Monday Mar 18, 2024

Supported accommodation: how we listened

Ofsted will inspect supported accommodation from September 2024. To support this work, we carried out a consultation where we not only received responses from the sector, we spoke to young people about what they wanted and needed from their supported accommodation.

Briony Balsom 0:09
Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. Today I'm going to be speaking to our guests about the importance of listening to young people, especially care leavers. So just to introduce our guests briefly, we've got today with us Anna Willow, who is children's services manager at Brent Care Journeys, Tia, who has experienced care, and we've got Lisa Pascoe, who's Ofsted's Deputy Director for regulation and social care policy and Matthew Brazier, who's one of His Majesty's Inspectors, and our specialist advisor on looked-after children. Matthew, tell me about this work, which is new for Ofsted. How did it fit into our work in supported accommodation?

Matthew Brazier 0:44
Yeah, of course, Briony. Yeah, we were asked maybe three years ago now by the Secretary of State to regulate supported accommodation, which obviously was going to be a really big task. There's around 7000, a little bit more, young people living in supported accommodation, or different types of accommodation. So it's things like single bedsits, but group living situations also supported lodgings. So we've been working on that for three years now, and will start inspecting this year as well. We thought it was it was a really fantastic opportunity to make sure that we spoke to young people, to make sure that we we heard from people with lived experience, to make sure that when we do inspect, and when we do register providers, that we were focusing on the things that matter most to young people. We've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years working with them, helping us plan the consultation, but also listening what they think was important for young people. All of the organisations that we've worked with have been really helpful in making sure that we've had the voice of lived experience, really heard, and it's been really strong throughout the project. And we've worked with Barnardos Brent Care Journeys on the project along with a number of organisations.

Briony Balsom 2:06
So Anna and Tia. Just to start with you. I'm sure we all know instinctively why we think it's important to listen to young people, but could you just kick us off by telling us exactly why it's important?

Anna Willow 2:17
I think what we know in systems is that people with a lot of authority and power traditionally get together in kind of formal surroundings and make decisions that affect children and young people and families lives all the time. But if we're doing that, with insight from people with lived experience, then we're missing so much, we're really missing the richness of what we need to work with. My colleague, Tia is an Assistant Project worker in our team, and working with the insight of her and her colleagues with us, is completely crucial part of what we do so Tia, do you want to answer that question as well about why you think it's important.

Tia 2:58
Listening is the easiest thing to do. But actually hearing someone doesn't come as easily to everyone. Because as natural human beings like we tune into different conversations that probably doesn't relate to us, like we're on the bus, we hear everything, we can choose what we want to hear and what we want to respond to. So I feel like in the past, professionals have just listened to this to give a reply back to but not listening to understand and comprehend. So that we bridge the gap between the professionals and the young people, they both can be in the same room together and coexist. Whereas beforehand, that wasn't a space that ever existed. It was two separate entities like the people who made the decisions for young people, and then the young people who had to just live with his decision. For a long time, young people in care was accepting bare minimum, but it was just the bare minimum.

Briony Balsom 3:50
Thank you both so much. And I really love your reframing that question around the power dynamic and to your distinction that you drew between hearing and listening, Lisa and Matthew, I'm sure a lot of that sounds very familiar. are we hearing anything in addition to that around at Ofsted, or through mechanisms such as our care leavers survey?

Lisa Pascoe 4:10
I think we've always tried to do some listening to children and care experienced. I think what we've learned and what we've done differently, and people like to have helped us to do is to do more of that co-producing with children and young people in our supported accommodation project. It's the first time that we've really worked with young people from the beginning. So rather than coming up with a set of questions we want answers to, we've asked young people to help us -what questions should we be asking you to understand and do things better? And I just think that's been, you know, a great step forward from us. We're probably in a different place than we would have been if we hadn't done it this way. And we haven't had people like Tia help us along that journey.

Matthew Brazier 5:00
The've given their views about how we should inspect what we should focus on, and we haven't always agreed, sometimes they've said things that we've had to explain that we're not quite able to do that. But, you know, some good robust discussions. You know, I think they've appreciated our honesty, and we certainly appreciated theirs, and it's really made a difference. So what we've ended up with, hopefully, is inspection arrangements that really focus on what makes matters most for young people.

Briony Balsom 5:28
Yeah, it sounds like such a natural and obvious way to sort of build the model to start with these voices, but also feels quite revolutionary in the way that Ofsted has done it.

Matthew Brazier 5:37
It's revolution in the way they've helped us to do it. Actually, I should say, because I think we've learned from the young people. And, and as I say, we're really grateful for that. And they nudged us as we've gone along when that when they think we're not, we're not quite doing it, right.

Anna Willow 5:51
A lot of this work before you kind of start doing it, planning it, or operationalizing, it is about mindset, it's about that kind of humbleness. It's about working in the open. It's about a willingness to say, to an external environment, I don't think we got this right before, but we're learning and we're listening. And we're willing to kind of keep iterating and changing what we do, based on what we didn't get right or based on what we saw be nurtured through what we tried. So that is, you know, our partnership with people model is just kind of our five pillars which have been very emergent through working with a test and learn approach. And that mindset of just putting that tentatively one foot in front of the other, importantly, redressing power, like willing to kind of fail fast, and stopping when things aren't working. So you are taking risks, but you're taking manageable risks, acceptable risks, but if we don't take those risks, then we feel like nothing will change. I've talked already about power, and we've only been talking for a few minutes. But I'll always talk about power, where it's kind of hoarded or hidden or visible or invisible. We work really hard to disrupt and redistribute that. We also think about environments and where we do things, and who's most comfortable in the room. For example, environments are crucial. When we want to listen, or we say we're working with the voice and influence of young people, we take them into our professional spaces where we feel in charge. Learning has got kind of two main streams for us. The first is that we learned together. So we learn in an integrated way. We don't send different people off on different learning journeys, we go on the same one, because we think that when we're all learners, we're at our most ready and levelled and humbled to accept the things we don't know and the things we can learn from one another. And the other is inverted learning. And that was our kind of very first interaction with Ofsted, in this space of regulation change for supported accommodation, was to say, and I'd really like Tia to say a bit more about it, if she's happy to. We've developed some learning because in this instance, we think we have the expertise, we have lived experience of living in unregulated accommodation at a stage of life where if you're lucky, you have a lot more support and guidance and kind of comfort around you. And so we would like to educate you, we would like to be at the front of that classroom. And we would like you guys to be our delegates. And that was the very beginning of our journey. From that which followed on was educating 40 placement inspectors for Ofsted.

Tia 8:32
I feel as though although they are they're professionals when they get things wrong, they don't want to admit it. Once they do, it makes it easier for everyone else, it makes it easier for the young person, they live a better life a more fulfilling life with less to worry about. And the professionals feel rewarded. Once their people feel like they've got something out of it. Then the professionals have they're like, Well, I'm doing my job great because my young person is very happy. I mean, relationships are always changing. I feel like as you get older, you rely on people less than you would. And I feel like that's also something that's really hard to like swallow and accept because people like you're professionals, and I think actually each team can see me every single week. I feel like we need to do all these plans every single week. But actually people are ever growing, like people starting to find employment like education, it's giving them that space to like, grow as well. Because nothing's worse than like a professional like on your case all the time. When you can't do it by yourself. You just want to show that space of independency and a lot of young people also are scared to say something- but they really shouldn't be because actually these decisions are about them. And then don't take on my own experience. But I wish I had spoken earlier. Again that power back in your hands is very vital in anyone's life. To be honest.

Briony Balsom 9:53
I just wonder whether Lisa, Matthew, you could say a little bit about what Ofsted has learned from working with Anna's team?

Matthew Brazier 10:00
While we learned a lot, what I was struck most by was just how it gelled as a group and you're talking about relationship being really important but the relationships we have with each other was clearly important, they got a lot of support from each other, they trusted each other. And we got the sense that they expected their views to make a difference. They weren't there thinking, they were hopeful, or they might be grateful for us to do a couple of small things, I think they were there with the confidence that we were gonna go away and do something different as a result of what they told us. I mean, they also told us a lot about what they thought supported accommodation should look like as well. So it's really practical things, you know, about the quality of accommodation, but also about things like, you know, support for emotional well being and, and having someone to turn to in times of crisis or in times of worry. So here's some real practical things that, you know, some really important things they were telling us that we could take away.

Lisa Pascoe 10:57
This isn't something you can just do as an add-on. It's something that's got to be integral to your thinking right from day one. Because actually, it takes time. And it takes it takes careful thought, and it might slow you down. And it might take you in a route that wasn't the one you were really planning. And you have to be sort of prepared for all of those things and prepared to go with that and think about how you're going to manage that. And for an organisation that can be quite delivery focused, because that's our job, you know, we have a job that we have to do. It's how you balance those two things and get get that right is something that you know, I really want us to reflect on.

Briony Balsom 11:36
So it sounds like the spirit of this partnership is definitely something that needs to live on across Ofsted in terms of consultation and partnership working but specifically with this partnership, what's next?

Lisa Pascoe 11:47
We don't want it to be the end. We haven't started inspecting yet. Well, we have more things to learn, we'll want to reflect on are we doing the things that we set out to do. And we'll need people to reflect on that with us. We can't just reflect on that ourselves. So I'd like to see us work in partnership with the many groups that helped us to get to this point.

Anna Willow 12:10
I think too often may be in kind of participatory spaces. We see people say well, a young person said that was okay. There's that there's some kind of tokenism or lip service paid to this kind of work. But I think and I hope and I think that also, what Matthew was witnessing was the result of tough love, which is actually like a really open, honest and often challenging space, where we don't just necessarily agree with the young person because they're young person, but we hold one another to account. And we're willing to be challenged, and to offer fair challenge if we think it's in the best interests of that young person. And the reason that Matthew, I think people there were talking confidently about, 'This is going to change because I said it', is because they followed a process. They've done their research. And they've developed a robust evidence base for what they're saying. And they know that that weight is going to see a change.

Tia 13:06
I feel like legacy is such a scary word to me because it's like planting seeds in a garden you never get to see to be honest, you just have to trust that was left behind will be nurtured or the plants you will be planted will be nurtured and will be taken care of so that the next cohort of caregivers can reap those fruits that we sowed in that garden and just hope that was left behind what we left behind will still be cultivated and grown. And year after year, all those seeds will be replanted. And new caregivers upcoming, like babies who are just coming into care now, will be 18 in 18 years and still using our work that we have produced. You know our garden has ever so... it's naturally renewable because those same seeds will grow back again and come back again. So it's like you only need to plant it once for it to sustain itself forever. So that's what we've done. Five years in the making. And I'm so excited to discuss when I come back when I'm 25 and I'm not a care-leaver anymore.

Briony Balsom 14:03
Tia, I can't think of a more perfect way to finish today's podcast. Thank you so much for those words and thanks to all of our guests for all of your really insightful comments. We spoken a huge amount today about listening and getting diverse voices and hearing as Tia said, diverse voices. Thank you so much everybody. You may be aware that Ofsted are currently launching our Big Listen, so please do contribute. Please know the values of your own voices and opinions and contribute wherever you can. It's really vital. Just go to www.gov.uk/Ofstedbiglisten

Comments (0)

To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or

No Comments