Systems Change Action Alliance

Our Vision

To create a system which puts relationships and peoples lived experiences first.

Our Mission

To have one system working better together for everyone.

To build strong relationships where we can share resources, learning, challenges, and successes.

Trailblazing different ways of working whilst challenging barriers to positive change

We are a partnership made up of Voluntary sector, public sector, health and commissioners who have all come together to challenge the current system for people with complex/multiple needs. We believe that the system designed to support people MUST work around the whole person, tailoring the service to the person, supporting them as we would wish a loved one to be supported, in a more humanistic way.

What we currently know about the system:

➢ It is fragmented with services typically responding to the problem they are commissioned to respond to and not whole person (silo working)

➢ It sees the ‘problematic person’ in isolation from their wider social, economic and wider political context

➢ It commonly responds to presenting needs rather that what sits behind them (symptoms not cause)

➢ It sees people through a lens of problems and deficits missing opportunities to draw on strengths and assets

➢ It responds to crisis and risk and fails to adequately support recovery and resilience

What we want to achieve; we need to understand how the system and the people within the system (service user and staff) thinks, what can we do to test and improve the system for people with complex needs. The questions we need to answer are;

➢ What do we know about how people feel about their lives now?

➢ What do we know about how people perceive services and the systems that deliver them?

➢ What do we know about what personal, support and system improvements people want to see?

What will we do in response to what we discover from asking these questions?, what difference will that action make to people; their sense of self, their experience of services and systems and appreciation of trauma and disadvantage?.

The SCAA group meets every Thursday between 8am – 9am on Microsoft Teams.

Where Our Journey Started

December 2020

In response to the ‘changing futures’ fund a group of likeminded people from statutory and voluntary sectors came together to create a new partnership to develop a joint bid to MHCLG. Key to this was the work of Making Every Adult Matter – MEAM, who were the main drivers in bringing the group together.

February 2021

Unfortunately, our application was unsuccessful; however, what became apparent early on was the energy and passion of the group to work together regardless of the outcome. We thus created the “System Change Action Alliance” (SCAA) working across Northern Devon and Exeter (6 coastal and market towns and 1 city but with the same issues around deprivation), with ‘in kind’ support from Golden Key in Bristol.

The nature of our partnership is to put people first; (service users, frontline teams and the wider community). To create a space where action learning and listening is encouraged and supported by all partners, a place to test new and innovative ways of working which puts people first. We all recognise that we cannot work in isolation and that for real change to happen we must work in partnership with other like-minded organisation.

March 2021

System Change Action Alliance (SCAA) was created and rooted in relationships and understanding each other’s values, drivers and energy – we quickly became a team of passionate, innovative disrupters who were passionate about driving system-wide change in how systems work together to create comprehensive solutions. The core group includes:

Claire Fisher, Encompass Southwest
Amanda Kilroy, Colab
Amanda Sheriff, MEAM & Clinks
Andrea Beacham, One Northern Devon
Richard Merrifield, Public Health
Rob Fenwick, Exeter City Council
John Slater, Momentum
Josh Stunnell, B the Change CIC
Matt Wall, Together
Kristian Tomblin, Devon County Council
Alex Purnell, DCHOP
Liz Thompson, VAWAG Lead, Devon County Council

We are always keen to welcome new people to our group, if you’re interested in finding out more click on the contact us button at the top of our homepage.

May 2021

We set out to identify key objectives which we were passionate about and which we knew we could start to develop, these were:

Co-production –
- Listen-better to the voice of the client and the voice of our teams working directly with clients.
- Increase lived experience involvement
System Leadership
- Supporting organisations to establish a ‘we got your back’ approach
- Joint projects and reduced silo working
- Information sharing agreements between services
Staff Development
- Support frontline staff to avoid burn-out
- “Listen-better to the voice of our teams working directly with clients
- Improved empowerment and confidence across staff and develop a network of practitioners.”

June 2021

Frontline practitioners forum, co-production training and resources were developed and delivered by the partners. We started to:

- identify stakeholders and map their priorities
- Building an evidence base and developing an influential narrative
- Journey mapping of case studies

Andy Brogan – getting to know each other

10th August 2021

Housing first meeting with Juha Kahila, Head Of International Affairs / Kansainvälisten asioiden päällikkö at Y-Foundation

Juha Kaakineen CEO of Y-Foundation https://youtu.be/k6DPjCmc3BM

February 2022

Women’s work – Resilient women’s project in Exeter and Women First in North Devon came together to develop a “proof of Concept” to support women with complex needs.

March 2022

Successful National lottery bid “Trailblazing” The partners secured £214,000 from the lottery to build on the SCAA work and start to develop a wider response to complex needs by looking at the whole person, whole system.

May 2022

Journey Mapping – Supported by MEAM, Northern Devon introduced a new forum for journey mapping individuals stories, the aim was to facilitate a safe space for multiple agencies to come together to start to be curious about how the system could have responded differently. (attached a copy of the outcome to be included on the website)

September 2022

Launched our Cultural values survey across Exeter and Northern Devon.