Since 2015, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) has been working on a significant transformation of Children’s Services, with the support of CELCIS, the Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection (CELCIS), which is part of the strategic partnership between us and the University of Strathclyde.

This ambitious journey aims to meet the goals of key Scottish Government policy priorities, including Getting It Right for Every Child, the Christie Commission, The Promise and The Brock report. The vision is for family support to be readily available to families that need it and to make sure that families are able to access the help they need, where and when they need it. This doesn’t mean just an adaptation of the current way of supporting families but a transformational journey of what we do and how we do it.

Through this unique partnership, many initiatives have been supported and implemented within Children’s Services with the help of CELCIS. CELCIS provides key knowledge and expertise to support and facilitate the change journey. This includes supporting leadership skills and behaviours for complex change, incorporating new methodologies such as improvement, implementation and systems theory and building data capacity and analysis of the evidence.

Two large cross-sector events took place at Hampden Park in 2016 to kickstart the assessment and understanding of the current system: what was going well and where changes were needed to improve the outcomes and experiences of young people and families. This engaged staff and teams at all levels and revealed significant concerns in the way that Children’s Services were currently delivered, such as a failure demand approach, a risk adverse culture, a lack of partnership approaches with families, a complex policy landscape and poor outcomes. This analysis helped identify both strengths and areas for development and informed several workstreams to support improvement for children, young people and families.

Since the start of the work, a number of collaborative projects have come about as a result of the work that have led to meaningful change and improved long-term outcomes for children and families in Glasgow.

Case Study: Glasgow Intensive Family Support Model and Third Sector partnerships

This project facilitated the development of a partnership with the third sector that would enable families to receive high-quality and consistent support across services, and the starting point was developing a shared vision, aim, language and approach across our HSCP and third sector partners to deliver strengths-based and trauma-informed support to families. This is reflected in The Glasgow Intensive Family Support Service (GIFSS) model, which incorporated the Voice, Validation and Hope model. The model sees families as experts in their own lives and helps to identify strengths as a mechanism for building families’ confidence and resilience as a foundation for supporting meaningful change. The service operates evenings and weekends, supporting families who are in need of help and support, aiming to reduce the likelihood of children being cared for away from the family home.

Case Study: The Family Connections Assessment

The team also supported the implementation of the Glasgow Promise Action Plan 2021 to 2024. A core principle of The Promise is to ensure that children who are unable to live with their families stay connected with their brothers and sisters and other family members. To support this, the Family Connections Assessment was developed to maintain important relationships for children with care experience. This initiative focuses on all relationships, not just sibling bonds, to help keep children connected to the people in their lives who are important to them. 

So far, our HSCP’s partnership with CELCIS has led to numerous innovations and improvements within Glasgow's Children and Families Services. Their role in providing the support has helped create positive changes needed to improve the lives of children, young people and their families.

Karen Dyball, our HSCP’s Assistant Chief Officer for Children’s Services, said: “Our collaboration with CELCIS has supported a profound transformation in Children's Services, driven by evidence-based practices and a commitment to long-lasting change. This partnership highlights the importance of strategic leadership, community engagement and innovative approaches in creating a supportive and effective care system for children and families. We want to continue working with CELCIS and other partners across the sector to promote learning and to create a culture of care across the organisation and city.”

Next steps in the work with CELCIS are to revisit the foundation skills for leading change, and then to embark on a more detailed period of exploration of practices that are working well to support children and families. Over time, this work will help to develop an enabling context for consistently high-quality, trauma-informed practice for families that supports meaningful change and improves long-term outcomes.

Strategic Partnership
More information is available on the strategic partnership between Glasgow City HSCP and the University of Strathclyde, which seeks to drive innovation in health and social care.