The first phase of the Total Craigroyston initiative was completed when the last of three consultation sessions was held in West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre on 18 June. The team behind the initiative to improve life chances for local families will now evaluate the findings of the three workshops before deciding what can be taken forward.
Manager Christine McKay explained the thinking behind the approach. “Total Craigroyston has been established to improve outcomes for children and families in the neighbourhood around Craigroyston Community High School. The initial focus will be on looked after children to ensure that all necessary support has been identified to ensure that they have the best opportunity to succeed in their lives. We will also be working to reduce the need for children to become looked after, and that means finding ways to offer support at an earlier stage and in a variety of ways.
The idea is to take a holistic approach – ensuring that all of the local resources in both the statutory and the voluntary sectors are on the same page, facing the same direction and contributing to the agreed outcomes. Crucially, people who are using services and those who live in the area will be involved in deciding what is required and contributing ideas about where and how it should be delivered. Local staff who know the community, its strengths and challenges, will be also central to the development.
It is important to think of Total Craigroyston as an approach rather than a project! We know there is lots of excellent work going on in the area and we will build on that. However we must be brave enough to acknowledge that there is duplication within the system. When necessary, removing this duplication will allow us to re-invest those resources in services that can be offered earlier to prevent the need for children to become looked after in the first place. To us this means building on community strengths, engaging earlier and more effectively with service users, doing more preventive work, creating better linkages between partners, improving communication and developing parity of esteem between organisations – among other things!”
Total Craigroyston recruited the services of a Glasgow-based social innovation agency SNOOK to help engage with local people and local staff. SNOOK, which ‘specialises in service design for social good’, was tasked with taking a fresh look at how services are delivered, staff and community perceptions of their delivery and to identify where improvements can be made at an earlier stage.
Three well-attended sessions were held over the course of the month, giving opportunities for as many groups, individuals and agencies to participate in the exercise.
The ‘Total Craigroyston Festival’ on Saturday 2 June was an informal open public event held in Muirhouse shopping centre event that gave local people an opportunity to comment on Craigroyston, express their own vision for the future and describe what they can bring to the area.
The ‘Co-creation Workshop’ on Friday 8 June brought together people from Craigroyston, both organisations and members of the public to develop ideas generated during the Design day, putting ‘meat on the bones’ of the ideas.
The last exercise was a ‘Prototyping Labs/Showcase’ on 18 June in West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre. Before the event, organisers SNOOK explained: ‘We are looking for a cross diagonal slice of leaders/organisations/frontline staff/families/young people/experts. During this workshop we want to bring the ideas to life that have been generated by the community and check in on the routemap for the future of Craigroyston.’
That route map is now being developed by Snook and City of Edinburgh Council, directly informed by the involvement of local people and workers. The organisers point out: ‘This is not a consultation but a collaborative exercise in understanding what the future of Craigroyston will look like in terms of services, approach, community and the generation of people growing up.’
Christine McKay said: “We have tried to involve as many people as possible in our open events – the whole point of Total Craigroyston is about being open and welcome to opinion and the route map we are generating will ensure that this approach is maintained. It was good to see so many people taking part in the sessions – both local people and local staff – as it is very important that we get the opinions of local people about how we can best tailor and deliver the services that will suit their needs. This really is only the start of the process, however, and there will be many more opportunities to be involved in the future.”
Principles For Craigroyston:
Working with people, not at them.
Prevention, not intervention.
Always show progression.
Whatever it takes.
You can’t really argue with that, can you? You can keep up to date with what’s happening by visiting the Total Craigroyston blog at www.totalcraigroyston.wordpress.com
Pictures taken at the West Pilton workshops on 18 June
