Home Link Family Support is a charitable organisation that deliver effective family support and therapeutic services to families with young children across Edinburgh and Midlothian. The team consists of family support workers and therapists who work directly with families using a range of early intervention approaches to enhance child and parental wellbeing.
There has been a variety of different tools and approaches embedded across the organisation in order to provide effective and meaningful support to staff and managers. This has included a robust and varied supervision model involving opportunities for group peer supervision and one-to-one line management supervision; clinical supervision, adjustment of working patterns and arrangements to suit staff needs; check ins with frontline staff daily; open door policy to all managers; and work using the individual and organisational window of tolerance.
This work has supported the development of a culture of openness and honesty across the organisation where staff feel valued and heard, and managers feel equipped to implement effective wellbeing support.
The challenge
Following the pandemic, Home Link continued to embed areas of practice that were set up to support staff wellbeing and used existing structures that were in place to provide robust systems of support for staff.
Managers wanted to continue good practice that emerged throughout the pandemic (e.g. regular check ins with staff), and emphasised the benefit of carving out opportunities for meaningful relationship building between staff members that had been impacted by lockdown.
Outline of project
Home Link provide a varied, robust and holistic offer of support to their staff which reflects their approach in supporting children and families in the community. The team is a mixed team of family support workers and therapists, which enables colleagues to support each other by providing regular spaces for reflective practice. Activities that have been implemented across the organisation to support staff care and wellbeing include:
Varied models of supervision
Each staff member gets monthly line management supervision and peer supervision as standard.
In addition, clinical staff receive external clinical supervision which includes further opportunities for training and group peer support. During these supervision sessions, therapists are able to present specific cases they’re struggling with and share and receive support and reflections from their peers. In addition, these clinical supervision sessions occasionally focus on a particular theme and can include an input from a relevant specialist (i.e., neurodivergent consultant) to provide additional guidance and support.
Each line management supervision session begins with a check in focused on staff wellbeing and welfare. Only after this initial wellbeing check in will managers start discussing activity related to specific practice such as caseloads and work-related issues. These conversations ask practitioners to focus on their sense of self, with practitioners being asked to rate the complexity of each of their cases and explore how this is making them feel.
Adjustment of working patterns and arrangements
New cases are allocated to staff members the basis of who has the physical, emotional and mental capacity to take them on in relation to their existing workloads. In addition, managers have adjusted working patterns and arrangements to suit the needs of staff members where possible; for example, management ensure that home visits to families are planned so that practitioners aren’t going out to visit several families with extremely complex needs on the same day.
Furthermore, pragmatic and proactive considerations are made around practitioners’ schedules so that staff aren’t left feeling worried or anxious about their cases over the weekend. For example, a practitioner who was working on a very complex case involving a family with significant mental health issues moved their visits from a Friday (where they were often left feeling apprehensive about potential issues that could arise over the weekend) to a Thursday morning so that arrangements could be put in place for effective crisis management with other key workers (e.g., health visitors, social work) and referrals to other specialist services where appropriate. Following these changes, the practitioner’s working pattern was also adapted so that they no longer work on a Friday, and additional support is provided to help manage caseloads and work-life balance.
Good practice to support staff wellbeing that was developed during the pandemic continues to be embedded across the organisation as standard practice. This includes management conducting ‘check ins’ with staff twice a day at the start and end of every day. This creates a culture of safety and support for staff who are often lone working and are visiting families in their homes. Due to the challenging nature of the job, it has been important to ensure staff have opportunities for reflection at the end of each day.
Relationship building
Home Link pride themselves on having an ‘open door’ policy to foster a culture of honesty and transparency underpinned by effective communication and relationship building with their staff. A key component of this is that all staff share the same physical space in the office to create a sense of openness. Furthermore, colleagues are encouraged to move desks every 6 months to allow staff to strengthen relationships with other team members and build a sense of community across the organisation. This approach may not feel appropriate for everyone; for example, some colleagues have requested their own desks so that they have somewhere to ‘land’ each morning when they arrive at work. These requests have been taken forward and actioned, another example of how staff voices are heard and validated within the organisation.
Furthermore, the organisation has carved out protected time each month for team lunches to encourage colleagues to come together, share food and strengthen relationships across the team. This includes bringing in dishes that staff have made themselves to share together as a group, which helps to build a sense of community across the organisation.
Window of tolerance
Manager and staff trauma champion have conducted two separate activities relating to the window of tolerance: one that has been completed with each individual staff member to explore their needs; and the second as a full team to determine the organisation’s own window of tolerance. Following the full team exercise, key organisational issues were captured and a wellbeing charter was developed.
Staff are regularly asked to identify if they feel like they are in the ‘red’ ‘green’ or ‘blue’ zone (and are encouraged to share what would help to support them if they are outwith their window of tolerance). This has allowed managers to have a different perspective and identify what they can do differently to avoid colleagues feeling like they are permanently out-with their window of tolerance.
One way that staff members are encouraged to share where they’re at each day is through utilising different coloured felt squares that they have been given, which reflect which ‘zone’ they are in (i.e., red, blue or green coloured squares). If they feel comfortable, colleagues are encouraged to place their chosen colour of felt on their computer monitors to demonstrate how they’re feeling. Managers emphasise that there is no requirement to participate in this activity and that it is completely voluntary, but it provides the opportunity for both staff and managers to communicate in a simple way how they are feeling. This has helped to create a sense of honesty and transparency for all staff, including managers who can often feel at risk of absorbing issues and not having space to effectively offload. One colleague highlighted:
It is helpful seeing the window of tolerance squares being used so I know who I can speak to without overloading them.
HomeLink have adopted a trauma champion model whereby an experienced frontline staff member acts as the first point of contact and support for other staff. In turn, other staff members feel empowered to approach them and share issues that may have previously been handled by managers. The trauma champion has wrap around support themselves and has protected time to attend additional training opportunities. For example, the trauma champion attended a weekend retreat focussing on trauma and the impact it has on practice and the families they support. In addition, they have completed level 1 and 2 trauma training and attend monthly peer reflective sessions with other trauma champions to support ongoing development.
Results
Culture of openness and honesty
The various activities embedded across the organisation to support staff care, support and wellbeing are underpinned by fundamental principles of honesty, transparency and openness.
In turn, this has created a culture of staff and managers feeling empowered to share and reflect upon their own experiences, and has created a community of effective and meaningful peer support. Staff feel enabled and supported to participate in two-way dialogue with managers through shared physical space and regular opportunities for communication. Feedback from staff included:
I know I can approach my manager at anytime to offload about my life or the work.
I like the culture of being honest and open, so I don’t feel bad about saying I am not firing on all cylinders today.
Autonomy and self management
The organisation has provided staff with a range of tools and resources that they can access to support their own wellbeing and practice, which encourages emotional regulation across the team. As a result, staff have been proactive in seeking out tools to help themselves and, in turn, this hasn’t increased the workload of managers in a significant way. In addition, the role of the trauma champion provides further peer support opportunities to colleagues without feeling like they are pressured to engage with managers if this is not appropriate/ necessary.
Staff feel heard and valued
Since Home Link have begun embedding staff support, the organisation has successfully retained staff unless restricted by funding conditions, demonstrating that staff feel happy and valued at their work. The staff team and managers participate in an annual 360 appraisal system, feeding in their own thoughts and recommendations via a survey and through one-to-one conversations with the board to capture feedback. Suggestions and recommendations highlighted by staff are often implemented and actioned in some way, and colleagues feel heard and valued as a result.
Learning
Building foundations takes time
It has taken Home Link a significant period of time to create a robust working culture of openness and honesty. A key component of developing this has been underpinned by relationship building and providing staff with a range of opportunities and avenues to share, reflect and connect with each other.
The current context is challenging
The current context and environment that the public and third sector are working within has a significant impact on providing effective support to staff. The lack of security surrounding funding can often create a sense of uncertainty and anxiety amongst teams. Not shying away from these conversations and being transparent and open in discussions can help alleviate some concerns and is fostering an open and honest working environment.
Being receptive to change and feedback
Management highlighted that there were challenges when they conducted the organisational window of tolerance exercise, as it was almost a ‘knee jerk’ reaction for managers to feel defensive when people were signalling that they were in the ‘red zone’.
However, it was important for managers to have initially created the conditions where they felt responsive to and accepting of feedback with the acknowledgement that staff being in the ‘red zone’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as colleagues were not feeling like they were there all of the time.
A key piece of learning was allowing time to make sense of and think collectively about how to make working conditions better and more effective. This can be done through asking different questions in supervision to encourage a change in dialogue around what support is needed for staff to feel happy and valued at work.
In essence, being receptive to making changes is key to progressing this work, as well as being open to having potentially difficult conversations – not unlike the approach taken with the families that staff are working with.