Systems Change – What’s next at Fife Gingerbread?
Opinion Piece from our Laura Millar our Strategic Manager.
All too often systems that were established with the best of intentions to support those most vulnerable or at risk in our communities begin to work against them and become part of the problem rather than the solution.
Over the years at Fife Gingerbread we have listened to families, raised awareness of the challenges and championed for change. It is critical to have enough self-awareness as an individual, project or organisation to reflect honestly on the changes we need to make both internally and externally to improve the lives of families.
Systems change is an important element of our approach at Fife Gingerbread. However, it has always been a biproduct of the family support services delivered through our projects where we identify common and reoccurring structural challenges to family’s progression.
This year we are keen that we set ourselves the challenge of tackling systems change on purpose – moving towards applying the Pareto Principle to our approach and dedicating at least 20% of our time, effort and energy into systems change. I wrote another short piece this year focused on why this is an important shift as an organisation in the context of a landscape with increasing demand for services and limited resources to respond How can we really transform systems? — Fife Gingerbread.
This will require changes to our own systems, thinking and approach to enable this shift.
We have started to talk about this idea in staff development sessions, within the leadership team and we will introduce this as part of all internal meetings. Ensuring our team understand what system changes means, their role and how they can contribute. With this in mind we have adapted our structure slightly to create an Influencing & Change Team who will drive this important and purposeful shift in our approach. Over the next year we will create space (i.e. time) for the team priorities and purpose to evolve.
Our ambition is that (by the end of this year) everyone in Fife Gingerbread sees themself as a change-maker.
As conversations around systems change have developed it has emerged that broadly systems change can be described in three categories (Practice, Policy & Legislation).
These are important differentiations to make in order to identify opportunities for tangible actions and our circle of influence. Enabling us to prioritise systems change activity and consider how our time will be split.
At a practice level we will support our team to advocate effectively on behalf of families, challenging instances where practice contradicts family’s rights and gathering evidence of challenges that are systemic rather than individual. We anticipate that the highest proportion of change will continue to happen within the area of practice primarily at an individual level – spearheaded by our frontline workers. At a policy level we will identify systemic issues that are within our circle of influence to research, challenge and change. This work will be coordinated by the Influencing & Change team and our prediction is that much of this work will be centred around local policy. At a legislative level we will raise awareness of challenges and continue to build partnerships with national influencing and research organisations.
To achieve change at all three levels (practice, policy & legislation) we need our whole team to be unafraid to shine a light on issues affecting families – both as individuals and as a community. If we remain solutions focused in our approach, we can progress. Moving away from systems that are stuck in loops of short term and immediate solutions towards longer term preventative measures.
Child poverty will be the golden thread through all our systems change work, due to the far-reaching impact of surviving poverty in all areas of family life affecting the majority of families supported by Fife Gingerbread.
To be clear our systems change approach will look both internally and externally. We will not be pointing fingers of blame at others but also reflecting internally on our own systems. Being critical of our own approach, challenging ourselves and testing new ideas. It is easy to assume that all the cyclical and systemic problems affecting families are created by others in the system, and this is a trap I am keen to avoid at Fife Gingerbread.
A great example of this recently is our work around Community Wealth Building and Progressive Recruitment.
We have been working with Fife Council to identify improvements they can make to recruitment processes and job opportunities to recruit and retain lone parents (a key child poverty priority group). Our ambition is to identify opportunities to fast-track lone parents into good, well paid and flexible work with a particular focus on key anchor organisations. However, this led to us thinking about our own recruitment processes at Fife Gingerbread and the need for improvement internally.
Changes so far have included:
prioritising lone parents for vacancies in business services
supporting lone parent work placement opportunities
prioritising the progression of our own staff team
sharing interview questions with candidates ahead of the interview
inviting our parent's forum to join the interview and selection process
All of these changes have added value and evidence our enthusiasm to improve our own approach.
Looking ahead, this will be another exciting year for Fife Gingerbread. As we continue to grow and develop, we will have a much greater focus on changing systems (both internal and external). Improving the lives of children and young people surviving poverty in Fife. We believe that if we continue to deliver frontline services without a focus on changing systems then we are complicit in the challenges that often hold families stuck in place.
The Influencing & Change team have begun to explore the key principles that will underpin our approach, and so far, these include:
Listening to staff, volunteers and families
Promoting opportunities for co-production
Asking why? more often
Using framing to shape how issues are seen and understood
Embedding a collaborative solutions focused approach
Focusing on a small number of important issues
Considering any adverse impacts of proposed changes
Reflecting and sharing our learning and journey with honesty
Through listening to staff, volunteers and families we have also identified some key emerging challenges affecting families which include housing, childcare, child maintenance and part time work.
Watch this space as we develop this approach, and we hope to be able to share our journey with you (even the bits that are tricky!).