Born into Care: helping parents’ social workers and health workers navigate life changing decisions through co-design. Mapping the process of taking an unborn child into care.
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Blackpool on the NW coast of England has the worst healthcare outcomes in the UK and significant social challenges. Focusing specifically on child safeguarding there are indicators of a structural problem as Nicholas Crichton, founder of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court says ‘A family justice system that removes the fourth, fifth or sixth child from families without doing anything about the reasons for removal is a failing system’ 1.
In 2023, Professor Leon Cruickshank was approached to lead a project to co-design an accessible usable description of this process by which babies can be taken away from parents at the point of birth. Building on a 3,500-word description of this complex process the Born into Care Mapping project working closely with a team of experts including parents with lived experience of having children taken into care, health workers and social workers. This team co-designed a series of documents across a range of levels of detail that are now being used throughout the Blackpool area by health and social works working with parents where there is an identified safeguarding concern. One of the first tests of these documents came when an Early Parenthood Specialist Nurse used it in a discussion with two clients where mum and dad were both just 13 years old. If ever there was a need to have a clear, unambiguous accessible description of this complex process it is this first test case. For Designing Change SIG there are insights here concerning: commissioning and how this effected the success of the project and also the creation of flexible outcomes that are modifiable by health workers without compromising graphic quality.
1https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/resource/mothers-in-recurrent-care- proceedings-new-evidence-for-england-and-wales
Name | The Design Research Society |
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