A Co-constructed and Co-produced Evaluation of the Anchor Project in Shetland

Section 7: Anchor ‘Blueprint’ Principles and Recommendations

In this final section of the report, we set out principles and recommendations that are intended to guide the introduction, implementation and sustainability of actions and scalability of this intervention in other island or remote and rural contexts in Scotland.

These are based on a synthesis of the findings reported thus far from Phase one and two data, alongside our analysis of Phase three data which was focussed on using the findings of Anchor to determine how Anchor could be rolled out to other contexts. These are presented as:

Ten Anchor Enabling Factors/considerations for implementation in other contexts.

1. Relationship based interactions and services are critical and fundamental at micro, meso and macro levels to family support and linked to providing breathing space and time. Families should be at the centre of relationship building to ‘Anchor’ a holistic approach to early intervention and family support.

Relationships at micro, meso and macro levels are key. Robust relationships within and between individuals/families/workers (micro), local systems and communities (meso) and system wide (macro) are fundamental. Reciprocal trust between families, Anchor workers and leaders helps build relationships and impacts on perceptions of risk as Anchor did not work through a lens of risk which other services may be guided by.

2. Investment in breathing space and time at micro, meso and macro levels alongside faith and belief in this approach reaps benefit for families, workers/leaders and communities.

Breathing space and time are necessary to build relationships and establish trust across partnership working. Time should be spent with families and working together at their pace. The investment of time by leaders and service providers to reach shared understanding revealed benefits were possible in the immediate, short, and longer term.

3. Leadership approaches should be dynamic and distributed and include the recipients of services as partners. This requires commitment, trust and energy amongst leaders of services and organisations to support this.

Dynamic and distributed leadership involves doing what is right for the families and community as a priority. Checking things out, peer support, consultation, and trust alongside no requirement for workers to ‘seek permission’ from managers to act in the best interests of families worked. Permission to fail for both families and workers set the pace and agenda, so both were not passive providers or recipients of a service.

4. Universalism of the service links to the empowerment of key stakeholders at micro, meso and macro levels.

The universalism of Anchor, which required no eligibility check, was linked to trust in the leadership and empowerment with everyone taking individual and/or collective responsibility. Shifting power was complex, challenging and dynamic but achievable. Everyone needs to see it is as part of the job, including leaders ‘letting go’. The importance of developing a shared understanding and vision from top to bottom, and vice versa, empowers families through establishing relationships which could help them to address their needs at their pace.

5. Interactions need to move beyond signposting to ‘walking beside’, holding and empowering families, if support is to be authentic.

Supportive, flexible interactions focussed on the family. Interactions were not restricted by statutory requirements and were mediated between services and families and vice versa. Importantly Anchor workers acted as advocates and not just a signposting service. They acted as a ‘professional friend’ not bound by professional identity/regulation and viewed the situation through a ‘different’ risk lens, which included permission to fail and authority to build trust between workers and families. Modelling skills and walking beside families, empowering families, going ahead and doing, getting on with things needing doing were key interactions. Anchor workers were quietly confident about doing and acting and demonstrated innate professionalism in their accounts of their work and engagement with parents who had engaged with Anchor. For the workers themselves, they seemed to derive intrinsic rewards with them being regarded as being the ‘good guys’ by the families.

6. Individuals, services and organisations need to recognise, value and characterise a continuum of non-traditional outcomes beyond those which can always be observed and quantified.

Recognising non-traditional outcomes – outcomes in early intervention and prevention work take time and may not be measurable by traditional methods. ‘Holding’ the families suggested the togetherness of the families and workers who provided immediate practical outcomes around food, clothing and fuel (practical needs a priority without needing to know why the problem exists at the outset). Meeting practical needs could be a precursor to building a longer-term relationship. Medium/longer term outcomes included building parenting skills, improving school attendance and transitions and keeping young people out of the youth justice system.

7. To achieve family centred outcomes a family/person centred ethos/approach and strengths based approach is needed rather than a deficits model/focus.

Family centred outcomes – families at the centre of the service and desired outcomes defined by families themselves. Permission and support to try things out, fail with no consequences and at a pace led by families.

8. Continuity and consistency of funding for services is critical for workers and families.

Continuity of services - linked to longer term commitments to building and sustaining Anchor. Workers need assurance about jobs through secure funding cycles to retain people and build the service rather than a reliance on secondments. Short term funding could be detrimental to the relationship basis of a service – families and workers need consistency.

9. Recognition of the emotional labour involved in delivering a family focussed prevention and early intervention service is important.

Emotional labour - emerged as the workers identified their involvement with families who were experiencing difficult times. In the context of Shetland this could be particularly challenging given the family histories and connections across communities of the workers themselves, and their potential ease of accessibility as a consequence.

10. Scaling of an Anchor service requires creative solutions to data sharing whilst safeguarding family information to meet GDPR requirements.

Identifying solutions to Data sharing – creative solutions to sharing data across services and dealing with GDPR implications associated with sharing data across service boundaries are important. A system such Fast Online Referral Tracking (FORT) was judged to have potential by Phase three participants.