Systems Change: The great motivator?
Anyone who works in child protection and safeguarding has faced that moment: the overwhelming weight of resignation that the way things are set up is just not working. But the catch22 is that, whilst most people will nod when you say this, changing the system just seems so damn hard!
So, is it a good idea then to embark as an organisation explicitly and deliberately down a journey of systems change? Saying to staff at all levels and in all functions we are not only here to improve the lives of this individual but to take that learning, build on it and try and change the wider system for the better too. This way of thinking has long been the purview of policy and advocacy functions, knocking on the doors at Westminster and Whitehall to convince Ministers that things should change. I know from my time managing The Children’s Society’s public affairs team the highs that can come when you achieve change for children at such scale, but also the lows of having worked on campaigns for months, sometimes even years, to find your ambitions for change thwarted. To me, systems change diffuses this passion for change at scale to a wider group of colleagues, and so follow the associated highs and the lows. Of course, this comes on top of the obvious stresses and strains of working directly with young people, and the immense reward too.
In 2019 I started on a journey of systems change with brilliant colleagues by my side, becoming part of the Systems Changers programme. Now The Children’s Society is embracing this desire for change — underpinned by the hope we have for all young people. We are now saying to colleagues our mission is about more than the young person coming through the front door of our services. It is about more than advocating for an individual young person to not be excluded from school, it is in our DNA to approach the school leadership, to work alongside them to develop a more inclusive policy towards school behaviour and exclusions. It is about saying to a police force that it is not enough to treat this individual young person in custody well — but about wider reforms to make custody a reachable moment for young people to be better safeguarded. Yet this is hard: they might say no (or not right now), the weight of daily safeguarding might dampen our spirits for wider change and staff might feel scared to swim outside of their lane.
So why then do I believe systems change can be the great motivator? In our systems change journey we have identified a number of enabling factors to support systems change — with these built into the organisation, systems change is about hope. You can read more about this in our newly published report into our Systems Changers Programme, and a linked Learning Summary.
Our learning journey to date has narrowed these enabling factors down to eleven, and across The Children’s Society we’re now working to put these into place. To build the foundation that supports a whole workforce to believe in the scale of change we can and must achieve for children. It is about believing that change can be bigger than the individual, it is about finding that connection with a partner agency who agrees to work with you towards the same goal and it is about knowing one day you will get that feeling that you have changed something for more young people than you will ever see.
