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We shine brighter together
#WSBTMOVEMENT
We shine brighter together
#WSBTMOVEMENT
aBOUT
WHO WE WERE
Brent Care Journeys was a pioneering strategic alliance between Barnardo’s and the local authority of Brent. It is unusual for the statutory and voluntary sector to come together in this way; in a non-commissioned partnership. This innovation was inspired by the need to take action on the unacceptably entrenched, and simultaneously unprecedented, challenges faced by young people today.
Barnardo’s made this investment to enable partnership working with young people who have grown up in the care system. We knew that our services across the UK make a huge impact to the lives of children and families every day, but what we want to learn more about was how to address the need for systemic change, by giving more power and agency to the people who have true lived expertise of the issues at hand.
We achieved this incrementally through a fundamental belief that empowering relationships can be a pivotal place of change. We designed, tested and implemented together; we employed young people who have grown up in care to be the change that they wanted to see; we learned reciprocally and with mutual respect; we listened, and we gave centre stage to the least heard.
Outcomes for young people who have grown up in care are unacceptably poor and we existed as a stand against that.
Watch our film (below) to get an idea of what it was like to be a part of this journey.
WHAT WE DID
Early days of the project coincided with the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. From a distance we engaged potential collaborators, were responsive to experiences of acute need and earned trust; in many ways this period was foundational in terms of our learning about the power of relationships. Although opportunity to collaborate in person had been disrupted we emerged from this time with a Movement of 40 care experienced young people with a passion for change. They have remained at the heart of work over 4 years, enabling and directing a community of people who find solace and solidarity in connection with one another.
From here we embarked on phases of codesign - each one iterating in approach and standards as it learned from the last – to achieve the host of cultural and structural changes that we are proud of. If you would like to know more about our process and achievements we invite you to access our impact report. You can also access our external evaluations from the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations here . From a strategic perspective, a key step at the beginning of the programme was cocreation of an evaluative rubric. From that we were able to devise operational projects and goals. A top level view of these is as follows (see below):
HOW WE WORKED
With an unapologetic approach to reflection and a drive to make our learning useful to others, in later phases we were able to depict our approach into five key pillars:
* radical relationships
* relentless inclusion
* intentional environments
* redistributed power
* learning & iteration.
We welcome you to download, discuss and iterate the BCJ way 'Partnership with People' model in your own work (see below).
Each pillar represents that which we have learned we must strive for. It has been crucial scaffolding in work which can be both chaotic and complex. We don’t claim perfection but we are proud of the way in which our young collaborators can identify these values in our work (see below):