Just Ideas’ Autumn Review 2024

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Flexible, resourceful teams…

…thinking creatively and building relationships

For us, the standout theme of the past three months is the energy, flexibility and creativity we’re seeing in our teams of Just Ideas’ associates. Working with challenging systems and sensitive subject matter, they’ve shown remarkable teamwork, initiative and resourcefulness. We’d like to say a huge thank you for their contributions.

Covid-19 Inquiry – Every Story Matters

Experiences of Test, Trace and Isolate (Module 7)

We continue to work with Ipsos, in partnership with WSA Community, on the UK Covid-19 inquiry Listening Exercise – Every Story Matters. We have just finished working on Module 7, focusing on people’s experiences of test, trace and isolate, from home testing and PCR tests to tracing efforts, guidelines around isolating, and the impact of those.

Once again, we travelled around the UK talking to a broad range of people. Our work has focused on a number of target groups including those who were digitally excluded (lacking the confidence or devices to access Covid-19 information online); people supporting family members to isolate; people with neurological conditions; people with learning disabilities; and nomadic people.

The nomadic group covers a huge spectrum, from people living on boats, to travelling show people, to people from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. That posed challenges in how we contacted people and arranged meetings.  Through our network of contacts, we’ve worked with organisations that support those communities, and been able to do most interviews by mobile phone.

Our research and preparation has been careful. We’ve listened to organisations that know these communities best, to help us build relationships and trust. There’s been a need for sensitivity and understanding, particularly about how people from Gypsy, Roma, Traveller backgrounds feel society views them generally and how Covid heightened feelings of mistrust. We’ve needed to be very flexible with our offer, in response to people’s needs and preferences.

Insights in to Digital Exclusion

Talking to people who fall into the category of ‘digitally excluded’, we’re understanding more and more of the nuances involved. We’re learning that, while certain platforms are digitally inclusive of some people with learning disabilities, or some people who are neurodivergent, other platforms don’t work for them at all. We’re realising it’s not just a case of access to devices, or money for data, or skills that enable people to use digital technology – it’s more nuanced than that, and in some cases people are opting out of digital communication by choice.

“It’s been a real privilege to get to speak to such a broad range of people about their experiences of the pandemic as part of Every Story Matters, and being part of a really supportive and flexible team as a Just Ideas associate has made this feel especially safe and rewarding.”
Just Ideas Associate

Impact on Children and Young People (Module 8)

We’ve just started work on Module 8, focusing on the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, particularly relating to changes in education, access to health and other services, and digital communication. We’ve welcomed some new team members who bring the relevant expertise, including a new associate from a teaching background.

Publication of Healthcare Systems record (Module 3)

When we talk to people about their experiences of the pandemic, they often tell us that they appreciate the opportunity to talk, but have doubts about what will change. It’s been really good to see some quotes from our Module 3 fieldwork published in the first Every Story Matters record, so we can assure people that their experiences do matter and are being shared. Ipsos’ Managing Director of Public Affairs, Trinh Tu, recently celebrated the publication of the record on LinkedIn.

Trust for London – London Housing Panel

Having facilitated successful hybrid (in person and online) reflective workshops in support of the London Housing Panel in 2022 and 2023, we were delighted to work with the Panel again in June 2024.

We used a variety of methods and activities to stimulate debate, working together on themes and issues arising from a previous survey and themes that surfaced on the day. We introduced the Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry method to generate and capture dialogue, showcasing a methodology that the panel wanted to learn more about for future work.

“We were immensely grateful for your thoughtful help and support beyond the brief. From responding to… such enormous hurt being felt right now in the Gypsy Roma Traveller communities, to being mindful of those joining online. Aware of the number of technical and relational tasks your team was juggling… and with such an air of calm and warmth!”

Secretariat, London Housing Panel

The London Housing Panel shared a draft report of the workshop with participants and told us that the outcomes are already showing up in meetings with the GLA.

We’ve drawn on our experience of facilitating excellent hybrid sessions to create this guide to running successful and inclusive hybrid meetings.

The Magpie Project

Following the Magpie Pathways Pilot project we were involved in this spring, facilitating listening workshops with vulnerable mums and their minis, we put together a report of the insights we had gathered.

We’re delighted that the team at The Magpie Project really appreciated our work. They have asked us to partner with them again to take the learning from the listening workshops, and build on it with four co-design workshops with the mums and the professionals.

Each workshop will be on a different theme that emerged in the listening workshop: Better Play in the Universal Setting; Clearer Pathways; Prepared Professionals; and Big Picture Policy. The purpose of each workshop is to design the work programme for that theme.

Each work programme, delivered by a Task and Finish group involving mums and professionals, will be responsible for developing tools, materials, resources and practice to shape future services, interventions and advocacy, improving access and opportunities for mums and minis.

“The report was brilliant. Out of seeming chaos, chat, and emotions, you managed to distil themes and directions in a way that makes sense, but without losing the feel, tone and heart of what was discussed with professionals, mums and minis. The report looks so great, we can be proud to send it to people to read. We have already had feedback from professionals that they enjoyed reading it.”
Jane Williams, CEO Founder, The Magpie Project

Local Trust and Big Local

As part of Local Trust’s ‘measuring change support’, we’re working with Villages Together on their brilliant idea for piloting a community hub on a local estate, bringing together local agencies, community groups and associations and creating a space for new activities and events to happen. The idea is for people to be able to access support and advice all in one place, without travelling out of their area.

Richard Usher, Director of Just Ideas, co-facilitated a session, bringing together all of these groups, to think about what they want to see, what they want to get out of it as organisations and the difference it would make to people on the estate. We made the most of the local contacts we had established as part of our work on the Covid Inquiry listening exercise, and had really good attendance, with 20 different organisations present.

We returned in October to run a session with people living on this estate, to talk through what they want to see and be part of in the community hub, and how the process of developing it will work.

Just Ideas Collaborative

It’s been really inspiring to see the way our teams of associates are working together, creating opportunities, building relationships and supporting each other.

With the Covid Inquiry bringing some challenging targets, and involving research work that’s not so conventional, our team has really risen to the challenge. We’ve seen people seizing opportunities, making contacts, getting through to people and setting up interviews in really short timeframes. It’s taking creativity and flexibility, and we’re really heartened by the good communication and mutual support going on in the team.

COP 29: Model Climate Conferences for schools 

Another team of associates is coming together to plan and facilitate nine model climate conferences for schools across England this November. Timed to coincide with COP29 in Azerbaijan the conferences will take place in Council Chambers from Cheltenham to Ipswich and Reading to Birmingham. In partnership with youth climate charity InterClimate Network, a group of eight of us are looking forward to traveling around the country and delivering those conferences together.

Keep in contact

Join our mailing list to hear our news and get links to helpful information and resources.

Opportunities to work together

We’re really grateful for the long-standing relationships we have with our clients, meaning we get to work with them on an ongoing basis, often on long-term projects.

We’re always interested in developing new partnerships, so if you have a project you’d like to discuss with us for 2025, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

Looking forward to updating you on our progress again, and sharing our highlights from 2024, at the end of the year!

Richard, Helen, Mary and the Just Ideas Collaborative

New Research for Local Trust: ‘Spheres of Community Leadership’ report launched

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We are delighted to share the publication of three reports for Local Trust, examining the long term impact of their Community Leadership Academy. Richard Usher, our Learning and Evaluation Director, explains the role of Just Ideas in this project:

“This piece of work is the result of a long standing Learning and Evaluation role Just Ideas had alongside IVAR,  helping to bring together the learning and see the difference the (Local Trust) Community Leadership Academy was making. “

Entitled “Spheres of Community Influence” the three reports include ‘Living, Leading, Learning’ .

“Living, Leading, Learning” brings together learning from three roundtables facilitated by Just Ideas and IVAR, attended by stakeholders involved in Community Leadership in a range of different ways, from the grass roots through to those funding through to organisations supporting community leadership.”

Richard Usher

 

Please contact us for information on our Learning and Evaluation offering and learn more about our work with IVAR for Local Trust on the Community Leadership Academy in our Spring 2024 Review

 

Just Ideas’ Summer Review 2024

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Bringing diversity, creativity and lived experience

This year, we’ve committed to reflecting on our progress on a regular basis and sharing that with you. Here are our reflections on the work we’re doing in the spring of 2024, highlighting what we’re learning, and recognising with gratitude the contributions of everyone involved.

Covid-19 Inquiry – Every Story Matters

Working with Ipsos, in partnership with WSA Community, we’ve started Module 6 of the UK Covid-19 inquiry listening exercise – Every Story Matters. This focuses on the experiences of people with care needs and in the care workforce, as well as unpaid carers and loved ones of people needing care and support during the pandemic.

Our team will be doing 48 interviews between now and September, working to make sure we hear and support people whose voices may not be heard through more mainstream methods. Because of our specialism in this area, we will be supporting people with learning difficulties, and those that care for them, to share their stories.

We’ll be going into care homes, talking to the workforce, residents, loved ones and unpaid carers. It’s obviously very sensitive work. We’ve refreshed our trauma-informed research practice training and made sure that appropriate emotional support is available, for our team and for participants.

We’ve faced challenges in working out what’s appropriate in terms of ethics, and managing expectations as to the stories that we can appropriately capture. We’re working hard to make sure that conversations happen in a way that doesn’t retraumatise and that provides a positive opportunity to reflect, talk and be heard.

We’re really excited to be doing this work with a great team, including two new members who bring their youth and diversity of experience.

The Magpie Project


We were put in contact with this brilliant charity by one of our team. The Magpie Project provides a safe and fun place for mums and preschool children seeking safety, who are living in temporary or insecure accommodation in and around Newham, East London. They invited us to work on their Preschool Pathways Project, listening to the difficulties families are facing in meeting the emerging needs of their preschool children, and working with local health professionals to help them access support.

In the first phase, we’re providing specialist facilitation for eight workshops to support the mums in talking about their experiences, so they can be heard by a range of healthcare professionals, from speech and language therapists and special educational needs coordinators to health visitors, social workers, midwives and staff from children’s centres.

The second phase will build on what we know about the barriers these mums face, exploring what will help them get the specialist support they need for their children – identifying where there are missed opportunities. We’ll be supporting the codesign of pathways and tools that enable people in this situation to be looked after much better by the system.

One of our real strengths is the team that we’ve been able to bring to this work. It’s been really important to represent ethnic diversity, and to include team members with lived experience of some of the challenges these mums and children are facing. We’ve found a really good match with The Magpie Project’s values and person-centred approach, and are delighted to be working together.

Berkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy

Our engagement work on the Berkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) culminated in a webinar for Reading Climate Festival in June, updating people on our progress. Through this project, Just Ideas has organised and facilitated:

– six place-based community workshops, attended by a total of 235 people

– three workshops for farmers and landowners, attended by a total of 140 people

– an online workshop with 35 participants

– 400 responses to an interactive survey.

We’re delighted to have achieved such a successful level of engagement, making sure that community voices have really been heard. We’re proud to have created an approach that was informative, enjoyable and allowed people to learn from each other.

“Just Ideas were friendly and professional, working hard to reach timelines with a complex and changing brief! I always enjoyed meetings with them, coming away feeling supported and empowered about the project. The workshops received very positive feedback, and the notes they painstakingly collected are being used to shape the strategy.”
Rosie Street, Berkshire Nature Recovery Strategy Manager

Again, our significant strength was in putting together a team of people who specialise in facilitating workshops and creating visual resources related to nature and ecology. Through our creative approach to workshop design and communicating information, we’ve seen people and nature really come alive.

New Local

We’re excited to be working on two projects with New Local. One is working with the council and communities in Ealing to codesign ways for communities to get engaged in influencing the council. Events so far have included our team getting involved in impromptu dancing, alongside some more traditional engagement and research!

We’re also working with Leicester City Council on a project called Leicester Changing Communities. The aim is to help the council understand what makes its local communities tick and what’s foremost in people’s minds, with a view to being better able to connect with those diverse, changing communities.

St Martin-in-the-Fields

We’re delighted to continue our long-standing relationship with St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity. Recently, we’ve been working alongside their senior leadership team, providing bespoke coaching and leadership support, and supporting managers in the organisation through coaching and mentoring.

It’s a dynamic organisation that has grown a lot recently and had some big changes in the senior leadership team. We’ve facilitated an interactive workshop with managers to identify their support needs over the over the coming year, and a codesign workshop to talk about their learning and development needs over the next month.

Connecting Health Communities

Helen is working with IVAR on Connecting Health Communities in Dudley, exploring how cross-sector partners and communities can work together to shift behaviours and help residents live healthily and happily. We’re looking at childhood and family obesity as both an outcome and a contributing factor to other difficulties.

We aim to help professionals working in the area to deepen their understanding of how children and families make choices about food and exercise, and the barriers to making choices that lead to greater health and happiness. We’re delivering interactive workshops with primary schools, involving asking, listening, imagery, activity and movement.

Helen has also been delivering webinars and training for the Connecting Health Communities Champions Network. It’s been really interesting to explore leadership in situations where people are tackling complex issues, as well as learning about spotting unconscious bias, and sharing practical tools for leading change collaboratively.

Local Trust and Big Local

Reflect | Recharge

We’ve reached the final stage of Reflect | Recharge, which has been a huge piece of work for us over the past two years, involving 15 Big Local areas. It’s been really valuable to reflect on the ten-year process of Big Local, which involved challenges like the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis, and to acknowledge the energy of so many community volunteers.

Richard has been working with groups in Manchester and Warrington, exploring the ongoing change that people want to see in their communities. We’ve focused on valuing people’s contributions to their communities, thinking through lasting infrastructure change, and supporting groups to become sustainable.

 

 

“Thank you so much for today, it was very helpful. Members of the group fed back that it has helped reduce stress for them, which is a huge compliment!”

Big Local Area Co-ordinator

“It’s helped us to see how much community spirit we have – and a willingness to work together. That passion came through and some great ideas! Thank you!”

Reflect | Recharge participant at Latch Ford Big Local

Big Local Area Profiles

Our work continues on researching and running workshops for Big Local areas. We are currently working on four areas, and will be researching and writing a further four area profiles from July. These area profiles will form part of the Learning from Big Local website.

Just Ideas Collaborative

Welcome new associates

Mike Ball has been working with our core team to support us with our systems. At Local Trust, he successfully set up systems on a much bigger scale, so we’re benefitting from all his knowledge. He’s been particularly helpful in unpicking the complicated processes needed to make the Covid-19 Inquiry listening exercise work well.

We’re happy to be working with new associates, some recently graduated, and broadening the experience of our team.

We’re looking forward to bringing the whole Collaborative team together again in September. Find out more about the Just Ideas Collaborative.

Work with us

If you’d like to find out more about working together, or talk about partnering with us, or just sign up to keep in touch and hear our news, please do contact us. We’d love to hear from you.

We look forward to updating you on our progress again, later in the year.

Richard, Helen, Mary and the Just Ideas Collaborative

 

Just Ideas’ Spring Review 2024

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Real Community Engagement and Meaningful Participation

At Just Ideas, we believe in reflecting on our work and sharing our learning to support future action. Our most recent annual review highlighted how we value and promote the practice of looking at what’s worked well, and why, pooling our collective wisdom and developing principles to help us plan into the future.

This year, we’ve committed to reviewing and sharing our progress with you through the year. Here are our reflections on the first few months of 2024, highlighting what we’ve learnt and recognising with gratitude the contributions of everyone involved.

Berkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy

Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) are a new statutory requirement, funded by DEFRA. There are 48 strategy areas covering the whole of England, and Just Ideas has been invited by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to be a delivery partner for Berkshire.

Our role

We have been working with as many different residents and stakeholders from local communities as possible. Our purpose is to find out their views and priorities for nature and make sure their voices are represented in a meaningful way, alongside the contributions of experts. This involves us learning and understanding enough to communicate effectively between these different groups.

We facilitated three workshops with 135 farmers and landowners, to talk about the opportunities their local LNRS brings, which have been brilliantly received. We then hosted six community workshops – for local businesses, residents and community groups.

“Another stimulating workshop last night, well done. Some of the discussions were challenging, but the Just Ideas team did a good job keeping it on track.”
LNRS community workshop participant

The information gathered is being combined with scientific expertise on local species, habitats and ecosystems. Priority habitats and species will be fed into a systematic conservation planning tool, to generate guidance on the best way to achieve recovery targets.

Our team

We’re working with a small team: two with specific expertise around nature, environment and climate, and all with really good local networks in and around Berkshire.

“Just Ideas have been a fantastic support for us. Drafting and leading excellent workshops, putting inclusivity at the forefront and always going the extra mile under tight deadlines. Plus, they are really fun to work alongside during the project.”
Rosie Street, Berkshire LNRS Manager, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead

Our associate, Natalie, has produced a set of beautiful illustrations of some of Berkshire’s habitats and species, capturing the workshops. Our aim was to bring a wealth of complex information to people in a meaningful way, encourage them to engage with it and get a wide diversity of people participating.

Covid-19 Inquiry Listening Exercise

This year, we contributed to the module of the listening exercise on people’s experiences around vaccines, working in partnership with WSA Community. We also designed and delivered an extra piece of work focusing on the perspectives of people experiencing health inequalities.

We did some intensive work in Cornwall, listening to people with complex health and mental health needs and people who are rurally isolated. We spoke with some inspirational young mums who had babies during the pandemic, about their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. Often, they were extremely vulnerable, living remotely, not in secure housing or in extremely overcrowded housing.

Through the valued networks that we’ve established over the years, and our Just Ideas Collaborative, we’ve been able to reach out to people whose voices wouldn’t usually be heard – communities in areas experiencing structural exclusion or multiple deprivation. We’re really proud to have been able to offer a breadth and depth of reach in our community engagement that goes beyond traditional expectations.

Looking ahead

We’ll be piloting a module on people’s experiences of accessing and using PPE. Again, we’re reaching out to community settings and putting a lot of thought into how we’ll get a real breadth of diversity of experience.

Local Trust and Big Local

Community Leadership Academy

We’re in the final stage of our work on Local Trust’s Community Leadership Academy in partnership with IVAR. Our role involves understanding the longer-term impact in communities of this innovative programme, and bringing together people involved with supporting community leadership at different levels, to explore the future for community leadership support.

It’s been really inspiring to hear about the powerful experiences people have had. We’ve heard people talking about changes they were able to make in their communities and in their lives. We’ve heard how they value their experience in a range of community roles: advocating, becoming involved in local democracy, and reaching new people through their Big Local or community groups.

Big Local Area Profiles

This year, we’ve worked with Local Trust to research and write profiles of five more Big Local areas for the ‘Learning from Big Local’ website. This website will summarise what Big Local groups achieved, how they worked together, innovative ways they prioritised funding, and what they learned from the experience.

So far, highlights have included hearing about the positive impact of improving the physical environment. For example, creating peaceful mosaics, using path areas more thoughtfully, encouraging people to get outside, and improving access, mental health and community connection.

One local area managed to develop the community centre on a local estate, reaching young people through DJing sessions and events that engaged hundreds of people from the local community. As a result, they’ve been able to raise funds for local groups and see positive changes happen.

Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR)

We ran some bespoke sessions in March for IVAR’s Propel Initiative, which funds charities and community groups in London. The aim is to help them think more strategically about changing systems that aren’t working. Richard continues to deliver these training sessions, focused on evaluation and learning, covering theory of change and participatory approaches.

Just Ideas Collaborative

We had a great gathering of our Just Ideas Collaborative in March, bringing our team together and introducing our newest associates. In a two-hour, online workshop, we updated everyone on our current priorities and gave feedback on some of the projects they’ve been involved in.

We looked at our five main areas work: facilitation, community engagement, organisational development, learning evaluation and research. We shared ideas for how we could develop our offering in these areas – what we thought were the building blocks of each, and the core competencies we needed to deliver them. Our associate, Simon, is taking this work forward, thinking about how we can develop packages to offer to our clients.

Our Just Ideas Collaborative is made up of people with links to a wide variety of different communities. The diversity of our team, in terms of ethnicity, age, gender, geography and neurodiversity, gives us a real advantage when it comes to community engagement, because we’re able to reach and engage with so many different communities of people.

Reflecting on our strengths

Throughout our work so far this year, and in the years leading up to it, we notice three really important elements that run through what we do and support our success:

  1. Our commitment to real community engagement and meaningful participation
  2. The diversity of our team, thanks to our Just Ideas Collaborative
  3. Our ability to reach and engage with so many local, community-based groups.

Work with us

If you’d like to find out more about working together, talk about partnering with us, or just sign up to keep in touch and hear our news, please do contact us here. We’d love to hear from you.

We look forward to updating you on our progress again, later this year!

 

Richard, Helen, Mary and the Just Ideas Collaborative

 

Sharing highlights from Just Ideas’ 2023 review of the year

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Empowering Patient Voice: Showcasing our work with NHS England 

A big part of what Just Ideas do is to grow the voices, confidence and influence of individuals working and volunteering within community engagement roles. This includes delivering training for patient voice representatives – volunteers who share their lived experience – within NHS England.

Working with our long term partner organisation – WSA Associates – we are commissioned by NHS England to deliver training which supports these Patient and Public Voice (PPV) partners to grow their influence and impact in role.

NHS commissioners have a legal duty to ‘make arrangements’ to involve the public in commissioning. Consequently PPV partners work within all parts of the NHS to aid the development and delivery of services across healthcare.

The training that Just Ideas and WSA deliver has evolved over time, including moving online in 2020, and has continued to be well received by those who attend. The value to them is in the connections built with other PPV partners, as well as with the NHS staff who attend.

“The PPV training has empowered me – made me realise I am not the only one. I put my armour on – I am unstoppable!”

PPV partner attendee

For more information on our work with NHS England, please visit the 2023 Annual Review

To discuss your organisation’s facilitation and training needs and how we can help please contact us.

New Report for Local Trust: ‘Building Community Leadership’

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We’re delighted to share the publication of ‘Building Community Leadership’ the culmination of work with IVAR as evaluation and learning partners to Local Trust’s Community Leadership Academy (CLA).

Learning from the experience of participants and delivery partners over the last three years, the report sheds light on how the CLA supported individuals in communities to take action during the difficult years of Covid-19, and what will be needed in future to take forward this learning and sustain community leadership.

Learn more about our work with IVAR as learning evaluation partners for Local Trust’s CLA on our blog here

Blog for Local Trust: Time to Reflect and Recharge

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In a blog for Local Trust, Director Richard Usher has written about Just Ideas’ role as delivery partner for the Local Trust ‘Reflect Recharge‘ support offer.

This facilitated support package gives Big Local partnerships the space to reflect on their achievements to date as well as inviting deeper thinking about what support is needed in the final phase of Big Local.

Reflect Recharge aims to build momentum and capacity, but crucially acknowledges the huge achievements of resident volunteers in Big Locals across the country:

“The sessions helped crystalise and firm up thinking about the future and the current context we’re in.”
Devonshire West Big Local

“It has been great focusing on what we want [to achieve] and thinking about solutions.”
Blackpool Revoe Big Local

Richard reflects: “There’s been a great response from the Big Locals we’ve worked with so far, who really appreciate having some time to consider bigger picture stuff and working with us responding to their immediate needs. Reflect Recharge gives that all too infrequent space to reflect on achievements in the community but also to look ahead and tackle any challenges in the final years of the Big Local programme.”

Read more in the Local Trust blog and in our 2022 Annual Review.

Case study: How Cornwall Council focused on learning, built capacity and transformed relationships

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During the pandemic, Just Ideas teamed up with Cornwall Council Public Health to help them apply a Human Learning Systems approach to working with the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors.

In this blog Just Ideas’ Director Helen Garforth shares her insights into the positive results and valuable learning that came from working in this way.

More details here in this interactive report.  If you are interested in talking to Just Ideas about opportunities to work in a similar way, please get in touch

Where does the Human Learning Systems (HLS) approach come from?

The Human Learning Systems approach starts with the belief that public service exists to support human freedom and flourishing. It grew from a group of public sector workers realising that the traditional use of targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) wasn’t effectively addressing the complexity of people’s lives.

To design and deliver services that really make a difference to people’s lives is to put learning at the centre of what you’re doing – to recognise that systems (made up of people) deliver outcomes, not individual ‘services’ or pathways.

It’s a collaborative approach, involving the people using public services and the people working with them; trusting those relationships; developing networks of organisations around them; sharing learning and reflecting on how things are going. This way, the people on the receiving end of public services have an influence on the broader system.

Why did Cornwall choose an HLS approach during the pandemic?

 When ‘Contain Outbreak Management Funds’ (COMF) came from central government at the start of the pandemic, Cornwall Council saw an opportunity. One of its leading public health consultants knew of the HLS approach and had the vision, courage and leadership to take this funding and try doing things differently.

The COVID crisis was pushing all of us to be less risk-averse, to cut through bureaucracy and get on and do things. Cornwall Public Health assembled a core team of people who believed in the HLS approach enough to really give it a go. That’s often what it takes: the combination of an individual’s passion, commitment and knowledge of this way of working, and a belief that it’s never a perfect time to start, so let’s start in whatever way we can.

What were the main changes to ways of working?

The changes happened on two levels. First of all, Cornwall Council Public Health took the HLS approach to using its COMF funding, making the application process much more of a dialogue. The team of commissioners had an open-door policy, so the people applying for grants could talk to them throughout the process.

Instead of setting KPIs and asking organisations to submit monitoring forms, the team asked each organisation to participate in three peer-learning events. Questions that might have been answered on a monitoring form were asked from a learning angle. For example, “how many people have you seen?” became “what have you learned about need among the people you are working with?” and “what challenges have you faced?” became “what hasn’t gone so well, and what has enabled you to make a difference?”. These questions were answered in the round and shared with other organisations, so everybody learned about what was happening across Cornwall.

Cornwall Council and all of the organisations working with communities funded in this way were sharing their learning, building a picture of Cornwall as a whole. They built relationships that enabled collaboration which they found very beneficial. They had to report on spending, so there was still financial accountability, but the other elements of monitoring and evaluation were collaborative.

The second level of change was Cornwall Council investing in a learning partner, which was Just Ideas. Our role was to support the learning from and between the grant-receiving organisations, to look at how these processes were working, to discover what the impact was, and to work out how this learning, and the positive results of a HLS approach, could be shared in Cornwall and beyond.

What’s radical about the HLS approach is consciously freeing up and creating spaces for learning to happen. Really investing in relationships and learning. Just Ideas is used to working in a human-centred, relationships-based, learning-focused way. We do a lot of collaborative analysis, involving people in helping shape the messages that need to be shared.

One difference this time was in how we presented the research findings. So we didn’t just do a boring report. We invested time and energy in presenting the findings and the learning in an interactive way that reflected that HLS approach. We really pushed the boat out to make it accessible to people who were interested, in the way they were interested. So someone might only want to watch the videos, someone else might want to dive deeper into the detail.

As a team, we learned a lot about how writing the content, designing the structure and creating the visuals affected each other in a way that led to a fuller, more interesting product. Now this way of presenting findings is something we can offer people, as an alternative that’s more accessible, more interactive and more engaging.

Can you tell us more about the learning spaces that you created?

Cornwall Council really put their money where their mouth was when it came to investing in learning. They brought in external support, to help create and hold learning spaces. We kicked off with a big online event to showcase the way of working and let organisations know what to expect. That was followed by a series of smaller groups, with each organisation becoming part of a smaller learning cluster.

We worked in an inquiring and appreciative style, enabling conversations. There were two different sets of about six learning workshops. Each organisation went to one near the beginning to set their aims and talk about what good would look like. For example, how will you know you’re getting there? What do you anticipate might happen? What are the challenges you’re facing already? What’s going well?

At the end of the programme, everyone came together in a face-to-face event – grantee  organisations, commissioners, people living and working in communities – to share learning and talk about how this could influence the relationships and funding processes in the future.

How did people respond to these changes in ways of working?

 Most organisations that received funding found themselves freed up and trusted to do the work that needed doing with their beneficiaries in Cornwall. The vast majority were delighted with this approach, this streamlining of the application process into something that felt productive, rather than hurdles to get over.

Invariably, people found the learning workshops really useful, supportive and collaborative. They appreciated the change in relationship with the local authority with the commissioner. Most of those voluntary and community sector organisations have been really wanting to work in this way, and have been trying to work in this way. Their overriding message was don’t go back to the old ways! Keep moving in this direction!

Some found it a bit uncomfortable to talk about what wasn’t going well. Some were out of their comfort zone, having relied for so long on counting numbers of people that come to sessions and ticking boxes about outputs and performance indicators. We saw how our role as the learning partner, holding spaces for these changes to happen, really helped. Most people commended Cornwall Council for giving it a go, and want it to carry on.

We love this way of working. Cornwall Council Public Health made themselves available, and worked with us as team. They were clear from the beginning that it’s an iterative process – we didn’t know what we were going to find. We worked together on how to present the findings. We ended up with a great result, but there were points in the process where we didn’t know when we could draw a line under it. It’s the nature of this way of working and it’s to be embraced but it’s not always easy.

 

“I’ve really enjoyed the process of reflecting and learning. I certainly feel more confident to always think about how learning should be part of the process. Mentioning it today with a colleague, we were thinking about how even in our teams we can sometimes remain siloed! 

Just Ideas has been open, honest, flexible, and always there when we’ve had questions. You’ve shown us a different way or presenting, which has been great. Your challenge to share with our colleagues has allowed me to think differently. You’ve provided us with evidence to support different views, which is really helpful.”

Helen Kneale, Commissioning Manager,  Cornwall Public Health

 

What were the biggest outcomes of these changes in approach?

Cornwall Council Public Health encouraged and invested in alliances of organisations. This meant that the really tiny, volunteer-led groups that wouldn’t normally have a seat at the table could come together with bigger organisations around an issue, for example a disability alliance.

Investing in the voluntary sector, building relationships, and having a voice as an alliance, rather than being in competition, was a big outcome. Bridges were built. Some voluntary sector organisations were prepared to put Cornwall Council’s logo on their materials for the first time ever, because they felt they were all trying to achieve the same thing.

Another outstanding outcome was that by reflecting on how things were going in real time, through learning workshops, rather than retrospectively, everybody had an understanding of the bigger picture, of the needs and the assets available in Cornwall. People got to know other people doing similar work, or different work, who they could work with in collaboration.

Our videos show beneficiaries talking about how amazing, flexible and responsive the services were, for example with people having to move house, people’s mental health, or people’s needs changing.

In voluntary and community sector organisations, it’s really hard to get anyone to fund what you need to do to keep your organisation healthy. With this money, they could invest in new staff, or time spent on strategic planning and fundraising. At an individual level, there is evidence of services being freed up to be really responsive to what people needed on a changing, day-to-day basis.

At an organisational level, we heard people saying staff wellbeing was at rock bottom, and they were able to use this funding to take away threats of redundancies, buy in extra capacity and recognise the value of investing in the team’s wellbeing. Even in the height of COVID, they saw less staff sickness and more people supporting each other to do their jobs, even across organisations.

What needs to happen for a ‘whole system’ approach to work?

Someone (or more than one person) needs to have a vision for how things could be different, and needs to be equipped to take a leadership role. It doesn’t have to be a director, but somebody with the skills and drive to see that things can be different.

You can start wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, by inserting spaces to learn and reflect together with the people who are the biggest experts in what’s going on in their lives. You don’t need to have the perfect set of circumstances to try a HLS approach. It’s not a case of ticking every box. It’s more about applying what we can to what we’ve got.

We need an understanding that better outcomes for people come from a whole system, not from a particular intervention. And that those people are very much part of the system. It takes a bit of bravery, spotting an opportunity to try and do things a bit differently and getting some colleagues on board.

How did Cornwall make this approach work in such a short timeframe?

What’s useful and interesting about that is there’s never going to be a perfect context in which to redesign the way you do something. The short timeframe for this work was definitely imperfect. Cornwall Council was letting these organisations know they were going to be working in a new way, focusing on learning, collaborating, holding learning workshops, asking what works and doesn’t work, and being flexible. At the same time, the funds needed to be spent by March 2022 to meet the national government’s conditions.

There was a bit of pushback from organisations questioning whether this made any sense. But these organisations could see that the council was investing in building relationships and having conversations in the open, and that helped them see the constraints and understand that we’re all part of one system. Once they realised there was flexibility to spend funds in the way they chose, they managed very effectively and usefully to spend the money on the outcomes for which it was intended.

How can Cornwall make sure these changes are sustainable?

It’s important to keep talking about the benefits that have come through this HLS approach in this particular setting. To talk about that with other decision-makers at the council. To help people see that we can build on good progress that’s already happening and should be happening anyway. Rather than saying you’re doing it all wrong, you’ve got to stop doing that and do it like this, because there are brilliant commissioners out there that already practise a lot of elements of this way of working. There’s an opportunity to show people that we can go even further.

How can this learning be shared with other councils?

 Cornwall Council Public Health has connected with the people managing and promoting the Human Learning Systems approach – an organisation called Collaborate and Northumbria University. The lead commissioner, Helen Kneale, was involved in Human Learning Systems Week and is now talking to people about what Cornwall has been doing.

As a learning partner, Just Ideas felt it was really important to give something back to everyone involved in this work and help spread the word about its positive impact. So our designer created this interactive image with a beautiful picture in the shape of Cornwall, made up of representations of real people who took part. It invites people to come and have a look at what they did. Now we can help make links with other local authorities that might be interested.

What has Just Ideas learned from this work?

It’s one of the most rewarding pieces of work that Just Ideas has been involved in this year. We’ve learned a great deal and we’ve really added to our offer. One of our strengths is that we are quite fleet of foot as an organisation. We have a network of associates with a range of different skills and experiences, all with a real passion for creating positive change in communities and in our environment.

This was a project where that Just Ideas collaborative model really came into its own. We were able to be flexible enough to meet what was needed, in a project with a lot of moving parts. We celebrate being a small staff team with a big team of associates – we see that as a strength. We’ve got the Just Ideas collaborative, who all do other things as well, and they bring that into being part of Just Ideas.

Please contact Just Ideas for further information.

 

 

Film: Just Ideas’ Learning and Evaluation partnership with IVAR – Local Trust’s Community Leadership Academy

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Just Ideas continue to work regularly with Local Trust Big Local communities. There are 150 English neighbourhoods that receive capacity building support and funding through the Big Local programme.

The @LocalTrust Community Leadership Academy (CLA) was formed in 2019 to help recognise and develop leadership skills which the nominated partnership members then bring back to their Big Local area to support community-led change.

As Learning and Evaluation partners for the CLA, Just Ideas and the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) work to evaluate its successes and to identify how best to support the CLA programme in the future.

Collectively we work with Big Local communities to capture their experiences and many inspirational insights are shared.

We are delighted to share this film, made by Windmill Hill Big Local in partnership with IVAR, which highlights the achievements of the Big Local. Partnership members also share the difference the Community Leadership Academy has had on their nominated member and within their community.

You can watch the video here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgu6ILk5Hos

Final report published: Community responses to Covid 19

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In our April blog. Director of Just Ideas – Richard Usher – reflected on how much was learnt and shared over two years working with the Third Sector Research Centre team and being alongside communities across England.

Local Trust have now published the final report in the series they commissioned, entitled “One pandemic, many responses: How community responses to COVID-19 developed and why they varied “.

The research followed 26 communities in England, observing their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis defines a ’model of resourcefulness’ through reflections on the factors that drove strong community responses; and on the interaction of multiple factors that shaped different responses. These include factors such as feelings of community cohesion and identity; past and present investments in communities; having a strong network of community leaders; and having strong relationships with local authorities

Richard reflected:

“It was a privilege to work alongside Brookside Big Local on this research project – their responsiveness to the rapidly changing need of their community during the COVID-19 pandemic meant that isolated people got the support they needed, be it help with food, prescriptions or just someone to talk to. This report explores findings from 26 communities across England and their varied responses to the COVID-19 crisis. It’s an inspiring read and it was great to be part of the wider research group with the Third Sector Research Centre, including our regular partners WSA Community Consultants.”