Collaboration for impact
This blog is a write up of a talk I did at a Tackling Child Exploitation (TCE) Programme learning event on 10th February 2022. TCE is a Department for Education funded consortium programme led by Research in Practice with The Children’s Society and the University of Bedfordshire.
Since October 2021, TCE has hosted a programme of digital events to share our learning from across the three years the consortium have delivered the programme. TCE’s aim has been to create an opportunity for reflection, inspiration, networking, connection and ideas for action to help develop local area strategic responses to the challenges of child exploitation and extra familial harm.
The session I spoke at also included fascinating conversations led by Lucy Belcher, between partners that The Children’s Society have worked with as part of our Prevention Programme. This blog doesn’t include those insights but the recording from the session will be shared on the TCE microsite in due course.
Evolving approaches
I’m going to share with you the way The Children’s Society approaches our child exploitation work, and the thinking that has helped shape this. Our place in the landscape as a medium sized children’s charity offers us opportunity to work in ways that are arguably easier than for statutory agencies.
The Childrens Society organisational emphasis is on learning and we are supported to continually evolve our approaches by examining what is, and isn’t working in our programmes. But we are always pushing ourselves to consider how can we make our work as impactful as possible — in the context of increasingly complex child protection issues.
We believe that systemic change is needed to better respond to this rising complex need. Child criminal exploitation holds a mirror up to current provision and highlights the gaps. Systems are currently missing the bigger picture — too often interventions are targeted at crisis points, and fail to address the systemic issues leading to that crisis, meaning we work with different children, with the same problems and issues over and over again. Systems that are working to support young people are old, slow, complex and (mostly) broken. We’ve been saying this for a few years now, but its worth repeating.
We’ve learnt that we need to work together at all levels of the system to sustainably disrupt exploitation. And that our approach needs to match the continually evolving, non-linear complexity of young people’s lives. Our responses need to be multi-agency, involve statutory and non-statutory organisations, be multi-level, responsive, adaptive and agile.
But what do all those words actually mean? We are here to collectively think about and share our approaches to collaboration, to achieve impact for young people — to stop different children experiencing the same problems time and time and again.
Systemic models of change
The Children’s Society has an ambitious goal — we want to overturn the damaging decline in children’s wellbeing.
Our child exploitation work is critical to this — working with young people, their families, the professionals and the multi-organisational systems all around them.
The Children’s Society’s learning journey has led to the development of a systemic approach to reduce and disrupt child criminal exploitation. This recognises that children and young people exist within a wider environment that influences their safety, successful development and wellbeing.
These include the:
· individual level (children, young people and families);
· interpersonal level (interactions and experiences with peers, support providers, in school, online or in neighbourhoods);
· institutional and policy level (policies, processes and how support agencies work together); and
· societal level (social norms and ideologies).
The many influential factors within this environment are interrelated and exert an influence on children and young people at various levels, and all need to be worked on to reduce and disrupt exploitation sustainably.
Across The Children’s Society’s we explicitly work at all levels of this systemic model.
Our work
The Children’s Society has a national footprint and local delivery, with four national programmes working on tackling child exploitation, a network of local services and a policy and research functions seeking to influence and change national policy and legislation.
• We have a national network of staff, with some roles embedded within partner agencies e.g. British Transport Police.
• We act as catalysts to drive forward and accelerate new strategic responses to prevent and disrupt child exploitation, abuse and extra familial harm
• We actively work to build bridges and make connections across sectors and geographies, recognising the value and role that everyone can play in safeguarding children and directly safeguarding children through our practice base.
• We work to change the narrative around victimhood and responsibility including challenging bias and assumptions that affect responses to young people. Our updated appropriate language guide is a great resource to share.
Always learning
The Children’s Society is on a significant learning journey in developing systemic model of interventions. Our programmes are evaluated and lessons shared across the organisation and wider through our commitment to generous leadership and honest reflection. Some of our keys learnings are summarised:
1. Listening to young people isn’t a nice to have, its essential.
It helps us gather real time information about what’s happening, what works, informs our responses, affects our priorities and helps us evolve our delivery.
2. There are key moments that are ‘reachable’ — where young people are more likely to engage. These can be adapted and developed to become more young person friendly and respond to change in individuals and systems.
3. One size does not fit all. Whole person, non-time limited intensive interventions that address the whole family context work best. Based on trusted relationships that young people build with highly skilled staff.
4. We are working in a highly dynamic and constantly changing context. We must be agile to respond to shifting threats, evolving systems and new challenges.
5. Evaluating and managing change and impact in this context is complex. We are developing new, more fluid ways of monitoring and evaluating our work that better reflect our impact on individuals and systems, and enable our learning. Fundamentally we know that long term impact in systems takes time.
6. In order to ensure that systemic approaches have the largest possible impact, we have developed our thinking on the different ’layers’ within the system that we are working within. I know I keep mentioning these layers but for us they are really important to help us to identify who we need to work and also help understand our own role in the system .
Whilst we recognise that some of the most impactful changes happen at the top level of the system (through legislative, policy and societal change), we have also learnt that these changes take time and require allies. We also know that systemic change cannot happen without the layers underneath (the processes, cultures and ways of working) being prepared for and on board with this change, as these layers hold up the top of the system.
We need to recognise and work within all these systems.
But whats the golden thread here? Its collaboration — we target the collaboration we pursue in order to lean into the areas where we will make the most difference.
I invite you to consider which partnerships and collaboration you need to prioritise for impact?
Being intentional
My old team mate Adam Groves undertook an informal rapid review of work on collaboration, and developed a working hypothesis for The Children’s Society. He summarised, that when collaborating feels ineffective, it’s generally due to some combination of:
- unclear priorities
- poor psychological safety
- unclear/inappropriate ways of working — by this I mean team structures, tools and processes are not clear or not matched to the context
- insufficient resources (e.g. lack of time), perhaps signaling the ways of working aren’t able to support the work.
- weak relationships, damaged over time by the factors I’ve just shared.
We’ve worked on this to develop a set of core principles that underpin our approach to collaboration — noting that what is important here not just what you do, but how you do it.
- Approaches don’t need to be new and novel to be different; but they do need to be intentional in order to feel like we are working towards sustainable systems change.
- Working with and not doing to — intentional collaboration with partners to work together to achieve change. This means we will not always be defining how things go, not everything will be via a plan.
Collaboration principles
Collaboration — lets keep talking about it.
We see value in treating the systems we work in, with the same levels of care and attention as we adopt when working with young people. Systems include people, systems are people.
The collaboration principles in the slide and described, are taken directly from a blog by my old colleague Craig Grady — all credit to him for this.
Empowering and present
• Effective support for young people is asset based and focused on the strengths and positives in their lives. This is empowering for young people and helps us to frame and focus on hopes and aspirations within challenging contexts
• To help evolve partnerships and change systems, we have to help partners recognise they have the power to do so. We have to be present in that “system” to enable genuine collaboration and understand the strengths that can be built on.
Accountable and respectful
• Remaining accountable to young people is a core foundation of any youth work approach. We are accountable for our actions and their consequences.
• We need to respect each of our partners’ experiences and avoid assumptions about their influence on the system.
Centred on the people in that system
• We need to maintain focus on who we are doing that work for and why.
Reflective and aware of complexity
• A complex system can be difficult to predict and subsequently change. We have to consider how the landscape around a system constrains its ability to move and adapt. Context is crucial.
• In order to speed up change sometimes we have to slow down to pause and reflect — think about change in incremental steps.
• In practice, we are thinking about this as a journey of change, helping partners to go from acknowledging challenges and supporting them through to the point where partnerships feel resilient enough to continue addressing these systemic challenges without our direct input.
Equal and inclusive
• We must make the actions, activities and “work” we do both equal and inclusive.
• Inviting our partners to have an equal say in the direction we take, gives authenticity and assurance that we are including their experiences and sharing power.
• We try to include less-usual partners, and the voice of young people in meaningful activities focused on service design and policy or process change.
• It’s about taking the system with us on the journey of change.
Safe and sustainable
• Finally, we strive to work in a way that appreciates the time-limited nature of our involvement. We recognise external constraints and focus on what we can sustainably achieve. We think about small, sustainable steps and encourage all partners to do the same.
• Keeping the focus on continual development rather than discrete systems change projects has enabled partners to think about the future and move away from short term action planning.
This makes sense both for young people and for systems — we want them both to have a better future.
Pace and space
We know this work is complex. And it can make your headache.
The solutions are complex.
If this was easy we wouldn’t have anything to resolve. And we wouldn’t be here today.
But there is simplicity to hold onto.
Pace and space.
Partnerships need to have space to work together, to think together, to listen to each other, to try things out and reflect.
We should challenge ourselves to slow the pace and push to have space to reflect.
I recommend you to book this time in — add collective reflective time to the agenda.
For more information about our Tackling Child Exploitation Learning Events please visit or follow #TCEProgramme on twitter.
Huge thanks to Beck Dabscheck and Lucy Belcher for helping to shape this up and hosting the event.
