Podcast Episode 7: The story catchers

Please note that this transcript is auto-generated and therefore will contain some errors and natural pauses in conversation.

00:00:06:20 – 00:00:27:12

Dawn

Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work podcast, where we explore how a creative approach to life story work can help children and young people who’ve been in care make sense of their past and build a brighter future. A new model for life story work is being rolled out in the north east of England, and this podcast shares

 

00:00:27:12 – 00:00:43:23

Dawn

the latest learning and investigates how it could help improve the lives of care, experienced children and young people across the country. My name is Dawn Williams and I am an associate at Blue Cabin, one of the partners on this exciting work in the region.

 

00:00:45:06 – 00:01:03:19

Dawn

So far in our podcast series, we have thought about what is a story? Who gets to tell it? What are the ethics of storytelling? What gets told and what gets withheld? Today, we’re asking the question How do we gather those stories?

 

00:01:04:03 – 00:01:23:08

Dawn

What tools might we use in order to best advocate for and influence change for care experienced young people? I’m delighted to say that discussing it with me today will be Chloe Juliet, who is lead researcher with Ipsos Mori, who along with Corum, are evaluating creative life story work.

 

00:01:23:19 – 00:01:40:00

Dawn

And Tom Elkins, chief executive officer from Photo Voice, a UK charity that uses ethical photography to promote positive social change. A really warm welcome to Chloe and Tom this afternoon. Very lovely to have you here with me.

 

00:01:40:02 – 00:01:40:22

Chloe

Lovely to be here.

 

00:01:41:12 – 00:01:42:20

Tom

Yes. Thank you. Lovely to be here.

 

00:01:43:02 – 00:02:04:14

Dawn

Yes. At the fourth attempt despite COVID, we are here this afternoon, so I’m really delighted. Chloe, I was just wondering because we’ve had the pleasure of working together on some of the evaluation of the All About Me sessions on also with some of our young researchers.

 

00:02:06:00 – 00:02:22:10

Dawn

I wondered if you would like to do a bit of scene setting for us around the importance of gathering those stories. Why? I know one of the sessions that we did with our young researchers was like research. Why would you bother?

 

00:02:22:10 – 00:02:33:05

Dawn

Why are we bothering to do that? And I just wondered if you would like to do some big-picture contact setting for us without slides? How to know slides aloud to the phone, Chloe? No.

 

00:02:35:05 – 00:02:49:14

Chloe

So I have a great life story. Work. When I when I saw that come through as a saying that we could be evaluating, I was very excited about that. Thank you for not introducing me as care. Experienced people often lead with that in their space, but am also care experience.

 

00:02:49:14 – 00:03:02:02

Chloe

So I’m seeing that come through being experience under researcher. As someone who did life story work when I was a kid, I thought was very exciting and a new a new way of doing things. So we went for it.

 

00:03:02:02 – 00:03:20:09

Chloe

And when we when we got together with those young researchers who are going to help us make the evaluation better, which again was an incredibly exciting addition to to the work evaluation, I do think more people with lived experience should be involved in designing research that is about them as well as participating in it.

 

00:03:21:23 – 00:03:37:19

Chloe

I think what stood out to me the most in there in the conversations about how to do this, this well is often about agency. So you do, you do research and in a way that’s gathering people’s stories, particularly when it’s qualitative.

 

00:03:38:03 – 00:03:52:08

Chloe

You’re trying to understand their experience of a service like creative life story work. And that to some extent is is their story. And then the work of creative life story work is very much digging into to what their story is.

 

00:03:52:08 – 00:04:11:06

Chloe

And I think the key difference that stands out to me about life story, work and creative life story work is the agencies is different. I’m in creative life story with the the agenda for how they explore that is kind of set by the young person and not by a social worker or whoever is trying to to gather

 

00:04:11:06 – 00:04:24:21

Chloe

information to give the young person. I think that they’re they’re both really valid things to be doing, but I think the the agency over who writes the narrative and who gathers the stories is is what’s most interesting to me in this space.

 

00:04:25:04 – 00:04:39:10

Dawn

And I think it’s because of the podcast that we’ve been doing and talking to other people about whose story is it and who gets to tell it that I did think very carefully about how to introduce you because it’s your story and you might not want it to talk about that today.

 

00:04:39:12 – 00:04:50:20

Dawn

I know that’s one of the big the agency with who, what you get to share and what you got to withhold was one of the big conversations that we had with some of the young people that we were in the room as well.

 

00:04:51:21 – 00:05:14:09

Dawn

Thank you, Chloe and Tom and Tom, the photo voice to your charity. I know it’s based in the UK and you work globally on. Lots of different projects. But I wondered if you could tell us a bit. It’s a nice link into the what Chloe has been talking about.

 

00:05:14:15 – 00:05:20:05

Dawn

one of your projects called care leavers in focus. If you wanted to tell us a bit about that.

 

00:05:20:22 – 00:05:40:06

Tom

Sure. You’re entirely right that we’re a UK based charity, but we do work all over the world and we are not an issue specific organization. So we’re an organization that’s based around a methodology and approach to community engagement and the belief that everybody should have the right to tell their own story in the way they want to

 

00:05:40:06 – 00:05:57:08

Tom

tell it. And people should listen to the stories that they have to tell and act accordingly and do things differently as a result of that. And so our projects have ranged from all sorts of different topics, and no one year is is the same, which is, you know, a very exciting opportunity for for us as an organization

 

00:05:57:08 – 00:06:17:21

Tom

to work on many different things. We came across the idea of trying to work with care leavers in England and Wales, basically because we thought we knew that there was an interest in it. We knew that there were some areas that people were exploring and we thought very carefully about, could we apply our methodology to this and

 

00:06:18:07 – 00:06:39:05

Tom

developed a program with the intention of engaging young people in a variety of settings across England and Wales and getting them to share their perspectives using photography as a tool of communication? Photography is one of the easiest and simplest ways to kind of document what’s happening in people’s lives in a way that is obviously very engaging.

 

00:06:39:05 – 00:06:55:09

Tom

We’re used to seeing photographs all around us, and what we try to do with our workshops is work with a whole variety of different ages, different locations, different experiences and get people to tell us what was important to them, what was happening in their lives and who they want to share that with.

 

00:06:55:15 – 00:07:14:16

Tom

What were they like to tell people who were often making decisions about them without asking that perspective? And so we did this right? Yeah, we worked all over with a variety of different partner organizations not having done the care leavers specific project before, and we knew that we wanted to develop some sort of output that did something

 

00:07:14:16 – 00:07:38:05

Tom

with these stories. And that led us to another year of engagement with local authorities, with a group of ambassadors across different care. Experienced services of state got involved, partner organizations got involved, and we ended up developing this resource that takes the stories, the priorities, the perspectives that young people have told us and turns it into a thing

 

00:07:38:05 – 00:07:54:14

Tom

to amplify their voices for other young people. But more importantly, for local authorities who are providing services, it tells them what they should be thinking about in relation to what the young people have told us. So we’re very much a kind of a vehicle for other people’s voices, perspectives, ideas and the outputs of this are all kind

 

00:07:54:14 – 00:08:10:16

Tom

of very much all worth it around what they’ve told us, and they’ve been involved with it every step of the way, and we’re really proud to finally get it to print, which which happened just before Christmas. And we’re now very actively distributing it to local authorities across England, Wales in the hope that they’ll take a pause on

 

00:08:10:16 – 00:08:18:16

Tom

the activities and things that we have been able to get from the young people we’ve been working with and share that.

 

00:08:19:03 – 00:08:34:07

Dawn

Chloe, it strikes me that there’s a lot of what Tom’s just said then have been the meat of some of our conversations when thinking about the questions that we might be asking that we tested out with the young, with the young researchers.

 

00:08:35:12 – 00:09:00:04

Dawn

And I’m just wondering, what are some of the considerations that you’re putting into place when you’re crafting those questions? And I’m thinking of the big conversations that we had around ethics and consent because that was a big, huge topic of conversation, which was very new to me and very new to some of those young care leavers that

 

00:09:00:04 – 00:09:05:19

Dawn

we were talking to as well. And it’s certainly something that’s come up in Tom just talking there.

 

00:09:06:09 – 00:09:24:05

Chloe

So I think one of the biggest things that comes up in ethics is this is the importance of informed consent. It’s not just enough to kind of say This is what we want to talk to you about that sound, all right, to take part, you know they need, particularly when the conversations are sensitive and so personal in

 

00:09:24:05 – 00:09:39:17

Chloe

this way. And it is it is very personal to it to talk about your care experience. And I think there’s a culture around that which I’ll come on to try to get ahead of myself too quickly. But it’s telling them what we want to talk about why what will be done with their their views and perspectives afterwards

 

00:09:39:17 – 00:09:55:05

Chloe

, like it’s going to inform this report. You’ll be anonymous. That report will go to such and such a person, and it will have this kind of impact. There are options for kind of ways that you can participate, like if it suits you better to have a discussion, we’ll have a discussion if it suits you better to write

 

00:09:55:05 – 00:10:14:12

Chloe

things down or draw or whatever, it’s giving them all of the information upfront. They need to make an informed decision about whether they really want to participate. And that can include telling them what sort of questions you’re going to ask them, because that really helps them to understand whether they want to discuss that or not.

 

00:10:14:12 – 00:10:24:09

Chloe

And it’s it’s letting them know things like you don’t have to answer every question, actually, if you want to answer most of these, but one of them makes you uncomfortable or don’t force yourself, not just to skip it, that’s fine with us.

 

00:10:26:04 – 00:10:46:04

Chloe

So think informed consent is the really is the really big part of that. There are some other things that we work through. But what this this makes me think of is, again, kind of agency, an agenda setting. And one of the biggest conversations we have with the young researchers was about who gives that informed consent.

 

00:10:47:03 – 00:11:08:21

Chloe

So there’s kind of two things interacting here. There’s this culture of research. We always ask the participant to give us informed consent because usually it’s about their experience. There is also a culture of social care, which we discussed at length with the young researchers, and then I was able to take that away and discuss that length with

 

00:11:08:21 – 00:11:27:03

Chloe

the evaluation team and was really tough to be able to do that about. There is an understandable culture in social care where children’s lives are discussed quite openly, incredibly personal things about your life and things that happen to you when you were when you were a child.

 

00:11:27:03 – 00:11:39:00

Chloe

Some of the most painful things we have been through and they’re they’re just written down and discussed among people all the time. And it has to be this way to to to some extent, at least because otherwise, how can social workers do that job of not critiquing that as such?

 

00:11:39:00 – 00:11:55:11

Chloe

But it does create a space where it’s easy to forget that these young people should have some agency over who tells a story and why. So to me that the best that we had some really fruitful conversations, that young researchers were amazing.

 

00:11:56:08 – 00:12:11:08

Chloe

But the best conversation to me was that one about, well, don’t just ask for the part, the interview, participant consent. We want that young person that the the carer or the social worker that they will be discussing. Yes, it will be anonymous, but that’s not the point.

 

00:12:11:08 – 00:12:32:02

Chloe

It’s still it’s still their story so that carers should check with the young person first if they’re happy for the character to talk to us about their experience before before they consent to it. So even with the anonymity in the the careful crafting of questions, so, so making sure that we get across that we want to understand

 

00:12:32:02 – 00:12:46:10

Chloe

what your experience of creative life story work was. We don’t want you to tell us unless you really want to know about your care experience. We’re not asking you to tell us your story. We’re asking you to tell us how you found creative life story.

 

00:12:46:10 – 00:12:54:13

Chloe

Work as a space to explore your story, and that doesn’t mean telling us things about yourself that you don’t want to hear.

 

00:12:54:19 – 00:13:04:16

Dawn

So Tom is anything that Clarissa saying that I saw you nodding vigorously as Chloe was talking, and I wondered if there was things that you were recognizing there as Chloe was talking.

 

00:13:05:02 – 00:13:25:07

Tom

I mean, absolutely. I think everything Chloe saying there is absolutely vital to any kind of engagement, and I think we’re a slightly unusual organization in that we have a kind of a quite different approach to informed consent that others might have, that we don’t get consent for anything leaving the room until the end.

 

00:13:25:20 – 00:13:40:22

Tom

So we the workshops that we did with the young people we did, it took place over eight weeks, sometimes longer. And it was only at the end that we said to people, OK, now we’ve gone through this journey together and you set the agenda and we’ve shared agendas and we shared ideas.

 

00:13:41:13 – 00:13:57:04

Tom

What are you happy for other people to see and hear? And the risk with that approach is everybody turns around. There is nothing and it’s never happened. It’s never happened. But there is a genuine risk that you’re giving people that absolute element of control to what leaves the room that people will say, Well, all the best stuff

 

00:13:57:04 – 00:14:12:00

Tom

I want to keep here. And you know that it actually might be the most compelling image or the most compelling story that you know, we’ll have the biggest impact, but we’re really proud of that approach, and we always kind of distinguish between what gets people in the room, what kind of consent processes you need, whether that’s kind

 

00:14:12:00 – 00:14:26:11

Tom

of academic consent or looking at ethical considerations around ethics boards and things like that. But what comes out of the room has to be in the control of the people who have created the work. And so we’re very, very keen on that approach, and I really recognize what Chloe saying there.

 

00:14:26:21 – 00:14:41:14

Tom

And I think that can’t be a process that is taken lightly or done quickly. And so for us, we say that our consent process takes weeks so people feel every step of the way they’re in control. And by the end of it, when we’re saying what should come out of this room, what should other people say?

 

00:14:41:21 – 00:14:53:15

Tom

People know exactly at that point what the implications are, what they’re comfortable with, that you kind of created that safe space to really feel absolutely emboldened to make those decisions without any undue influence.

 

00:14:53:23 – 00:15:04:14

Chloe

I love that. I think what you’re saying about consent being an ongoing process is so important, right? Like just because somebody says, yes, I want to participate on one day doesn’t mean that when you actually come to do the interview.

 

00:15:04:22 – 00:15:19:04

Chloe

They want to participate on that day, they might be in a different headspace, and that’s absolutely fine and it’s getting across. They can say no because it’s very easy for people, especially when they’re younger. I think to to to pressure themselves and kind of push themselves to to maybe do something that that they they don’t want to

 

00:15:19:04 – 00:15:32:16

Chloe

do today, but they wanted to do a few days ago, so they feel like they should and that kind of thing. So I think the ongoing consensus is so important that what excites me about your time and voter voices is the the agenda setting aspect of it.

 

00:15:33:04 – 00:15:45:19

Chloe

I love that you’re allowing them to set the agenda in a way that I can in research. I did. I’ve worked on a project with Young People’s Network, which is how we kind of know each other through the years, my fairburn network.

 

00:15:46:22 – 00:16:03:22

Chloe

But we we work together to enable them to set their own agenda, and they come up with such interesting and fascinating stuff that you can then take to other people. And when they when the agenda comes from them that underpins flowing things, they wouldn’t have occurred to anybody else because from an outside perspective, you don’t notice how

 

00:16:03:22 – 00:16:22:09

Chloe

important that is. And the the editing process, the the when we did our podcast on the Young People’s Network, we would discuss some very difficult stuff. So while everyone kind of said we’ll come into the room and and talk about this thing and they set their questions that I then kind of put to them and we work

 

00:16:22:09 – 00:16:31:22

Chloe

through everything, we went through a process similar afterwards. And how much of this are we going to edit out so that it’s just thoughts? And how much are we going to share with the public? And is it’s a western.

 

00:16:31:22 – 00:16:42:21

Chloe

I remember feeling like, Oh, we could lose so much amazing, valuable stuff, and other people won’t get to hear it. And I’ve heard it, and it’s made such a difference to me. But you’re right, it’s the right balance.

 

00:16:42:21 – 00:16:53:15

Chloe

It’s the right way of doing things. And we ended up sharing a lot with the world that was was fascinating and a few things were held back just for us and that that felt right. I think that that process, if you could do it, is spot on.

 

00:16:53:23 – 00:17:10:12

Tom

I agree, and I think one of the things that we’re really lucky about is because our workshops don’t take place over a short period where it’s ongoing engagement over weeks. If somebody does want to tell a story that they feel uncomfortable about sharing in a particular way, or they’ve taken a photograph that is perhaps more revealing or

 

00:17:10:12 – 00:17:22:21

Tom

exposing, that might only be for the workshop. The same space that we create in the workshop. There are often other ways to be really creative and find another way of telling that story in a way that provides a bit more protection or a bit more anonymity.

 

00:17:23:03 – 00:17:37:11

Tom

There’s there’s nothing to say that you can’t try another way of taking a photograph or telling a story in a different way. If you feel that it’s important to tell that story or share that, but you don’t feel comfortable in sharing it in the way that maybe you initially thought you could.

 

00:17:37:11 – 00:17:46:13

Tom

And that’s that’s one of the things that has been great for us. We’ve been able to kind of go back and revisit people’s stories and saying, people said, Well, this is important, but I don’t want to share it quite like this.

 

00:17:46:20 – 00:18:08:00

Tom

And so we were able to work alongside them and find new ways of articulating that because people do have a passion to be heard. And I think one of the the aspects of our methodology, which is incredibly rewarding, is seeing people’s confidence in recognizing that they’re the experts in their own experience, that they are absolutely exposed and

 

00:18:08:00 – 00:18:30:00

Tom

seeing their confidence grow through workshops because photography is a tool that can give really good results really quickly. And so people can kind of suddenly find themselves in a way of sharing things that perhaps they hadn’t had the opportunities or the tools or the confidence to share before, and that ongoing engagement to kind of just tweak things

 

00:18:30:00 – 00:18:41:17

Tom

about and make things a bit different or to change the lighting or to do something in a different setting means people can really feel that they are not having to restrict themselves in what they want to tell people for fear of saying too much.

 

00:18:41:17 – 00:18:47:00

Tom

You can still share these things in a way that’s very protected, but still gives the message across.

 

00:18:47:23 – 00:19:01:01

Chloe

It’s not. That sounds like such a great process. It’s so difficult when you’ve when you’ve got lived experience of care experience and particularly things like engaging with with media or presenting at conferences, which a lot of care leavers end up doing.

 

00:19:01:03 – 00:19:15:01

Chloe

And it can be very challenging to know what to to leave out and what to keep in and how to present it so. But being able to explore it and figure out what it is that you need to say and then when you know what it is you need to say, then you can Vanessa and figure out

 

00:19:15:01 – 00:19:30:20

Chloe

how you make it kind of public facing. And it’s a really, really valuable process that I would like more caregivers to to know more about and practice less of pressure to to go out and tell you story and figuring out how you want to do that is so, so valuable.

 

00:19:30:23 – 00:19:42:11

Tom

I mean, and thank you for the kind words. I mean, it’s but it is a blessing and a curse in some senses because we’re a bit hard to define as an organization because we can’t always, you know, we’re not issue specific.

 

00:19:42:11 – 00:19:59:00

Tom

We don’t always kind of work on the same things, and we can’t always guarantee what’s going to come out of the workshops at the end. And if you’re working with some partners or some funders who are looking for a particularly predefined set of outcomes, it’s really we always call the gray fog of participation where you know you’re

 

00:19:59:00 – 00:20:13:19

Tom

going to come out the other side and you know, something’s going to happen. And, you know, it’s probably going to be a really. Rewarding and enriching experience, but what that looks like at the end, we have no idea, and so the resources that we put together this, there’s two of them.

 

00:20:14:03 – 00:20:20:19

Tom

I’ll hold them up, which is really useful for because I don’t know if you’ve actually seen exactly how.

 

00:20:20:19 – 00:20:21:00

Chloe

We.

 

00:20:21:01 – 00:20:36:04

Tom

Know, but this this is the this is the the the young person’s book and it’s the practitioners book. So this is for local authorities and this is for care experienced young people themselves. This is about this. We had no idea it would be like, this is kind of three times thicker than we thought it would be.

 

00:20:37:02 – 00:20:49:05

Tom

We didn’t know what it was going to end up looking like. It is now a books that’s got booklets and postcards and dialog sets and posters for the pope so that people can put on the walls. We had no idea that it was going to be like that.

 

00:20:49:05 – 00:21:03:07

Tom

And, you know, we obviously put down a rough budget for what we thought an undefined resource might cost three years later, not have done any of the workshops. And it’s, you know, it’s wildly off. But but we’ve been able to find ways to make it work.

 

00:21:03:07 – 00:21:20:16

Tom

And so that that kind of the unintended, unexpected things that come out of these sort of workshops are amazing, but it’s quite hard for some people, if particularly they’ve got quite a or some organizations, if they’ve got quite a fixed approach to what they want the project to look like and what they want the end to be

 

00:21:20:23 – 00:21:25:06

Tom

. We’re a bit more slippery than that and a bit harder to define, which I think can put some people off.

 

00:21:26:02 – 00:21:41:20

Chloe

Mm-Hmm. That’s really interesting. I’m conscious the listeners probably aren’t methods geeks, but I think that’s one of the key. The key differences between research and engagement is if you’re going to do engagement properly, you don’t want a really harshly put together, prescriptive set of outcomes.

 

00:21:41:20 – 00:21:49:19

Chloe

You want a bit of flexibility so that it can be Bottom-Up and people can decide what they want to do for themselves. And I say, you know, you’re going to get somewhere good, but you don’t know where you’re going to get.

 

00:21:49:19 – 00:21:54:22

Chloe

So it’s very hard to to tell people in advance of what this is going to be like for itself.

 

00:21:54:22 – 00:22:05:09

Tom

And how have you found that with with your kind of approach where you’re letting you know, attendees, participants, you know, set the agenda, how do you find kind of reconciling that getting through the great for yourself?

 

00:22:05:11 – 00:22:23:13

Chloe

So I suppose I’ve got a three when I do research, it’s it’s very it’s very well defined and we keep people in those parameters flexibility where we can when we do. But when I do a bottom up kind of let them set their own agenda and do their own thing.

 

00:22:23:13 – 00:22:41:11

Chloe

I’m. It was it was very challenging. I mean, as my fairburn were were great, and I think it’s unusual, and I was I was lucky in that they were supportive of the idea of getting some of us together and see what’s important to them and see what they want to do.

 

00:22:42:08 – 00:22:59:18

Chloe

And that is incredibly unusual to have somebody support something like that, and I don’t think it’s something that will happen again very quickly. But we just kept checking in and I just, you know, every couple of months you’ve been showing the progress and you tell them what they have come up with.

 

00:22:59:18 – 00:23:15:06

Chloe

And as long as you can show them little sparks as you go along, they feel they can continue to support it. But there is a kind of there’s a medium, which I think is what we basically did with the young researchers on the Creative Life Story work program, which is more kind of co-production.

 

00:23:15:06 – 00:23:32:01

Chloe

I think co-production is very ill defined as a thing. But, you know, the principles of their sharing power and all that kind of stuff with the young means that we kind of we came in, we had we had some parameters and we remember that first session and we did kind of have to sit down and let them

 

00:23:32:01 – 00:23:46:16

Chloe

talk about lots of really big things about the system and then remind them that, you know, this is how all of all of that stuff sits in context around this project that we’re doing virtually. You know, we need to focus on creative life story work, and we need to look at the evaluation.

 

00:23:46:16 – 00:23:59:10

Chloe

We’re doing that. But within that kind of the ball’s yours like these are the questions that we’re coming up with that you could throw them out. You can you can rip them apart, you can trust and you can tell us what’s totally different things you can edit them like, what do you think we should be doing?

 

00:23:59:23 – 00:24:07:07

Chloe

So there’s a there was a kind of happy medium and they could see how it would feed into the wider system. There was some yeah parameters.

 

00:24:07:09 – 00:24:09:05

Dawn

It took a while, though, Chloe, didn’t it?

 

00:24:09:06 – 00:24:11:02

Chloe

It did. Yeah, that first actually.

 

00:24:11:10 – 00:24:25:01

Dawn

Took a while for them almost to believe that this is that this was the offer and there was a bit of we had a session with the time that they actually believe that this is what we’re going to do with it.

 

00:24:25:01 – 00:24:41:04

Dawn

So we had to almost redo a bit to Tom’s point about work, and that’s the joy of working over a longer time span is that we had we had the well, not a luxury, but we had the opportunity to be able to address that with those young people as well.

 

00:24:41:10 – 00:24:43:08

Dawn

Reassure them, Yeah, you’re right, there was.

 

00:24:43:23 – 00:25:00:13

Chloe

There was a real shift wasn’t there and we did that first, that first session where we look through the first set of questions for the interviews we were doing, they kind of they didn’t hold back. And that was it was a really fruitful conversation, but I’m not sure they were convinced that we were going to do anything

 

00:25:00:13 – 00:25:13:07

Chloe

with it, really. And when we came back the next time we did the first half an hour with a kind of, you said this, we did this, you know, it wasn’t a we’ve actioned everything you said exactly as you said it was.

 

00:25:13:11 – 00:25:28:02

Chloe

We’ve taken two thirds and pretty much done exactly what you wanted us to. But there’s this third of stuff actually where we’re not going to do it quite like that. But here’s why. And let’s discuss it further. If you feel strongly about it, tell us and what we can talk about it some more.

 

00:25:29:06 – 00:25:40:14

Chloe

And I think that there was a real penny drop moment where they were like, You have literally taken every single point that we said and you’ve done something with it and where you’re not going to action it, you’ve been really clear on on why and we can still talk about that.

 

00:25:40:14 – 00:25:50:14

Chloe

And they it definitely changed the atmosphere of how that all worked. I felt we yeah, that was a very positive, quite moving session.

 

00:25:50:18 – 00:26:12:13

Dawn

It was, yeah, it was very moving and light bulbs are going to be in that space. And I wondered if if Tom, that was the same in some of the workshops that you’ve been running as well changes in the participants when they have that moment of it’s mine, it’s ours and they’re listening almost.

 

00:26:13:01 – 00:26:27:23

Tom

I think so. I mean, for us, I think because we’re slightly outside of the systems that perhaps people normally engage with, we’ve already we’re already slightly outsider to some of these these dynamics and often and not just with with levers, but with some of the other projects we’ve done.

 

00:26:29:06 – 00:26:45:13

Tom

It’s taken a couple of days to convince people that even though we might be working in partnership with an organization they’re familiar with, they don’t know us, but they know the apartment that we’re working with, that we’re not really connected to that we’re there genuinely to try and kind of provide an opportunity for them to have their

 

00:26:45:13 – 00:27:07:06

Tom

experiences heard and understood. And we have no we have no greater agenda other than that. And again, it’s one of the benefits of us being a non-issue specific and slightly separate from these things. But the point you’re saying that you said we did think it is amazingly transformative to see the reactions that people get when you actually

 

00:27:07:06 – 00:27:17:08

Tom

say to them, Yeah, we took on board what you said and some of what we can’t do. And here’s the reasons why the amount of goodwill it generates just to say, Yeah, we did listen to you, we can’t do it all.

 

00:27:18:04 – 00:27:28:03

Tom

Or there are some good reasons why the thing you’ve been asking for here isn’t possible within these parameters. And it’s one of the things we’ve really advocated for in the resources because it came up over and over again and.

 

00:27:28:04 – 00:27:44:22

Tom

In the workshops. So when we created the ambassador group, which came from the original, the original participant workshops, but also worked alongside local authority experts. It was then basically working together to say what was realistic to expect other local authorities to do.

 

00:27:45:16 – 00:27:59:22

Tom

You can. You could be as aspirational as you want, but if it’s not possible, but then that’s reasonable to to understand that things aren’t possible. If people have explained why they’re not possible, it’s not. It’s not reasonable to say no, sorry, that can’t be done or just to ignore it.

 

00:27:59:22 – 00:28:14:07

Tom

And so actually, those kind of ongoing dialogs have been incredibly transformative, and this is a large part of what we’re we’re promoting and the resources both the young people and local authority can teams to say, you know, feedback on what?

 

00:28:14:14 – 00:28:30:07

Tom

What’s the point in asking a question if you’re going to do something with the answer? And it seems like such an obvious principle about consultation and engagement, but it seems to be so surprising to people, and I think we get used to because we do that all the time and and I’m still a little bit baffled when

 

00:28:30:07 – 00:28:34:19

Tom

I’m surprised by people, when I see people who are surprised by it kind of taking that sort of approach.

 

00:28:35:03 – 00:28:54:20

Chloe

I think transformative is is bang on the right word. I think it’s a little personal, but I think I’m going off in care and then getting into co-production problems. On that side of the table. So when I first, I design all of this stuff now and I run them, but when I first started in my very early

 

00:28:54:20 – 00:29:11:04

Chloe

twenties after I’d left Cairo, I took part in co-production projects to deal with problems in the system. And the the shift was life altering for me, taking part in something like that because prior to that, I would I would flag something that I think was an issue, but I didn’t.

 

00:29:11:04 – 00:29:30:19

Chloe

I didn’t understand the system that I was engaging with. Nobody explained to me, like when somebody said no or somebody said yes. And you understand why. And it took participating in co-production and then becoming a researcher that specializes in health and social care and engagement methodologies to understand my own childhood because nobody could explain to me when

 

00:29:30:19 – 00:29:43:02

Chloe

I was young why it was a yes or why it was a no, and I had to educate myself in how government works in order to understand why it’s so yes and want to know. And I think there’s something I don’t know.

 

00:29:43:02 – 00:30:01:23

Chloe

There’s something here around the way that we do. These engagement practices could be applied to social care, just having those conversations to explain why decisions are made the way they are. I suppose to circle back the importance of life story, but I can’t wait in a way like this is why it’s so important for people to to

 

00:30:01:23 – 00:30:17:13

Chloe

understand why decisions have been made and why their life has been the way, the way it is. And I think it’s strange that I’ve had. I like my lifestyle, but I think it’s strange that I’ve had to become a researcher to understand because nobody told me when I was younger.

 

00:30:17:19 – 00:30:21:11

Chloe

But yeah, that’s going to play on my mind for a days, you. That’s very interesting.

 

00:30:21:13 – 00:30:37:02

Tom

But clearly we must. What do you think it is? Because it kind of feels like it was at once. People get it seems quite obvious, and it’s like one of the things that you see an optical illusion. And once you kind of you see through the optical illusion, you can’t see it in any other way anymore.

 

00:30:37:03 – 00:30:50:09

Tom

And so and I feel a bit like I’m so far down. Well, of course, this is how you should engage with people and kind of respond to it that I’m struggling to kind of imagine what it’s like to not have that as part of the way you do things.

 

00:30:50:09 – 00:30:52:07

Tom

So so what do you think the barriers are?

 

00:30:52:09 – 00:31:11:12

Chloe

I do think it’s I mean, it’s a cultural thing. I think so much of it is about race. Those people are. There are enough social workers when you don’t have the time and the headspace, it’s, you know, you’ve got you’ve got to do the things that are your job in the sense of paperwork, you need to fill

 

00:31:11:12 – 00:31:27:06

Chloe

out that form. You need to notify that person. And things like spending time with the young person just falls down the list of priorities. And, you know, it depends on the the social worker and it depends on the the context.

 

00:31:27:06 – 00:31:46:07

Chloe

But I don’t think anyone gets into social work without. Wanting to do things like that, but it isn’t part of the culture because they’re so over, so overstretched, and I think it needs is group groupthink, isn’t it like you get you get used to prioritizing certain things and if you don’t have an external force, come in like

 

00:31:46:07 – 00:32:02:02

Chloe

photo voice or blue carbon and kind of say, Well, if you just engage like this, you’ll get totally different results and that that young person who is hard to reach or won’t engage or whatever it is like if you if you approach them in a different way, they might change how, how they respond to you.

 

00:32:02:09 – 00:32:20:05

Chloe

But I think it’s it’s very easy to get tunnel vision and not realize without an external force kind of coming in and and reminding you that the human aspect of it, because everything so, so paper might have got outcomes to and KPIs and, you know, all those kind of stuff.

 

00:32:20:22 – 00:32:25:14

Chloe

It’s very challenging, but I think. Yeah.

 

00:32:25:16 – 00:32:40:20

Tom

Interesting. Yeah, it’s really interesting. I mean, I think across the sector, we’ve we’ve been incredibly lucky that the people we’ve worked with have all seemed to have such a genuine kind of commitment to the jobs that they do and wanting to deliver the best outcomes they can.

 

00:32:40:20 – 00:32:53:02

Tom

And we’ve really kind of been struck by how resource strapped people are both in terms of capacity, time, money, you know, available facilities, all those sorts of things. And that’s one of the reasons why we’ve really wanted this.

 

00:32:53:10 – 00:33:12:06

Tom

The toolkit to be something that we could give to people for free that didn’t require any ongoing subscriptions. It wasn’t anything that people needed to get specialist training for. It wasn’t anything that kind of did anything ongoing for us other than being the people who gave this the organization who worked in partnership to develop this tool and

 

00:33:12:06 – 00:33:22:06

Tom

then give it to people who would hopefully benefit from it. And that has been surprising for the reaction from local authority staff has been surprising to that that we said, No, no, it’s free. Is yours. This is it.

 

00:33:22:06 – 00:33:34:00

Tom

It’s all in the box. Everything you need is here. If you don’t have the capacity to do the sorts of engagement work that we’ve been able to do over a long period time, use other people’s stories to engage with the people that you’re working with here.

 

00:33:34:03 – 00:33:49:11

Tom

Here’s and posters and captions and things and worksheets that you can use. It’s all here in a box for you, and it’s free and it doesn’t cost anything from now on. And that has been a great thing to be able to offer to try and kind of mitigate some of the things you’re talking about, Chloe, but has

 

00:33:49:11 – 00:33:56:19

Tom

been surprising to you, to a lot of local authorities that that has just been that’s all it is. It’s just we want to give it to you because we hope it will be useful.

 

00:33:57:21 – 00:34:03:11

Chloe

Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Just here have some help. We recognize that your strategy, you’re doing an amazing job. Please keep going. Have some help.

 

00:34:03:12 – 00:34:05:22

Tom

Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

 

00:34:06:11 – 00:34:30:05

Dawn

And Tom’s given us one hope there. Chloe, if you had, what would your hope be in, I don’t know, five years time. Looking back on the work that you’re involved in now with blue carbon or or in other parts of your working life, what would your hope be for where those stories are being heard?

 

00:34:30:10 – 00:34:31:14

Dawn

What’s happened to them?

 

00:34:32:13 – 00:34:34:05

Chloe

Oh gosh, what a big question.

 

00:34:34:21 – 00:34:37:05

Dawn

I’m sorry, I left it to her last.

 

00:34:40:11 – 00:34:56:20

Chloe

I think I’d I’d like to say, Well, this seems implausible in a way. If I was, I would like professionals to have more time and headspace to to read that sort of thing and regain that kind of human connection.

 

00:34:56:21 – 00:35:16:23

Chloe

Part of the job that they often just don’t have time for through no fault of their own at all. But I think, yeah, getting getting some some empathy going and putting themselves on on the other side as part of their practice would be would be fantastic and just really valuing the importance of love, life story, work and

 

00:35:18:07 – 00:35:30:18

Chloe

. Enabling the young person to kind of work through where they’re from and why they’re from there, and I suppose it would be it would also, you know, similarly, it was for effects on professionals like me, but having care experience people have have access to.

 

00:35:31:14 – 00:35:43:13

Chloe

I was actually dazzled and amazed when I did the Young People’s Network. I’m the only such as Project, actually. So when I asked them at the end of the project, what did you get out of that? Well, I learned all these new skills and that was great, and I really enjoyed this all but one of the biggest

 

00:35:43:13 – 00:35:53:11

Chloe

things that comes up, and I don’t really know anybody else who’s been in care. And I’ve just known because I took part in co-production projects in my early twenties. I’ve just known so many people who’ve been in care for a long time.

 

00:35:53:19 – 00:36:09:05

Chloe

But I forget that there are other 1920 year olds who haven’t done that yet, and this is the first time they’ve ever met somebody else who has a shared experience like theirs. And I think bringing bringing people together so they actually have peers is really important.

 

00:36:09:05 – 00:36:14:11

Chloe

So yeah, giving giving those sharing those stories and letting people connect with each other as well.

 

00:36:14:12 – 00:36:32:15

Dawn

Thank you, Tom and Chloe. I think we’ve come to the end of our time here this afternoon, but and I wanted to say thank you for our conversation and for finding so many points of connection between the two worlds that you’re that you’re that you’re working in.

 

00:36:32:22 – 00:36:56:21

Dawn

And Tom, I wished we’d called this podcast The Fog of Participation, The Gray Fog of Participation. We might have to give up the title for the whole of the podcast. I wanted to just finish off. I’ve got a couple of quotes, one from the from the young researchers and also Tom, from the participants of your of your

 

00:36:56:21 – 00:37:15:21

Dawn

project. And the quotes that I’ve chosen say working on this project gave me confidence to show things that I feel are important and to show others that my voice counts. It’s important to use our voices what we say is important for what gets done.

 

00:37:16:15 – 00:37:30:22

Dawn

And the last one, it was really helpful are much more easy to talk since you’re with people who’ve gone through what you have. I hope we can aid making changes for care leavers and for those still in care.

 

00:37:31:11 – 00:37:56:04

Dawn

I’d like the last voice in the room today to be of those young people who we’ve been, who we’ve been working with. Tom and Chloe. Thank you very much for your time this afternoon. Whether you’re a foster carer, someone who has experience of the care system or you work with children and young people, we hope this episode

 

00:37:56:04 – 00:38:10:00

Dawn

has given you an insight into how we could make life story work better for young people. You can find more about our show at We Are Blue Cup Income Forward Slash podcast, and we’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

00:38:10:06 – 00:38:29:04

Dawn

You can record and send a direct question or message to the show via the website. You can tweet us at We Are Blue Cup in, or if you’re one of the 15 hundred people taking part in our Creative Life Story Work Learning program, you can always get in touch through the online learning platform if you’d like to

 

00:38:29:04 – 00:38:47:07

Dawn

listen to future episodes. Remember to subscribe or efforts as you usually get your podcasts. And if you’re using Apple Podcasts, please do leave us a review as it really helps others to find our show. Bye for now and look forward to speaking in our next podcast.