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

Section 5: Anchor Theory(ies) of Change – Micro, Meso and Macro Levels

Evaluation data illuminated components of the Anchor project which contribute to change at the level of micro (individuals), meso (services) and macro (organisations).

At the micro level of families/individuals and relationships:

1. As a person/family centred and relationship-based service Anchor helps people to help themselves without fear of judgement, which parent participants associated with statutory service such as social work. This was highly valued by parents.

2. Anchor is perceived to be free from stigma, ‘sits alongside’ people, provides a social cushion and helps ‘hold’ people and prevent them slipping into crisis in the immediate and longer term.

3. Anchor works to people’s strengths, gives people time, helps them to identify and work with their needs, at a pace set by them and what is possible rather than a deficit model.

At the meso level of organisations and communities in Shetland the following are key:

1. Anchor is not an emergency/crisis service and sits ‘under the radar’ in terms of Statutory Services and policy such as GIRFEC. The freedom for Anchor to develop in this way has been important to ensure services engage with families and individuals at a time that is best for them, and through helping people to recognise risky behaviours, helps build resilient families.

2. The sense of place and belonging for families, leaders, workers, and communities was significant. Passion for improvement was visible to the researchers and permeates Anchor. Shetland is their community and they wanted it to be an inclusive and fair place to live and work.

3. Leaders being brave and thinking ‘outside the box’ to achieve partnership working and switching resources from statutory services was evident. Two years of conversations and discussions about what Anchor might look like preceded its inception.

At the macro level, key components for organisations include:

1. Achieving a shared vision, understanding and collaborative working takes time, resources, patience, trust and bravery amongst leaders in negotiating ‘systems changes’ to enact early intervention and prevention across organisations.

2. Authentic conversations around social inclusion, connectedness, and social interaction need to be sustained as fragile connections could be dismantled if momentum or trust was lost.

3. Impact on outcomes takes time to evidence so adopting the Anchor approach will not provide a quick fix to family support and early intervention but rather work towards a sustainable model of change through the development of a social action across people and their communities.

Summarising Emerging Components of the Theory of Change

To further illuminate what our findings mean about the process of embedding change we now apply a theoretical lens drawing from the dynamic process of social change described by Weber¹⁶ (1991) and four constructs of Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) developed by May and Finch¹⁷ (2009).

Weber (1991) describes social action as being influenced by the past, present and future and when human behaviour influences the behaviour of others, becomes embedded and the norm. Key participants have different roles but collectively they contribute to the social action. Our findings suggest the roles and bravery of all the key partners; families, project workers, local authority, health, social care, police and education services are connected, and Anchor is developing as a social action in Shetland. Our phased approach to data collection, the participation of key stakeholders and our understanding of the policy and local drivers and the mechanisms which make Anchor work (Appendix iv) suggest a journey characterised by putting in the ground work to grow a shared understanding of what needs to be done, what needs to change and what the future could look like.

To understand further what these evaluation findings mean and how they might transfer/apply to other Island contexts or areas of Scotland, we apply NPT¹⁷ which has four constructs to help explain this process of social action. Using NPT as a theoretical lens, we use four key concepts to discuss the findings of this evaluation in more detail.

Coherence as a construct of NPT illuminates key stakeholders understanding of Anchor. Anchor as predominantly a school-based initiative needed to bring on board several key stakeholders with responsibilities for child and family wellbeing. Families and project workers perceived Anchor to be unlike other statutory services in that it is child and family centred and provides support across a range of issues. Parents understood Anchor was ‘different’ to other services they had experience of such as social work and the GIRFEC process. They appreciated the lack of stigma in being involved with Anchor. Staff in schools also understood Anchor as a safe space to nudge children and families into. School staff reported there were generational issues and histories associated with schooling with some parents and being able to hand over or suggest Anchor was helpful.

Other key stakeholders from health and social care, police, education and local authority who are members of the Anchor project board, have met regularly since the inception of Anchor planning and implementation. During the Phase two workshops there was a high level of agreement and understanding amongst these participants of what Anchor represents and why it is needed. Trust in each other and understanding of what needs to happen has been a catalyst for shared understanding of the needs of Shetland to provide a safety net for families to improve decisions and outcomes. This comprises a wide range of services across health and social care, education, local authorities, and Police. Across all key stakeholders we spoke to there was a shared understanding of the values we identified which underpin Anchor; fairness, compassion, kindness and humanity.

Cognitive participation relates to the cognitive receptiveness and engagement of participants to Anchor and the different components within it. The need for flexibility and the scope of Anchor to cover the diverse activities reported in a Day in the life of…. (Appendix v) was understood by all key stakeholders, as was the need to avoid turning Anchor into a more formal/statutory service and the restrictions this would impose. Linked to this was the willingness to take risks and experiment, with Anchor as an inductive approach driven by those intended to benefit and children and families placed at the centre.

Over time, Anchor has come to be understood as a safe space rather than a service, per se. The receptiveness of and trust between local authority, health and social care, education and police stakeholders has taken several years to achieve and has required regular communication and interface between services. There was also recognition that the level of receptiveness and openness could be fragile should significant changes in personnel occur.

Collective action refers to what key stakeholders did to establish Anchor and what has been learned during the process. The driving force behind Anchor was the desire to do better and intervene early for some of the most vulnerable families in Shetland and prevent them slipping into crisis. Relationships at micro, meso and macro levels were key alongside breathing space, permission to do things differently and permission to fail. Over time, this desire became a collective one across local authority, health, social, education, police and third sector services. This took time, transformational thinking about what services could look like, bravery amongst leaders and embedding new ways of working. Leaders who put outcomes for families and change first, rather than organisational issues, demonstrated bravery in putting families first. Collective action was further enabled by commitment from support services such as the head of finance, legal support for issues around information governance and HR prioritising job evaluations.

Reflective monitoring is about reflecting on and appraising the Anchor journey and the progress which has been made. Throughout, Anchor has conducted ongoing monitoring and evaluation which has captured changes in families and systems. The impact of Anchor on the families they engaged with demonstrated increased self-awareness, empowerment, and confidence. This was due to the non-judgmental ethos of Anchor which gave people permission to try things out and permission to fail. This also applied to staff and leaders across organisations. Relationships and trust at micro, meso and macro levels, which require time and commitment, facilitated reflexive monitoring of the Anchor process and how it has become embedded and successful in Shetland.

To summarise, we propose viewing Anchor as social action within an NPT framework has enabled us to highlight key elements of the change process as undertaken by key participants in Anchor. Therefore, learning from Anchor has relevance to other Island and Scottish contexts. Phase three focussed on the relevance of this learning to other Island and Scottish contexts and is reported below in Section 7.