A systems approach to improving young people’s lives
Young people’s lives — like all of ours — are rich and complex.
At The Children’s Society — a national charity with a 140-year history of frontline and influencing work to improve vulnerable young people’s lives— we’ve been on a 2-year journey to explore what taking a more holistic, systems-focused, design-led approach can mean for our ability to better respond to this complexity.
We’ve realised we need to embrace being explicitly ‘system-informed’ if we’re to stand a chance at tackling the root causes of the wicked problems facing some young people in the 21st century.
Our colleagues — led by the frontline and going right ‘up’ to the boardroom — have invested an immense amount of personal and professional energy into securing some epic achievements towards becoming systems-informed. They’ve also faced some difficult bumps in the road along the way. We’ve been doing a lot of internal soul-searching, testing out of new approaches, and re/connecting with ‘external’ colleagues who are eager to work together and share in our journey — ultimately because we share the same aims of being more optimistic for the kinds of lives that young people have the right to lead.
We’ve learned a lot. We shared some of our frontline experiences via this sister blog on Medium that focused on our Systems Changers 2018–19 programme. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we should have been communicating our learning much earlier and more proactively with our youth-centred allies outside of our organisation — but it’s been hard. ‘Working in the open’ takes a huge leap of faith and feels risky when:
- you’re in new territory
- you don’t know if what you’re doing is ‘right’, or even on the right track
- you’re worried about sharing your mistakes or admitting you don’t know the answer when your rich organisational brand and identity may be impacted.
But we are really proud of what we have tested out and achieved together. We’re really proud of our colleagues across the organisation who have embraced these newer ways of working — including the uncertainty of what exactly will come of them. More so, we’ve been really encouraged by the promising signs that these approaches are ‘working’ (as far as we can ever be sure of attributing outcomes in complex environments) — for both our staff’s capabilities and confidence, and for young people’s improved experiences of what can be messy and disjointed systems.
So we’re now ready to share our learning in the hope that others across our sector and beyond may be buoyed or inspired by what we’re up to and feel confident to try systems and design approaches out for themselves to improve the impact they can have for their users.
Most importantly — we know we need to work in close collaboration with our sector colleagues for us to achieve truly transformative systemic impact for young people. This blog is part of that conversation and a warm invitation to work together.
Please do check-in for regular, honest stories from our systems change and design teams, and wider colleagues across the organisation, as we continue trailblazing our journey. And get in touch!
