure out what People I Tolerate would be like week to week.
We thought about group work theory: ‘forming, norming and storming’ and made a plan based on this. For example, we knew that the first couple of sessions should be loose to allow for everyone to get to know each-other a bit, then we planned to do some more trust-based activities such as cooking for each-other and having storytelling sessions before ending with an adrenaline themed trip out together. We made session plans and materials lists for each session but it’s worth saying this wasn’t easy to co-produce. We found that Acorn co-producers didn’t particularly enjoy the detailed planning part. More in this in the next post…
Recruiting young people to join People I Tolerate
Build it…and they won’t necessarily come
There is an awareness amongst practitioners that engaging care-experienced young people in new opportunities is often the hardest part in new projects.
We undertook more than 50 unique recruitment activities to encourage 16–19 year old care-experienced young people in Plymouth to sign up to Project Acorn. This included presenting the opportunity to Personal Advisors and social workers in their team meetings, social media posts, stapling posters to young people’s benefits payments as well as reaching out to schools, foster carers and youth organisations in Plymouth.
We had 24 expressions of interest from young people including 5 unaccompanied asylum seeking young people. As part of our easing in model (explained below) we invited the young people to meet in person 1–2–1 or in small groups before People I Tolerate started but unfortunately the young people didn’t turn up. We scheduled another session and this happened again — we have much to learn about engaging and collaborating with young people in care from migrant and refugee backgrounds. Young Citizens project by Coram Voice and Plymouth Hope are projects that are doing great work in this area.
Making opportunities easier to access
In the next cycle of Project Acorn we’ll be trialling ‘rolling’ opportunities instead of one-off opportunities to make it easier for young people to join in when they’re ready.
“I do think there’s something for all of us about this recruitment question and having opportunities that are rolling that are there for the rest of the life of the work maybe just so that people get used to putting in people forwards for them, whether it involves a form or not is a different question.” — Rob Harrison, Care Journeys Children’s services manager
A note on data: We are not able to contact young people directly due to our data sharing agreement with Plymouth City Council. It makes complete sense that care-experienced young people’s contact information is protected however an unintended consequence can be that lonely and isolated young people who may not engage with their personal advisors are cut off from opportunities.
The ‘easing in’ recruitment model builds the foundation for psychological safety and friendship
“So I think despite the fact that it is a lot of planning and it’s time consuming, but not in a bad way, I think that was the right thing to do because in terms of these [young] people coming into that space, that pre bit of work I think is really, really valuable. I think it makes a difference for those that want it.” — Helen Fox, Plymouth City Council Personal Advisor
Groups are really like icebergs: so much relationship building work happens beneath the surface for the group to exist. All too often the time and skills this takes is overlooked. To acknowledge this work below are the steps Project Acorn undertook to get create a safe, comfortable environment for People I Tolerate young people.
- Young people start by meeting a worker for a 1–2–1, either on the phone or face to face. This gives them a chance to get to know each other and for the young person to get a bit more info about People I Tolerate
- Next, young people meet the same worker again along with a young person from the Acorn team for a 1–2–2 so they can start building up who they know and talk about what they might like to do together in People I Tolerate, i.e. DJing, cooking, chilling, outdoorsy stuff
- Young people come to their first group session knowing at least 2 people and knowing that they’re interested in the stuff we’ll do together
. In Project Acorn we started working ‘upstream’ with younger care-experienced people who are currently in care. We’re keen to explore how young person-centred group work can become a norm for young people in care to help prevent loneliness and social isolation.
In the next post we’ll share what People I Tolerate was like and what we learned about reducing loneliness and the co-production process.
Special thanks to the care-experienced co-producers in the Project Acorn team — you know who you are ;), the young people who came to People I Tolerate, Carin Laird, Helen Fox and Rob Harrison.
Project Acorn is featured in a 3-part episode series called ‘Making Change’ on Barnardo’s Heard but not Seen podcast. Here’s the first episode on Spotify and you can also find it on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen.
