The challenge

Barnardo’s Scotland provides a wide range of services for children and families in partnership with local authorities across the nation. With such a disparate mix of service provision, won by tenders with different fulfilment criteria, it is difficult to create a shared vision and language for Barnardo’s staff. When Barnardo’s UK decided in 2014 to make Five to Thrive the core model for their strategic plan for work with children and families, Barnardo’s Scotland quickly took up the offer, feeling that this would provide the key model linking many disparate pieces of work within their service provision.

Our approach

In KCA we know that only a co-creative approach to meeting local need can be effective. Our training and consultancy therefore provided Barnardo’s with the same core material delivered very differently in different locations, in partnership with both Barnardo’s and the local authorities commissioning Barnardo’s service provision. For example:

In Glasgow, conference events introduced Five to Thrive to leaders, managers and frontline staff across a range of disciplines.

In Renfrewshire, in response to need in a particular vulnerable community, nine events were provided in one day across the community, with Barnardo’s staff as Five to Thrive champions subsequently working to embed the model in practice across different services and disciplines. KCA provided quarterly supervision and planning sessions across the following three years.

The impact

Evaluations in Glasgow were very positive, and participants felt they had both learned a lot and could apply what they had learned immediately.

In Renfrewshire stakeholder groups gathered to give feedback in addition to the usual post-event feedback. This was always very positive – one police officer, for example, attributed a drop in serious crime in that period to Five to Thrive!

In 2024 a detailed case study is being prepared, and preliminary work shows that Barnardo’s in Scotland includes Five to Thrive in almost all tender bids to provide an underpinning theory of change. One senior manager said “We believe Five to Thrive is the basis for all trauma-informed work”.