In 2024, you’ll hear less about the ‘how’ and a lot more about the ‘why’. As a team, we’ll be steadfast and focused on tackling inequalities in the outcomes and experiences of children and young people and doing so via equitable approaches to advancing systemic change. 

Throughout our partnership with Inclusion as Prevention we’ve engaged with 98 young people to design and improve services, and early intervention for young people with experience of the justice system. It is estimated that a further 300 also participated through surveys and attending workshops. We’ve tackled challenges, overcome barriers, and learned together as a team to understand the system in South Lanarkshire, to ensure young people aren’t just supported when they enter the justice system, but that the services are there to prevent them from doing so. 

We are now delighted to bring these tools and ways of thinking to a wider audience via a new suite of training and learning opportunities. This includes an engaging, online introductory system thinking  course; a bespoke, in-person training for teams or partnerships; and an applied, cohort-based learning journey programme where folks can bring a systemic challenge to be worked through in practice (in cohorts or teams, with training inputs, peer-to-peer learning, coaching, and learning resources).

This blog is the first in our series on systems thinking. In this blog we explore one of the systems dynamics tools we use called goal-gap structures to help us understand people’s different motivations for change. We will be launching a systems training programme this autumn where you can learn more about these approaches!

Over the last five years we have been working to change the systems of support for young people who come into conflict with law in Scotland. We’ve been doing that through co-production with young people to re-imagine the kinds of supports that help keep them included in their communities and in the supports on offer to them. Too often young people are excluded from systems of support when they come into conflict with the law. This project fundamentally reframes the work of prevention and early intervention to be young-person centred and inclusive of their diverse experiences and needs.

There are many different approaches to producing a Theory of Change. It can be a tricky balancing act between bold ambition and feasibility. Go too big, and your Theory of Change feels unattainable and fails to become a useful tool. Get too boxed in by practicalities, and it feels uninspiring. 

We’d argue for a Theory of Change to be useful, it must adopt an integrated approach. We talk about the strengths of an integrated approach in our strategy paper launched early last year. We have been attempting to further progress it ever since (with a lot of success, failure, and learning along the way).

In the summer of 2021, Dartington Service Design Lab published a position paper: ‘Embedding an anti-racist approach in research and design’. This included our initial assessment of some of the ways in which racism manifests in research and design and a summary of some actions and commitments that we, organisationally, undertook.

One of these commitments was to share reflections and learning on this journey, and progress against actions. This blog is one such way of doing this.

Our very own Director of Research, Dr Julie Harris, has been appointed to the UK Government Evaluation & Trial Advice Panel (ETAP) bringing together top evaluation and experimentation experts from across government and academia.

We are delighted to announce that we are partnering with leading cancer charities, Young Lives vs Cancer, the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and Teenage Cancer Trust to codesign research and evidence measures, and apply an Integrated Approach to research and systems change with children and young people who have lived experience of cancer.

When I first entered the Inclusion As Prevention project, I thought I would approach it as I would working with any client seeking animation support. The brief was an exciting one, working with an innovative, community-driven project that seeks to support young voices through co-design and produce an animation to educate young people and their families on the topic of domestic abuse and gender-based violence.