What helps innovation flourish and sustain in children’s social care?
This collection of video resources shares the developing findings of the Innovate Project, about how social care and other safeguarding agencies are innovating to address extra-familial risk and harm.
The Innovate Project is a four-year UK study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which is exploring how social care and other safeguarding agencies are innovating to address harms that young people may encounter and experience beyond the family home. Find out more, about innovation.
In this series of three videos, Professor Michelle Lefevre and Julie Temperley discuss the findings of the Innovate Project about innovation in children’s care. They share a framework for the stages of innovation in children’s social care and discuss the system conditions that support innovation, both of which could support design, planning and review of innovation in your local context.
What is ethical innovation in children’s social care?
Michelle Lefevre discusses innovation processes that are supported by the ethical standards of social care. These:
- prioritise partnership and are participation based (including with children and young people)
- shift and disrupt power dynamics in the system
- promote learning and reflexivity.
(Length: 7 minutes)
During the above clip, Michelle talks about an article on ethical innovation. It is available here, Towards a framework for ethical innovation in children's social care.
A framework for innovation in children’s social care
Michelle Lefevre shares a framework for the stages of innovation in children’s care, a way of helping to understand what is happening during innovation. She talks about the questions leaders might consider in each area of the framework: mobilising, designing, developing, integrating, growing and system change.
These areas of focus and questions could support design, planning and review of innovation in your local area.
(Length: 5 minutes)
An infographic of the Stages of Innovation framework is available from the Innovate Project.
Local system conditions that support innovation
Julie Temperley shares developing findings about innovation based on interviews with twenty people who have been leaders and evaluators of innovation in children’s social care and in public services. In this video, she discusses:
- The wider context that can prevent innovation work: public opinion and the media, policy and regulation, the economy.
- Local enablers of innovation: culture, local resource, and capability and capacity.
(Length: 15 minutes)
Reflective questions
- How could you use the Stages of Innovation framework to reflect regularly on your service’s planning, implementation and review processes?
- What enables innovation in your local context? You may wish to consider your system’s culture, resource and capability & capacity.
- What would be indicators for you that an innovation has been successful?
- How do you find out what matters most to children and their families when designing and reviewing a different way of working?
About the presenters
Michelle is Professor of Social Work at the University of Sussex and Director of CIRCY – the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth. Her research primarily focuses on professional practice with children, young people and families where there are issues of risk and harm, and it is rooted in her background as a child protection social worker and arts psychotherapist.
Julie is a Senior Associate at Innovation Unit working alongside leaders transforming systems and practice in children’s social care and education. Julie’s background is in research and evaluation and her passion is making evidence and insight inspiring and useful for practitioners and decision-makers in the vital work they do to improve the lives of children and young people.
Professional Standards
PCF - Contexts and organisations | Professional leadership
Safeguarding and exploitation - complex, contextual and holistic approaches: Strategic Briefing (2019)
At a time of limited resources, and increasing demands, local areas are tasked with addressing multiple forms of exploitation and attending to the causes (rather than solely the consequences) of abuse. This briefing can be used to inform the development of holistic, complex and contextual safeguarding systems that are equipped to address and prevent exploitation in all its forms.
Embedding a trauma-informed approach to support staff wellbeing in children’s social care: Strategic Briefing (2021)
This briefing considers what a trauma-informed approach looks like at an organisational level. The approach is important for the organisation, the workforce and the children and families that professionals work with.
References
Hampson, M., Goldsmith, C., & Lefevre, M. (2021). Towards a framework for ethical innovation in children’s social care. Journal of Children's Services, 16(3), 198-213.