Glasgow Promise Project - Event and Resource Blog - Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector

Glasgow Promise Project event

On Thursday 29th June, the Children’s Services Team at GCVS hosted a celebratory event to mark the end of the Glasgow Promise Project.

Over 100 people gathered at the Glasgow City Chambers to celebrate the successes, outcomes and next steps of the 18 month long project. The event was attended by children, young people and families, third sector providers, partners from the Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, funders and representatives from Glasgow City Council.

Project leads, Zsara McEwan and Suzie Scott opened the event by outlining the project’s aims and objectives, touching on our journey so far. Attendees heard from a range of guest speakers, including two members of the GPP Co-Design team, Ash and Myranda, who reflected on their experience of being part of the project.

Third sector partners Nikki O’Hara from Home-Start Glasgow North & North Lanarkshire and Alison McIntyre, from Barnardo’s discussed the project’s next steps, and how we can implement crucial learning to meet the needs of families.

John Sherry, Head of Financial Inclusion at Glasgow City Council talked about the new Glasgow Child Poverty Pathfinder, and how the Glasgow Promise Project aligns with the ‘No Wrong Door’ approach. We also welcomed Kelly McFadden, from the CORRA Foundation, who provided an overview on The Promise and how CORRA enables collaborative working approaches.

Suzie Scott closed the event by thanking everyone who took part in the project. She promised that ‘this is not the end, it is just the beginning of the journey to improving services to support children, young people and families. She noted that we produced a number of resources and reports throughout the project.

Links are available throughout the blog, with additional resources listed at the end.

Background

The Glasgow Promise Partnership (GPP) is an innovative collaboration of third sector partners, supported by GCVS, in partnership with the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership. It represents a coordinated approach to service design, focused on the needs and views of families, involving those who use services and a range of partners from Glasgow’s third and statutory sector.

Aims

In 2021, a consortium of third sector organisations submitted an application to receive Promise Partnership Funding from the CORRA Foundation. This aimed to explore alternatives to traditional procurement and co-design services with families.

To achieve this, we worked through the following project stages:

Consultation with families on their experiences of family support
Co-design with families to develop a vision for family support services
Family support mapping, to update information on services and gaps
Co-design work with partners, building on the work with families, to operationalize the vision

Consultation

A large-scale consultation exercise was conducted with children, young people and families. Over a ten week consultation period, we aimed to:

Consultations were carried out by 24 third sector providers with 387 interviewees and produced over 800 pages of transcripts. This produced a problem statement for the co-design stage, which was shaped by the experiences of families.

Find out more about the consultation process, including methods, resources and findings, in our GPP Consultation Report

Co-design Storyboard

Co-design is about working with the people who are closest to the solutions, prioritising relationships, being honest, making sure people feel welcome, using creative tools and building capability. The GPP Co-Design team (participants, support workers, facilitators) created a detailed user-experience storyboard of how a family could find out about, engage with, and move on from services. This had a focus on choice, communication and relationships in relation to whole family support.

Watch the full Storyboard visual animation here.

Family Support Mapping

Alongside the Glasgow Promise Project, we carried out a family support mapping exercise. Co-designed with members of the GCVS Citywide Forum Family Support subgroup, and with HSCP input, we produced a survey to gather key data to identify the extent of existing third sector family support services, as well as gaps in current provision.

Read the Third Sector Family Support Mapping report here: Glasgow Third Sector Family Support Report Launch – Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector (gcvs.org.uk)

Co-design with partners

We explored various commissioning approaches and procurement law flexibilities in the context of the Glasgow Promise Project and the principles of whole family support. In addition to, and informed by the co-design work with families, we brought together third sector partners and GCHSCP commissioning leads in a series of conversations around commissioning and procurement. Focussed sessions, drawing on a co-production approach, allowed all partners to explore how we might collectively deliver on our project vision and commitment.

Find out more below.

The Glasgow Promise Commissioning and Procurement Considerations

Read more about the alternatives to traditional procurement here: Ethical Commissioning and Alternatives to Traditional Procurement – Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector (gcvs.org.uk)

The Outcome

Glasgow Promise project took 18 months. It involved 23 third sector organisations, 387 children, young people, parents and carers and 11 co-design sessions. The outcome was a collective vision for whole family support. Glasgow Promise Partnership Poster – presented at the Promise Partnership/CORRA Foundation Showcase Event

Nearly all participants said they would take part in a Co-Design process again and everyone who completed an evaluation after the Co-Design, said that they felt heard, valued, empowered, and more informed. They also felt like their involvement in the project has helped make a difference to the family support landscape.

Following the co-design sessions with partners, we have a direction for a partnership approach to maximising outcomes that reduced competition.

Members of the GPP steering group presented the Storyboard and future project aims to senior members of the Health and Social Care Partnership.

Glasgow Promise Project – Overview Presentation

The response was that the work was comprehensive and insightful, and a

“great contribution to the journey of what whole family support should look like.”

We now have a commitment to developing a collaborative action plan to provide whole family wellbeing services to families. .

The outcomes and learning will provide benefits for the people who use services and inform commissioners in designing the specifications and approaches to commissioning family support services in the city (and beyond) that will deliver:

Improved outcomes for families
More holistic and joined up services
Promote collaboration in practice and delivery

We would like to thank everyone involved for their time commitment and expertise. Very special thanks to young people and families who took part in the co-design work and made a vital contribution to the project.