Falkirk’s Get to Focus Group: Co-designing better services and systems

The Promise Team in Falkirk have worked with a group of parents to create a space where they can come together to co-design better services and systems in a trauma informed environment.

The Get to Focus Group is a group of parents who were brought together with other communities of interest to create a space where families can connect and provide peer support, while also influencing the services that they use.

With a grant from the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, the Group purchased 100 Manor Street, in Falkirk town centre, to create a visible support hub.

How the Get to Focus Group started

The project started in 2021 during lockdown, when a team at the local authority began looking at what families need when it comes to early support.

Mhairi Fraser, the participation lead in Falkirk’s Promise Implementation Team, led the project, engaging with five families to discuss improving early help and support around a range of issues, including poverty, domestic violence, incarceration and loss.

Through the initial discussions, the main recommendation that came out was to find a dedicated space for families to meet and offer peer support.

Mhairi said:

We explored many avenues to see how we could deliver a dedicated family space: that's trauma informed, feels secure and will be permanent. The answer was to buy something or have an asset transfer from inside the local authority. That became the crux of the development for three years.

While Mhairi and the team were working to find a location, the group continued to meet in a Morrisons cafe, carrying out their co-design work; sense checking how services were working and reviewing policies and strategies.

Mhairi said that the discussions the group were having, and solutions they were developing were often around issues they were experiencing. She said:

They were living and feeling services as we were exploring some of the deeper stuff they wanted to change.

The idea of the peer support hub was an answer to a lot.

Finding the right place proved the biggest challenge

Mhairi said:

There was always something offered to the group, but it was never a fit for their needs.

It had to be appropriate, and they had a vision of it not being up a back alley, not being in an outlying area.

It needed to feel intentional and be front and centre, because their motto is they want to put crisis in the front window. It can happen to anyone, and we're going to remove stigma by having something present in the town.

The big picture was this vision of a community owned space that was multi-agency, so that people could merge with family support staff, with social work, with teachers and have space for shared networking. They could see how this could work and we were getting feedback from the workforce as well that was mirroring that, they could see the value.

It was ambitious and, it was a lot of work just keeping the group connected to the whole thing. But they were amazing: every single hurdle they just picked themselves back up.

Staying connected

To keep the group connected through the years of not having premises, Mhairi and the team were flexible in their availability to speak to the families when things felt difficult.

While they searched for a property, the group engaged with third sector organisations, social work services and other partners, to tell them about the idea and what they wanted to achieve.

This helped with breaking down barriers. Mahiri said:

The parents were starting to see service staff in a different light because they were sitting at the table of decision making with them and they were working on projects together; that was changing the power dynamic.

It’s shown the parents that their lived experience isn't just some tokenistic thing for a one-off project. It's actually starting to embed in some of the systems. The families want to be part of the solution.

Overcoming challenge

A challenge Mhairi and the group could face was around external pressure and expectation of the work.

Mhairi said:

Given the sort of complex issues that these families face, there was drift and delay. With any work, there's always an expectation and deadlines with projects. So just buffering the group from some of that pressure was sometimes a bit challenging.

I would have service leads asking what's happening. We would have to explain these are real people, who have things to deal with in their lives, it’s an organic piece of work and we need to stick to that and believe in it.

100 Manor Street

After two and a half years searching, they finally found the building, at 100 Manor Street in Falkirk: an old Skills Development Scotland Building with a large glass front.

The local champs board helped to design the inside, so it felt like a warm, inviting space.

But to get the funds to buy the building, the group had to become a charity— then apply for Whole Family Wellbeing funding, and to get permission from the Scottish Government to buy the building.

Having the permanent space was key for the group, to show this wasn’t a short-term thing, but can make a long-term difference.

Keeping the promise

With the building, the charity’s work is continuing to contribute to keeping the promise in Falkirk.

Mhairi explained:

The collaborative work we’ve done to improve services places huge importance on the voice of lived experience.

Everyone is really excited when they come in. They feel the parity of power. We've had lots of different events where senior leaders of services are sitting next to young people from the Champs Board, and our parents and other groups— and the conversation is shared.

Long term, they would like to be able to see shared training at the charity. Having this shared learning space means we can demonstrate that the community can have the answers, and they need to be involved at that co-design level.

For others looking to create similar spaces, Mhairi’s advice is to not get impatient, even with increasing pressure.

She said:

Always have the people it's for driving it. Take the time for that to happen. It's easy to get impatient and run ahead, then you lose people, and it loses traction.