The Community of Practice for Siblings Planning Group is reaching out! If you are an area that might be interested in getting involved in one of our New Horizons tests of change, please get in touch!
The Community of Practice for Siblings Planning Group is interested in hearing from any local authority areas/community planning partnerships who might be interested in getting directly involved in one of the three ‘New Horizons’ tests of change, launched at the last Community session on 23 January.
New Horizons – Innovation Tests of Change
The Community of Practice is looking to develop three key Innovation Tests of Change given that broad agenda, and our learning from our work together over the past two years:
Kinship Care and Housing:
A focus on kinship care and exploring how collaboration in local areas could enable quick, impactful responses to housing adaptation/extension needs that would have significant positive impact on the lives of kinship carers and the children they care for.
That’s in a context where Kinship care is now the most significant form of care for children and young people across Scotland, growing rapidly. There is some helpful background information on why this theme is so significant within the context of kinship care – and in the guides at the bottom of that Report.
Data and Telling the Story of Change locally
Building from innovative work in West Dunbartonshire and Aberdeenshire, how do we better understand, evidence and share progress in keeping the promise to sisters and brothers? This theme also has links to the national activity to enhance the ‘CLAS’ data that is provided by Local Authorities to better reflect sibling relationships, and The Promise Progress Framework with its focus on siblings.
Decision Making Processes and nurturing Sibling and Sibling-like relationships
This theme has close links to Hearings for Children and how implementation of those recommendations is progressing. But it also has a broad focus on all decision-making processes in a local area in the journey of a child, sibling or family, from the earliest solution-focussed or Family Group Meetings through to adoption.
Please just get in touch if you’re interested. We’ve already got active interest from some areas, for example from Aberdeenshire (and a number of the relevant national bodies) on theme 1; from West Dunbartonshire on 2; and from East Renfrewshire and Glasgow on both 2 and 3.
On each theme, the provisional plan for the initial stages is:
- To have an initial ‘development’ session, probably online, with interested/connected folk;
- To follow that up with a full-day in-person development session hosted in one of the LA areas that’s interested in exploring/advancing the theme.
This work very much reflects the recommendations within Staying Together and Connected, key aspects of the promise, and work to further develop the route maps for Plan 24-30.
Watch this space for more information!