Co-pro example: Building trust through relationship-based practice
Stevan Sutherland describes how trust is essential in the co-productive process, reflecting on the co-production of a stigma toolkit which supports practitioners and families to take a more stigma-free and inclusive approach to delivering services in Scotland.
The Making it Work for Families (MIWFF) is a partnership whole family support service between Clued Up, Fife Gingerbread, Citizens Advice & Rights Fife (CARF) and Fife Intensive Rehabilitation & Substance Use Team (FIRST). The toolkit was developed in partnership between MIWFF project and the Poverty Alliance.
Some of the staff team had supported the families involved for a long time, and while a lot of the families have different make ups and were being supported with different issues, they were all sharing stories of how they had experienced stigma.
As we moved through the process of collating their experiences, and working with the Poverty Alliance to plan the best way forward, we realised that it would be best to develop the project in the form of a toolkit which allowed practitioners to understand more about stigma. We discussed how that understanding would be given real meaning through the stories that the families were sharing with us.
Once we had developed a workable proposal, we took that to families and ran sessions with them, gathering their views and feelings, so that we could make adjustments and changes based on what they felt was important. The co-production team were the first people to take part in and test the toolkit’s group activities and then the staff and families worked to accommodate the changes everyone felt were important.
I think our overall approach is one of relationship-based practice - we’d struggle to achieve anything with the families we work with unless we had a pretty positive relationship with them. The families can often feel apprehensive or are against any services coming on board and have often had experiences in the past that haven't been very positive with a service. We work in a particular way that we put their needs and their wishes right at the forefront of what we do. This approach naturally lends itself to co-production.
It can be a slow start, taking small steps where we build a positive relationship and it has to happen before we dive into the focused, issue-based work. We work with the whole family so everyone is aware of the different workers, while also respecting confidentiality. Ensuring that individuals in the family have the right to their own individual support and recognising that they are all on their own, sometimes very different journeys. We just focus as much as we can on building genuine relationships, making sure there is an equal power balance as far as possible.
Working for a voluntary service can help with gaining trust, in contrast to services provided by statutory authorities where the families may have no choice about the service being involved in their lives. We offer the family a choice and they can decide if they want the support or not. So right from the very start the balance of power is much more equal and I think that helps to develop the trust and the positive relationships with them.
We were not coming in as professionals who felt like we knew it all and created something on our own that we thought would be relevant and useful. Our process started with the families coming together, working alongside us to develop the resource that we knew was important because it was based on the stories that they were sharing.
It was quite straightforward for us really in terms of once we knew we had this invaluable resource of experiences; we just had to do a bit of the work to put it together and make sure that their voices were heard throughout it.
We won an award for the development of the toolkit at the Fife Voluntary Action annual awards evening, in the equality and inclusive practice category, and it was amazing to go back and share that with the families - was all buzz!
Feeling genuinely heard, after living for so long feeling marginalized and experiencing stigma when accessing services, and having an opportunity to work alongside our service to share their stories and experiences has been incredibly powerful for them.
There is an important and empowering kind of education and learning that is gained through working on a project of this kind and people can develop the ability to challenge and deal with future situations when they are being or feeling stigmatised.
I would say without a doubt there's been a lasting positive impact on the families involved in this project. Gaining confidence, being better connected with peers through the group activities and the developing really positive relationships with our staff are a lasting effect of this co-productive process.
Listen to Stevan talk more about the toolkit and its development in this video from Public Health Scotland.
Stevan is Team Leader at Clued Up Project, a charity in Fife supporting young people affected by substance use. He manages the Making It Work for Families partnership service.