Better Start Blackpool
Aims
To collaboratively translate the ‘born into care system’ (currently expressed in Power Point form) into a tool that can be used by a wide range of health and social care professionals while in dialogue with parents to help them understand and navigate through the care system.
It’s expected that this translation will be a physical artefact that will be developed to a close-to finished prototype that can go onto be used, tested and iterated over an extended period of time. As with any true co-design, we were open to different outcomes and to being flexible.
Outputs: Final version of the map realised physically along with the digital files used in its production. This will then be developed further over time.
Overview
Blackpool has by many measures the worst healthcare outcomes in the country. There are also significant social challenges with many communities encountering structural barriers to success. It was in this context that the NHIR funded Born into Care project was commissioned with the aim of ‘supporting the mental health of birth mothers at risk of recurrent care proceedings’.*
‘Around a quarter of women who have had a child involved in a care proceeding will go on to have at least one more child involved in a care proceeding, and this is more likely for younger women’*
Taking a health equity approach, the health and social care system is brought into the spotlight here, as Nicholas Crichton, founder and champion of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court says ‘A family justice system that removes the fourth, fifth or sixth child from families without doing anything about the reasons for removal is a failing system’ *
One strand of the Born Into Care project in Blackpool sought to map the process by which an unborn child may be taken into care at birth or soon after. This was a consultative process that resulted in a 3500-word 20 slide PowerPoint document describing this process.
In September 2023, Professor Leon Cruickshank was approached to lead a small project to co-design an accessible usable description of this process. This is to help parents, family, social workers, health workers and others to better have a common understanding of this process, its implications. Working closely with a team of experts listed below the team co-designed a series of documents at a range of levels of detail to achieve this aim.
Results and Outcomes
Tab Content: For Partners and Engagement
This project created 3 sets of documents,
A general, highly accessible description of the processes where a child may be taken into care at birth.
A more detailed version of this document that includes more information and also space for participants to add their own information, the names and contact details of their support workers and so on.
A comprehensive text document providing the details information on the process that may be needed for reference.
All these documents are designed to be used to help support conversations between health or social workers with parents. One of the fist uses of this documentation in practice was undertaken by Claire Punshon an Early Parenthood Specialist Nurse and a co-designer on the Born into Care project. She used the documents with a pair of clients where mum and dad were both 13 years old. If ever there was a need for a clear, easy to understand description of the process it was with these clients.
The BIC map is being used across Blackpool health and social services and a formal evaluation is under way.
It's also worth noting that the co-designed documents are ‘print on demand’ and can be easily produced, modified and adjusted by Blackpool council without needing specialist software or production requirements, they are PowerPoint slides. This is a living document that has already been tweaked to accommodate changes to the system.
Tab Content: For Academics
The co-design group (described below) are collaboratively authoring a journal article describing the highly innovative and effective co-design process that lead to the Born into Care map.
There is also a significant research funding bid in preparation to explore the possibility of developing the Blackpool map further through co-design but also in the scaling of this approach to other areas in the UK.
Back to listing