Gateway Family Services
Changing Lives, Changing Services.
We work to improve health, develop skills and opportunities and fight inequalities. We change the way public services work.
Hitting the targets – missing the point
Once again this week I will be spending my time responding to service specifications through a procurement portal. It’s good that there are still tenders to respond to, but….
What I write in response to their questions doesn’t give me the opportunity to talk about the really important stuff, the life-changing opportunities and the amazing journey that some people will make.
Every day I hear remarkable stories from staff about the achievements of the people they work with, the overwhelming barriers they face and the challenges they have overcome.
And every month I read the reports to the commissioners about the targets they set us and how we have achieved them. As I read these reports I see nothing about individual’s triumphs, –largely because this information is not measured as a target.
Yet when I do tell people about the difficult circumstances that some of our clients are in, and how we have helped them everyone agrees it’s the right thing to do, it’s needed and often changes lives – will these experiences ever change services?
We know loads of stuff
The term commissioning comes from shipbuilding, and it feels to me that often we are treated as an empty vessel. The reality is that we are packed to the rafters with experience, knowledge, skills and understanding from all sorts of perspectives – community based organisations usually are.
Trust is a great thing
The thing that makes us able to help people, is because we can listen to them, often we have been where they are, sometime live in the same places and most importantly we can see many perspectives, we are here because of our life experience. Someone recently said to me “The best guides in life are those that are just a few steps ahead of you” – that is how we see ourselves in relation to our clients. We need to be trusted to work in ways we know best.
We will find the way – see you there.
Where it starts to become uneasy is when the path is set, the route is determined and the road to a target is specified. In our sector, there is a well known route – it’s called the Patient Pathway and many many hours have been spent designing it, mostly by people who are never going to walk down it.
People can do even greater things
About 95% of the time spent by people working in communities is on negotiating the hoops that have been set down, in order to get to a target.
Negotiating services and systems is a job in itself; how to find what you want, where you want it and how you want it would be much easier if the road to the target was simple, the signs were clear and perhaps designed by those who use it.
Community/voluntary organisations, social enterprises, Community Interest Companies know loads of things, we don’t want to be responders, we need to be specifiers – then maybe targets will become more relevant to the point.
Pregnancy Outreach Workers succeed in helping hard to reach young mums.
Gateway’s Pregnancy Outreach workers offer one to one practical and emotional support. They make sure vulnerable women access all the services and help available, resulting in healthier mothers and healthier babies who can be hard to reach. This is a typical case.
After Alison* found she was pregnant she was referred to the POW service because she was a teenager, she smoked and her housing was far from ideal.
She was very frank about her lifestyle, and her difficult childhood. She said she’d self-harmed while she was still at school, and that she’d used cannabis and cocaine ‘to forget’. Although she said she’d given up cocaine, she said she still used cannabis quite heavily.
It was clear Alison needed emotional support and practical advice. A Gateway POW helped her to access all the services and grants she was eligible for, and told her how she could reduce her intake of cannabis. A ‘Stop Smoking Clinic’ was suggested.
Alison said she’d rather try and give up by herself, that she’d cut down from 25 to 5 cigarettes a day and only used cannabis once in the evening.
Alison shared her fears around parenting and her doubts about being a good mother. The outreach worker tried to give her confidence and practical support, then, three months before she gave birth, Social Services got in touch with her. They said they’d been contacted about her cannabis use. She was really worried, but was given reassurance and told to be open and honest with the social worker when they visited.
Alison went to a support group at her local children’s centre and Gateway’s outreach worker visited her at home until she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
On the day she left hospital, Alison was again visited at home by Social Workers. They drew up a 6 week care agreement with her and said if they had no cause for concern at the end of it, they would close her case. She followed the care agreement, and when the 6 weeks were up the social workers were satisfied. She continued to breastfeed, and said that after her daughter was born she didn’t use cannabis at all.
With support, Alison made a distinct change in her attitude to life. She now plans to devote herself to her baby’s early years, and then commit to full time study for a career in childcare. Alison said she considered the POW her ‘pal’, and said the help and support she got made a real difference.
*not her real name.
Gateway Family Services Awarded Social Enterprise Mark
Gateway Family Services has been awarded the Social Enterprise Mark in recognition of the work it does to help people overcome barriers to learning, employment and access to community healthcare.
There are 400 markholders across the UK – and it isn’t given lightly. It shows that a company is committed to social or environmental objectives, and can be trusted.
Vicki Fitzgerald, Chief Executive, is delighted with the award. For her, it is one more proof that Gateway’s work contributes to eliminating the causes of deprivation.
“Service users arrive here unprepared for the workplace but we enable them to become work-ready and qualified; some even leave their training already employed. We aim to reduce inequality by bridging gaps in public service delivery and working in partnership with the NHS and local authority. Gateway creates specific job roles to address deprivation, such as our Pregnancy Outreach Workers”, she says.
The Social Enterprise Mark will give Gateway a competitive edge and it will also be used to promote the social enterprise movement in general. For the company it will be an opportunity to demonstrate that what it does, and its profits help communities in the long term.
Gateway Pregnancy Outreach Workers help 4000 women
Gateway Family Services Pregnancy Outreach Worker
In areas of Birmingham where babies are at high risk, our outreach workers are making a real difference. The sooner a pregnant woman is seen by health professionals the better – but there are many reasons why they don’t make that vital first appointment. Travel problems, anxiety about dealing with doctors, childcare arrangements, and language issues are just some of the reasons they given – but they’re reasons our outreach workers can help with.
POWs primarily support pregnant women with a low medical risk and high social risk. Our POWs have real life experience of issues that can affect these women because they have a real good understanding of their local communities – that’s where we recruit them from and their experience is more important than any qualifications.
They’ve been offering home-based, practical support – and sometimes they just listen, but their work improves the life chances of newborn babies.