Introducing our Treasure Trove of Relational Practice Resources
In this blog we’re pulling together some of the brilliant resources we’ve discovered as part of our Relational Practice peer learning programme for those working alongside care experienced young people.
We invite you to dive into this treasure trove and see where it takes you!
First, a quick reminder of the resources we have generated as part of our Programme. Resources include:
- A report giving an overview of the programme including our 7 key learning points
- Short films showcasing how participants on the programme have used the learning to develop their relational practice
- Ten blogs to lead you through different considerations and tools to support relational working, including:
- care experienced young people’s views on relationships
- the relational universe model to help a young person describe the relationships that matter to them
- most significant change evaluation method and much more!
- Read more about the experience of taking part in the programme (National House Project and Lancashire county council)
- Finally, don’t miss catching up on the 7 recordings from our programme webinar series.
The Relationships Project
The next stop on our treasure trove tour is the Relationships Project. Here you’ll find much to enjoy including:
- Resources to develop collective understanding of relationship-centred practice, and why it matters
- Ways to connect with others working in this area
- Ideas to help translate learning into practical tools and training for embedding relationship-centred practice
A brilliant starting place here is the Case Maker which expertly assembles the evidence base for putting relationships first. It is an excellent place to find lots of key facts and stories to equip us all to make a compelling (perhaps irrefutable!) case for relationship-centred practice.
Relationships First (Falkirk)
During the learning programme we also came across toolkits focused specifically on relational working with care experienced young people. Falkirk’s Relationships First work got young people and members of the workforce together to produce design concepts for a leaving care service that privileges love and places relationships at the heart.
The website shares the learning and challenges experienced. There’s lots to delve into, including resources on why the work is needed as well as service design methodology tools and a timeline of what they achieved and reflections on what was learnt along the way. They created three service design concepts through the collaboration process. These are:
- Share the care policy is all about creating flexible and agile working conditions for corporate parents to support a relationship centred culture. This film describes the relationship between Robert and his local authority work experience mentor Siobhan (his ‘corporate parent’).
- Heart on Sleeve network aims to create a movement of practitioners who support relationship-based practice – the vision is to humanise the way people work and relate to one another.
- Hug in a mug recognises the importance of nurturing staff so they are well placed to support nurturing relationships.
The REAL toolkit (STAF)
Another set of resources is the REAL (Relationships, Empathy and Love) toolkit from STAF (the Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum). This collection of guides is for people with care experience and the people that support them. The guides for the workforce are all about providing support through the lens of relationships, with the resources organised in three domains:
- Relational organisation – guides in this area include
- Creating a relational performance management system
- Setting the values of your organisation and why it matters
- Keeping staff – why relationships do not work without retention
- Individual practice
- Exploring opportunities with young people
- How to build relationships with young people
- Ways of taking care of your mental health
- Frameworks and theory
- Why relationships matter
- Supporting young people from minority backgrounds
- Supportive relationships in continuing care
Cutting across these domains are different themes including kinship care, secure care, homes and housing, rights and justice etc. https://www.therealtoolkit.scot/the-workforce
RadHR
Finally, we really like the approach taken by Rad HR, a community focused on the specific issue of developing organisational Human Resources Policies which don’t oppress people, but support equity and justice in our workplaces. If you are looking to change your policies and processes to encourage relational practice, they are a good place to start. They might help you think about how to develop more collective internal policymaking, including some practical steps to move away from just one (HR) person at a laptop.
There’s also a newsletter you can sign up to and a forum you can join.
How might you use this relational practice treasure trove?
- There’s lots here – put some time aside to have a look, file them somewhere you can easily find them again, and share the love – send them on to colleagues
- Start conversations with colleagues about parts of the treasure trove that resonate with you – what do they like? Perhaps you can pick one or two ideas to trial in your role and set a future date with a colleague to check in together about how things are going
- Consider joining the Relationships Project mailing list to keep updated about new developments and to stay connected others who are also passionate about working relationally
- Browse the Rad HR website and see if there are any HR policies you could change to make your organisation more centred on relationships.
Where can you find out more?
This blog is part of a series of resources drawing on the peer learning programme and containing young people’s views, evidence and case studies of why working relationally is important for practice with care experienced young people.
The resources are accompanied by a series of webinars, where you can learn more and discuss how to put them into practice.
Find out more: Relational Practice Resources