Surrey Youth Focus

Case Studies

Summary

Systems Leadership, Stewardship Through: ▪ Relationships: We start new initiatives collaboratively, aiming for a shared view of the problems, often involving senior leaders and frontline practitioners. ▪ Voice: we aim to ensure that the voices of children, young people, families and practitioners are heard in the right places and we are learning about the importance and methods for shared sense-making of those voices. ▪ Courage: Some of our best work has come when we have been bold and taken action outside of our personal comfort zone. Surrey Youth Focus

| Overview

Surrey Youth Focus (SYF) is a collaboration charity – We are actually very small – a team of seven people bringing together organisations in Surrey to with a Full-Time Equivalent of about four but improve the lives of Children and Young people. On believe that we punch well above our weight. the one hand, we serve children’s and youth Because we have a range of skills and professional charities through a range of interventions, and on backgrounds we come at problems from different the other, we have strong links with public perspectives and experiences. We spend a lot of organisations including Surrey County Council time as a team trying to understand, and (SCC), health organisations, Districts and Boroughs understand again, the world around us, why things and Surrey Police through our role representing the are like they are, what needs to change and how third sector on boards. We build on these strong we can help bring about that change. Team relationships to instigate and encourage system members are encouraged to ‘travel’ around the change through a variety of means – from long- system making their own judgement calls on term projects and programmes to micro opportunities that arise (subject to resource interventions e.g. making introductions. A key point constraints) without the need to seek permission is proactivity, when we spot an opportunity we on decisions taken. rarely wait to be asked! Very often our work starts with small steps and grows as it builds momentum When we came across the Human Learning Systems and interest. work we were very excited, particularly about the term ‘System Steward’. Finally, someone else was

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describing our working methods which brought a initially named the “unofficial think tank”. With a sense of validation – our very different way of colleague at another charity, we brought together a working was endorsed by experts. small group of leaders from the council, health, police, education and charities to reflect on why, The results of our work are not always visible – despite all of the advances in social sciences, things happen in people’s minds and organisations medicine, and more – generations of some families that we don’t see – it can be difficult to know what have sad, unfulfilling lives, overshadowed by drug, impact we’ve had. Therefore, to write this case alcohol, domestic abuse, etc. There was no study, we asked some partners for their views on structure, no governance, just a group of us the difference that Surrey Youth Focus has made. meeting to reflect and share. This initiative evolved into “Time for Kids” – five key principles that are being used to drive whole system cultural change | Story of Change across Surrey. Following endorsement by the Surrey Health and Wellbeing Board, it is being Our story of change starts six years ago in a fairly mainstreamed through presentations by all of the traditional infrastructure organisation – serving our people involved at a wide variety of boards and youth charity members through training, team meetings across the county – inviting people information and networking and advocacy. We across Surrey to use the principles in whatever way could post-rationally claim that there was some they see fit in their work. grand plan to become a System’s Steward, that we were clear what we were doing and why. However, One of the questions that we are invited to answer that was not the case, certainly not for the first four in this case study is “What work did you do to years or so. ‘Understand the System’”. This question made me smile. I have spent the last six years’ learning about By invitation, we would attend public sector boards the “System” – Surrey County Council, health, and we were baffled at how siloed the work was – Districts and Boroughs, Surrey police and all third each agency was very clear about its role - but sector organisations working within the Surrey which left families with unmet needs. Over time, County Council geography - and my learning we started to question things that we were puzzled actively continues. about and we gradually became more confident, people seemed to respect what we had to say, and we began to build relationships. | Current Approach

A turning point came with a change of leadership at What are we doing that is different? This is hard to Surrey County Council over two years ago. Dave say, because we don’t know other systems very Hill, the new Director of Children’s Services really well. I will leave the reader to judge. saw the value in the third sector – in all of the wonderful children’s and youth charities across We have a dual focus on relationships. Firstly, we Surrey that we represent. He opened up space to focus on our relationships with people around the work towards much greater third sector system, we take time to get to know people at all involvement with council initiatives and valued levels across lots of organisations. having a ‘critical friend’. We were welcomed both to represent the third sector and also to ask questions and support change. Initially, our work “The SYF team are both focussed and committed. was mostly with Surrey CC, but gradually we have They are effective at making links across the system gained more involvement with the police and and often have a really good sense as to useful health. connections.” Health Leader One particularly significant initiative enabled us to have a very different place in the system, we

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“[SYF]… provides the link to the Local Authority with We are keen to seek out new ideas and share them a never-biased perspective; something the sector across the system; last November we were very greatly needs to make sure we are on pace, in the pleased to invite Dawn Plimmer to present on the right direction, talking to the right people, and Human Learning Systems concept at our AGM. With working collaboratively in the right ways with the about 70 influential people from across the system, right people.” this was a great opportunity to introduce new Charity CEO ideas.

“SYF’s annual meetings are effective networking events and bring together a wide range of representatives of the voluntary sector in the youth sphere. I have always found them to be useful We have learnt the …[with]… excellent speakers who bring an intellectual challenge to the Surrey audience. There importance of starting on a is no dumbing down with SYF and I for one journey with others, joining appreciate the exposure to these ideas.” Surrey CC Lead Councillor for Children

forces to understand the We have been evolving our techniques for ensuring

problem and define the that the voice of children, young people and mission. We have long been professionals informs decision-making at the heart of the system for the last six years. Originally, we trying to define true did classic research and report writing, but we have collaboration and I think that found that it is hard to actually achieve significant system change from a report. We have evolved our starting out together is a key methods so that people from multiple agencies reach out to young people to gain their voice. factor. During Covid a variety of professionals – youth workers, health visitors, school nurses, etc – held conversations to gather a picture of what was going Secondly, we focus on relationships between on for children, young people and parents. We others, acting as an introducer when noted that the very act of inviting people across the appropriate. One example was our ‘speed dating’ system to ask Children and Young people these event for 25 leaders from the public sector to meet questions could trigger positive change in itself, 25 leaders from the third sector, carefully even before the report was written. choreographed to maximise use of people’s time based on our considerable knowledge of all We are now going up a learning curve about the attending. Another example was our influence on use of Appreciative Inquiry for system change, with the direction of travel of the recommissioning of big thanks to Gary Wallace from Plymouth who has CAMHS in Surrey, which will have much greater shared his learnings in several masterclasses charity involvement going forward. attended by people from across the system. We are particularly interested in implementing multi- We have learnt the importance of starting on a agency sense-making, gaining a shared journey with others, joining forces to understand understanding of children’s lives. the problem and define the mission. We have long been trying to define true collaboration and I think that starting out together is a key factor.

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in the public sector, this has enabled us to identify | Barriers and Tensions and target key people who would be beneficial to our organisation. By forming relationships, been For a long time, it was difficult to win hearts and able to share ideas and concerns generally, sharing minds away from existing orthodoxies, but this has documents and in some cases benchmarking.” become easier over time, aided by a wave of Charity CEO leaders coming in from outside of the county. However, most public sector bodies are still “I think the steward post should be mainstreamed hampered by the legacy of New Public into everything we do as system leaders, not just Management models which their governance commissioning but delivery and assurance going bodies require. forward ... the lens they bring reminds us every day why we do our jobs.” There is still a trust journey to go on before the Health Leader/Commissioner excellent charities that we support are given full reign to work in a Human Learning System’s way – currently they are expected to deliver outcomes which focus on either process or pre–defined | What taking an HLS results. Approach Requires Health governance continues to be a complex, unwieldly beast that is difficult to navigate and We need to have high levels of confidence that our understand, let alone influence; central approach is effective. This is very different, government and NHS England controls often however, from believing that our opinions are prevent holistic local approaches. right! Spearheading a new way of working, we must welcome challenge. When someone says – wait a minute, we haven’t got to the heart of this – we need to pause and spend more time reflecting. We | Enablers and Successes are constantly seeking new truths – we may have the best answers for now, but we won’t have Our biggest enabler was undoubtedly our access to all the information and anyway, the world relationship with Dave Hill at Surrey County is changing. At the same time, it is a balancing act - Council, which opened doors for us to build we need to take action to help move the system relationships across the system; we were trusted by forward today. our main funder to get on with our work, in the way that we saw best. The tangible outputs are not always visible to us, we often can’t read people’s minds to know what As for our successes, we leave that to others to say: impact we’ve had on them. We need to believe that our focus on relationships, on bringing people “The real change has been how we commission together, on questioning, on getting to the bottom future services, the current procurement has of issues, will achieve change. Sometimes systemic recognised the significantly important collaboration inertia can seem impossible to overcome. between specialist and third sector organisations. Shifting the balance of delivery to prevention and It is important to make positive assumptions about early intervention resulting in a £6M investment people’s motivations – even though from a distance programme for emotional health and well-being it may seem puzzling why someone is doing what services” they are doing. Authenticity is important and there Health Leader/Commissioner is great power in being honest when we make mistakes, when we don’t understand something, or “Helped us to harness stronger relationships with we haven’t got a solution. It helps give others the like-minded charities and have access to key people confidence to do the same.

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For commissioners and the public sector, Human Learning Systems requires of them confidence and bravery; they are the ones who will get much of the flack on Twitter or from regulators if public money is seen to be spent unwisely. For National Government and NHS England, HLS requires delegation of resources and decision-making to local areas. Top down models of health and social care imposed on local authorities or health organisations tie hands behind the back and force one size fits all models of care, the opposite of the holistic, personalised approach that is needed.

We aim to:

• Invite colleagues from across Surrey to learn with us, aiming to capture the learning along the way so that it can be shared within Surrey and beyond.

• Carry on providing collaboration opportunities, system leadership and system NEXT

stewardship. • Continue the roll out of Time for Kids using the current methods, with the possibility of a launch event at some point in the future. • Explore with commissioners what they need from us to work in an HLS way. • Develop the system’s competence around the Appreciative Inquiry techniques that

WHAT we are learning from Plymouth Alliance.

Furthermore, one of the responders to our questions about SYF’s impact said the following, which has given us food for thought, not yet digested:

“System Stewardship is relatively new to parts of the Surrey Children’s system and it would be good to think through a strategy and annual plan in partnership.” Mental health trust leader.