Workshop: No Wrong Door – Balancing protecting children with support for families
Wednesday 15 September 2021
As a part of a week-long Strengthening Families, Protecting Children event that took place in September 2021, North Yorkshire No Wrong Door lead and facilitated an online workshop. An overview of the workshop and the key messages and themes are explored below.
Overview
- In the No Wrong Door (NWD) session we heard from North Yorkshire and each of the local authorities adopting the NWD model. This included an overview of the model, its values, design principles and non negotiables, the power of language when working with families, some powerful case studies and a video about RAISE, North Yorkshire’s framework for managing risk in NWD.
- Presentations from LA’s covered a wide range of approaches and in particular set out compelling stories of learning and progress for young people in the different contexts and how NWD is positively impacting upon organisational culture, partnership development and achieving improved outcomes for children and families.
- Insights developed through this workshop fall under three themes, which are explored in further detail on the next slide: Reframing the way we look at and think about families; Wider system change in adopting local authorities; and Working with the whole family.
Key themes from local authority participant feedback
Reframing the way we look at and think about families
- Understanding and appreciating the importance of family and acknowledging that children achieve better in families.
- Relationships are the key to healing, the most powerful therapy is human love.
- Expertise within the team helps everyone to rethink what's going on for the family and promotes standing alongside the family and recognizing that they are the expert in their journey.
- Family may look different for a child in care but they deserve to be connected to a network that loves and supports them. Some children will struggle to find and sustain lasting relationsips, No Wrong Door can always be seen as home and a place of support.
Wider system change in adopting local authorities
- The importance of working closely with partners and with elected members to ensure that every child or young person is receiving a high standard of support.
- Families and YP are active partners in No Wrong Door. We need to rethink partnership to ensure YP feel included and their voices are heard.
- In No Wrong Door; partners work together to slow processes down and think about what's best for that child and their family rather than seeking to simply reduce risk for the organisation.
- Relationships and the language we use with professionals/colleagues frame the way that families are thought and talked about and is important to create a trauma informed environment.
Working with the whole family
- The importance of seeing and supporting the whole family and seeing them as people in their own right and hearing their stories is critical to the wellbeing of young people and keeping families together.
- By working with the family to understand their issues, we can help treat the root cause of the problems the family are facing.
- From a workforce perspective, it is important to ensure time is given for everyone to ‘retrain’ how they see and work with families. The social care system is not static and knowledge and skills must be updated.
- Relationships are central to the No Wrong Door ethos.
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Attendee feedback
Total number of attendees: 55
So many successes so early on, changing the culture takes time and digging deep, keeping going with the drum beat
Great presentation- so important to incorporate vision, values, and provocations into everything we do across children’s services to bring about systemic change
Thank you for the passionate and powerful presentations today. It’s great to see everyone coming together!
Read more:Balancing protecting children with support for families - Learning event - September 2021
