Stepping out of the comfort zone..

First day back after lockdown was always going to be challenging for my son but being met at the door by the primary school SENCO made all the difference to the transition for both of us! It reminded me of the importance of advocates for our children as they navigate their school lives, as well as for us in our work environments. The importance of the advocacy role was recognised in our work in 2019, when we looked at the factors influencing children and young people’s (CYP) wellbeing, from the perspective of cross-sector practitioners in our workshops:

A key distinction to emerge in all the workshops was between the ‘internal’ and the ’external’ resources that a CYP is able to draw upon and the crucial significance of the interrelationship between the two in determining their level of wellbeing. Central to an individual’s internal resources are the closely related intrapersonal traits of self-agency, self-awareness and self-efficacy. In relation to external resources, the central issue is not just whether they exist out there in the wider community but also whether they are properly targeted and whether and how far a child or young person has access to them. The potential link here is the nature of the advocacy, a function usually, though not exclusively, provided by an enabling adult, available to the CYP at the appropriate time.

Smith & Hamer (2019:3)

It also reminded me how powerful participatory system mapping can be whether for research or evaluation purposes or in our leadership practice. The CYP wellbeing workshops used participatory system mapping as an approach to support groups, including teachers, health-care professionals and other practitioners working with CYP, to articulate and visualise the complex nature of the factors contributing to and influencing a high- or low-level of wellbeing. One outcome of the workshop was a system map. But even more important, the process of taking part in the workshops enabled the practitioners, from different contexts and with different experience and expertise, to gain an understanding and visualise CYP wellbeing as a system, drawing on different disciplinary fields and areas of practice.

Smith, J. & Hamer, J. (2019) A system mapping approach to understanding child and adolescent wellbeing. DfE https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understanding-child-and-adolescent-wellbeing-a-system-map