Systems and Stories
Often when strategists or policy-makers work to improve collaboration within or between childcare organisations, they will start from from the top and work down, or alternately, from the bottom and work up. Both angles are necessary and valuable, but, when laid out next to each other like this, immediately raise the issue of other folk in the middle, and then, how to be confident that the bigger picture has been grasped. One big worry is what might happen if things are missed that result in an oversimplification that, often accidentally, loses some of the stuff that makes the job worth doing, and provides vulnerable children with the experience of reliable, responsive, and creative, relationship they need.
The actuality of childcare systems that can provide this agile, personalised response to individual children, in the moment, will necessarily be complex and entwined, and may well, look very different, depending on the vantage point from which you are looking.
The word complex derives from the latin verb plectare in the context of braiding hair. Immediately we can see how complexity might be a thing of power and beauty, or alternately, a twisted and tangled source of frustration.
I believe a structure exists that allows these perspectives to be gathered, organised, and harmonised, to secure progress. Residential childcare is an emotional activity and each participant within an organisation will have their own story. The combination of these stories forms the mosaic from which progress can be derived. Crucially the process of collection is, in itself, a collaborative activity, requiring energy and the development of trust.
This is not linear data and it will not organise straightforwardly. Rittell and Weber coined the term wicked problem to decribe complex long-term problems with numerous stakeholders who often cannot even agree what the difficulties might be. They laid out ten conditions underpining their persistence and one was that every attempt at solution is a “one-shot intervention” ~ What you do inevitably changes things. The result can be that the problem stubbornly remains a step ahead of the solution and your intervention can look like kicking the can down the road.
The collation, organisation, and harmonisation of these stories could be described as a process of curation. Unfortunately, the verb curation has now become so over-used it would be easy to overlook how that skillset combines respect and care for the past, with the ability to assemble and activate processess that powerfully affect the present and the future. It might also tell us just how complicated things have become, and indeed how important this particular proficiency is becoming in our ever more complex world.