When Anne registered with Future Pathways, she felt like she had been on a rollercoaster for years. After leaving care, Anne experienced homelessness and felt she lacked the skills she needed. Anne worked for her local authority which would trigger flashbacks. Anne had also tried to access her care records, which was a painful experience. These experiences negatively affected Anne’s mental health.
Anne heard about Future Pathways through the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. Since then, Anne has worked with her Support Coordinators to access the right support for her.
“I have had two amazing Support Coordinators who went all out in helping me. Future Pathways helped me in many ways. I believe they saved my life in many ways.”
Future Pathways supported Anne with some practical needs. For example, Anne accessed the Discretionary Fund to purchase a laptop. Anne was nervous about using the laptop since she has dyslexia. But having a laptop helped Anne build up her confidence and digital skills.
Future Pathways also helped Anne access mental health support. When she started working with Future Pathways, Anne was going through a very difficult time. Anne accessed counselling through one of Future Pathways’ Delivery Partners.
“I needed the space to express how I was feeling about things. I believe the counselling I received through Future Pathways helped me survive a very difficult time. The counsellor was there for me at just the right time.”
Taking the time to tell her story in counselling helped Anne in her recovery. Having support from her Support Coordinator during the Inquiry also helped her manage.
“Anytime I phoned, they have been there for me. My Support Coordinator was amazing. She took me through everything, gave me good advice.”
With Future Pathways’ support, Anne was able to address her home environment. At the time, Anne was dealing with harassment from neighbours, and she did not feel safe where she lived. Because of these challenges, Anne felt isolated. Future Pathways purchased a membership at a cinema, to help Anne enjoy time away from the house.
“The cinema membership encouraged me to leave the flat and venture into town. When the cinema was quiet, I felt safe, like I didn’t need to scan the place. Then, I started going to other places in the city like the Gallery of Modern Art.”
With Future Pathways’ support, Anne was able to move to a new area, close to her family. Future Pathways also helped Anne buy household items to settle into her new home.
“I thought things could never be resolved before I moved. But I couldn’t have asked for better housing. Here, I have my own front door. I don’t have any stress about opening my door anymore.”
Now, Anne wants to make difference to others through the Voices for a Better Future group. Being a member of Voices for a Better Future has given Anne insight that not everyone has positive experiences with Future Pathways. Anne feels there might be some things Future Pathways could do to improve. For example, following up with people after about their experiences working with our Delivery Partners, and reducing the need to work with different Support Coordinators.
“It’s difficult because everyone is different. Maybe Future Pathways could look into what is working for people and what isn’t.”
Overall, Anne feels working with Future Pathways made a positive difference in her life.
“Really in every way, Future Pathways have had a very big impact in my life.”
Grace-Anne shares her wonderful paintings with us. She says:
“It’s never too late to learn new things. Learn to appreciate yourself and all you’ve overcame through expression. Whether that be art, writing, dance or song. Be unashamedly you because the world is a much nicer place when you learn to be authentically you. That’s your purpose…to live.”
Flora Henderson, Alliance Manager, explores our relational approach at Future Pathways.
Future Pathways is delivered by the In Care Survivors Alliance. It is one of the two services hosted by the Alliance (the other is Redress Support Service).
Our fundamental purpose is to help people who experienced childhood abuse and neglect in care to live happier, more fulfilled and more independent lives, recognising and being sensitive to the profound impact of traumatic experience – and tailoring support to set the conditions for positive connection and improving quality of life.
Since Future Pathways began, we have taken a relational approach to working with people.
We do this because we know that a positive relationship can be both an outcome in its own right, and a powerful enabler to accessing other supports.
Trust is a hugely important part of this; it is fundamental to making a connection and to building bridges to other supports and resources. This is especially important for people who may have been let down and poorly served by professionals in the past or may have a deep mistrust of services.
We decided, therefore, to centre trust in how we think about and measure the difference we make.
And we decided to be iterative, so we can apply what we learn immediately, constantly aiming to do our best by and for the people we work with.
For a number of years, we have worked with Matter of Focus. Together, we use impact measurement to drive insight and innovation. And by investing in impact measurement, we have an evidence-based way of reflecting on our work, developing the courage to test new ideas and adapting when we need to.
Measuring our impact helps us to consolidate what is most important about our approach in a robust way.
As such, as we now have real confidence in the importance of taking a relational approach, with a strong evidence base about what works and how.
It has helped us take a hard look at what being person-centred and trauma informed means in practice, with effects ripping out across how we work as colleagues, as commissioners of support and as contractors with Delivery Partners, as well as how we respond to feedback and complaints. Our relational approach invites the participation and contribution of everyone who is involved in and benefits from the service.
Measuring the impact of our relational approach has been central to developing an understanding of what ‘good support’ looks like and feels like to people, who have been seldom heard, or well served by existing services.
Redress Support Service can support you if you are applying to Scottish Government’s Redress Scheme, or if you are thinking about applying.
The service offers personalised support to people throughout their redress journey. This includes talking through your needs in relation to your Redress journey, including practical and emotional support.
There is tailored support provided by Link Workers and by delivery partners. There is also connection with other specialist support organisations who can help you find your records.
The service can support you to prepare for applying, during the application and after you have applied.
If you’re going through the application process for the Redress Scheme and would like to speak to someone about how you are feeling, contact the Emotional Support Helpline:
Phone for free: 0800 211 8403
The Helpline can also support you if you are thinking about applying for redress but haven’t made the application yet. You can also contact the Redress Support Service if you have already submitted your application.
Lauchlan, who is registered with us, shares these two reflective poems.
Talking to myself
Write go on write I’m talking to my pen
Oh what a clever writer to write when I say when.
The crimson skies the rushing waves I’m thinking in my head
Oh what a clever thinker to think what I just said.
It is really such a lovely life it’s me who’s telling you
I know it’s me who’s talking but to whom am I talking to.
I’m really just a splendid chap rich in thought and health
but guess what I discovered I am talking to myself.
Thoughts
A thought a thought it’s just a thought my mind will think again to think of all the thoughts
I’ve had would cast me out in shame.
I thought I was a rock star my mind was running wild selfish thought’s all for myself sometimes
I’m like a child.
I thought I was a Christian to the world I’d be so good but it’s to the devil my soul I gave and
the words I speak are rude.
I thought I was a politician I’d save the world’s cries but I’m not different from the rest
I’m a liar in disguise.
I’ve thought in many ways of folk
But it’s just a shot in the dark life is good and bad at times.
What do you think well there’s a thought.
Chris, who works with us, has been drawing for many years, using charcoal and, more recently, coloured pencil. Some of his work was recently shown in an exhibition in Glasgow. He told us about the exhibition, and about another way that he sometimes shares his work with others…
Chris has been working with Future Pathways for several years. He has been keen on drawing for as long as he can remember, and it has developed over the years. Chris told us:
“I used to mostly draw with a charcoal pencil – so that’s in black and white. But during lockdown I started coming out of my comfort zone a bit, and started doing colour drawings with graphite pencils. My friends often told me that they like them when I shared them on Facebook, and that the colour drawings cheered them up.”
Chris mentioned all of this to his Support Coordinator, and this started a discussion which ended up with them arranging an exhibition of Chris’s work in the Woodlands Community Meeting Room in Glasgow.
Above: Chris’s with his artwork on display at the Woodlands Community Meeting Room in Glasgow
Many of Chris’s drawings are of people, but they’re not all real people. Chris says: “I draw lots of stuff. I do things from TV shows or movie characters, or I’ll do cartoon characters or I’ll do superheroes. Things along those lines.”
But not all of Chris’s work is of made-up characters: “I sometimes draw bands of musicians and things like that.” And Chris uses this as a chance to share his work in a really lovely way.
“I go along to shows – plays or concerts – and I’ll pick a member of the band or the cast. Obviously I can’t draw them all, but I’ll draw someone. And then after the show, I’ll go to the stage door and I’ll present them with the drawing. Just as a little gift for them. People almost always ask if they are allowed to keep it! And I say, ‘Of course, that’s what I’ve done it for, it’s for you to take away.’ And they’re delighted. People giving me hugs and sometimes they’re nearly crying. It’s just very nice to see someone happy with something that I’ve done for them, and to see how much it means to them.”
Above: Chris’s work in the Woodlands Community Meeting Room in Glasgow
At SCVO’s The Gathering 2023 we’ll be telling people more about who we are and what we do, as well as what we learned through creating our most recent impact report, Stepping Stones.
We will be sharing how we went about understanding our impact, especially the impact of our relationships with people. Created in collaboration with Matter of Focus, the report shines a light on the difference we make and how we make it.
We’ll also be highlighting key words from our work. Each of the words below is one of the themes we noticed from our conversations with people we support. At Future Pathways, we ask people how it feels to work with us. It helps us to improve our service and to learn.
31st October 2023
Please note: this update replaces the communication we issued on 23rd October.
This is a further update about Future Pathways’ fund. The fund is used to help support the people we work with. We call this our Discretionary Fund or DF for short. However, below, we will simply refer to it as ‘the fund’.
The fund is one of the different types of support that people can access from Future Pathways. It is used to support people to work towards their goals.
We wrote to everyone in active support on 23rd October about two changes to fund. Since then, the Scottish Government has offered us extra support.
This means that we do not need to make changes to the fund anymore.
Ministers are keen to sustain support for people who are registered with Future Pathways. They have listened to the views of survivors and the Alliance Leadership Team.
The Discretionary Fund is one of the types of support that can be used to help people work towards the goals in their individual support plan.
The fund will not change. It will continue like it did before. This means that:
- There will not be a limit on how much you can access for purchasing items in a 12-month period.
- There will not be a limit on the amount you can request in a single application for purchasing items.
If you have any questions, you can:
- email us at engagement@future-pathways.co.uk
- write to us at Future Pathways, 40 Shandwick Place, Edinburgh EH2 4RT
The role of Future Pathways remains the same. We are here to support people with their goals and to help people work towards them.
Our latest Meet the Partner series continues with June Jeffrey, Head of Health and Social Care Community Services at Centred. With around 150 staff and working across the entire Highland region, the charity helps people with mental ill-health who live in their own homes and in Centred’s Recovery Centre in Inverness.
What does Centred do, and what is its ethos?
We work with adults who are experiencing mental ill-health and, in some cases, additional issues that impact on their ability to live a meaningful and fulfilling lives. We are a progressive charity, and continue to maintain a position at the leading edge of mental health recovery within the Highlands of Scotland.
We work within the Recovery ethos, which supports people to live productive lives even if symptoms persist. We have a 23-bed Recovery Centre in Inverness, which provides support to supported people in 12 self-contained flats and 11 single rooms. The Recovery Centre was the first facility of this kind in Scotland.
In the community we provide Support and Care at Home services to people living in their own homes within local environs from Inverness, Invergordon, Lochaber and Caithness. Within the Inverness and Easter Ross services we also facilitate supported accommodation services covering 24 hours each day 7 days each week.
How did Centred get started?
It was founded as Birchwood Highland 1987, to support the closure of Craig Dunain – one of the old-fashioned asylums outside of Inverness. The Community Care Act was looking to close these huge institutions located on the outskirts of towns and cities across Britain. The Not for Profit organisation was founded as a response to this government legislation. We started as a community-based service, moving people that had spent lots of their adult life – if not all of their adult life – in old-fashioned asylums, and moving them back into properties in the Inverness area where they could be supported in a more homelyand person-centred way aimed at enabling them to become part of their own communities.
We quickly realised how big the Highland area is! And how far people had travelled to Craig Dunain. When they were leaving, they wanted to go back to areas that they were more familiar with and may have some family connections. In response, we opened a service in Easter Ross, and then one in Lochaber.
We also opened Birchwood House at that time, which was set up to offer people who still needed 24-hour care and support with the added skills and knowledge provided by qualified nursing staff. The hope was that either they would later be able to move on to supported accommodation, or if not that they would be able to live there, but in a much smaller, more person-focused environment than the big institution. Birchwood House was updated and reopened in 2017 as The Recovery Centre, offering the opportunity for people to work toward their own personal goals by managing the symptoms they may be experiencing.
Now, we also work in Caithness offering both Support Services and Care at Home to people living in the County. We cover a huge area of the Highlands, but there are still a few gaps, just because of the size and geography of the Highlands. We continue to lobby for equality of access to services.
How do people come to you these days?
In Highland it’s a bit different from other areas: adult services are commissioned by NHS Highland, they are our biggest commissioners of services.
It’s usually either because someone has been or is being discharged from hospital and will need ongoing support to live as independently as possible at home. People and families come to their notice for other reasons, not necessarily just through hospital. So social work often make referrals directly.
The Highlands area is exceptionally large and sparsely populated. How does that affect the way that you work?
As a service, we have to realise that people do live quite isolated lives, and access to services is hugely challenging. Over the years, living in these communities has actually become even more of a challenge, especially right now due to the cost of living crisis. Having supported staff and people using our services through covid – further isolating people – we now face the cost of living crisis. And, of course, accessing services in the Highlands comes at an additional cost.
The cost of providing services in remote areas is not really considered by Scottish Government and therefore our commissioners.
Can technology be part of the solution, now or in the future?
It is right now. A big project at the moment is to reach out to people in the community and find ways of how to support them, whether that be on a one-to-one basis in their own home, or as part of group, or using new technology. I guess one of the positives from covid was that we all got used to communicating using Zoom and Teams and those types of things.
NHS, of course, use a lot of these technologies for appointments, especially in remote areas. However, that does have challenges about internet access and the cost of that. It’s certainly becoming a preferred way for younger people. They have their mobile phones, but a small screen can be a challenge for older people.
What projects are you currently working on?
We’ve recently opened a Discovery College, which works with people in the community. (Not necessarily people who have been commissioned for support, but people that are out there and don’t know where to go, or how to access services.)
People will be able to drop in and see who we are and what we’re about, and they can work on their own objectives. We’ll provide some learning courses that will be certificated, but over and above that there’ll be help to prevent isolation. Being able to come along and have a chat and a cup of tea with people who are peers. We have three Peer Support Workers who all have lived experience.
What sorts of mental health problems are experienced by the people you work with?
The full range. However, people who have been referred through NHS partners tend to live with significant mental ill-health: schizophrenia, personality disorder, bipolar…. but I think that what’s missing there are people who have anxiety and depression and just live with it. They never come to notice of services. The aim of the Discovery College is for people to reach out and find us.
Does someone’s location affect their likelihood of experiencing mental health problems: do they occur more in cities and less in rural areas, or vice versa?
It’s probably impossible to say, because people who live in cities have access to more services, so they’re more likely to come to the notice of those services.
And looking at it the other way, the outcome of people living with mental ill-health, or trauma, or any of these type of challenges, is that they have less life opportunities and therefore often end up in areas of deprivation and poverty. So, I think it works both ways.
How did your connection with Future Pathways come about?
I got a call from Future Pathways last year. You were looking for a provider to work with a particular individual that was being supported by staff based outside the Highland area. The individual was then offered a number of services in the area, and chose Centred as their preferred support provider.
The person, very fortunately, lives centrally and close to services. So we were able to provide support reasonably quickly, without anyone having to do lots of travelling.
Since then we’ve become an approved provider. There’s a lot of information that’s needed! All our staff are trained, and we’re fully insured. We’re registered with the Care Inspectorate, all our workers are SSSC-registered.
We’re really looking forward to working more with Future Pathways, and hopefully across the Highlands. Inverness is the main hub of need, but don’t forget that we are available to provide support from Caithness to Lochaber.
We are looking forward to attending SCVO’s The Gathering 2023. At this year’s event, we will have an exhibitor stand where you can find out more about who we are and what we do, and make connections with staff from across the service. Join us at stand 29 on 7th and 8th November to discover more.
We are delighted to also be hosting a partnership event with research company Matter of Focus at 9.30am on Wednesday 8 November. Titled “Opportunities and Challenges: evaluating relational services in a partnership context”, we will share what we have learned about evaluating the relationships we build as a service.
We have found that developing trusting relationships with people we support and our partners means improved outcomes for people and services. Matter of Focus have helped us evaluate our relational approach to partnership working since 2018. This has helped us understand more about Future Pathways’ impact at scale. But it can also be challenging. Often, services have assumptions about partnership working that need to be considered and evidenced.
At this event, we will share what we have learned about how to evidence and understand our relational approach, drawing on examples from our work with people we support and partners. We will explore how this evaluation has enabled us to make decisions about refining our model of support and enhance our impact.
At this event and at our exhibition stand, we hope to highlight our work and our impact, and create connections with other services.
“Future Pathways is the first service of its kind, pioneering a relational approach to working with survivors of abuse and neglect in care. Embedding evaluation and learning into the service from the start means not only that Future Pathways are really clear that their service is effective and their work is making a difference to survivors, but has also allowed them to continually refine and innovate their approach to make the best difference possible. Matter of Focus are delighted to be working alongside an organisation with such a deep commitment to learning and improvement.’’
Ailsa Cook, Director, Matter of Focus
“We are looking forward to attending SCVO’s The Gathering 2023 as both exhibitor and as event host. Sharing our learning with others is an essential part of our work and we are delighted to be part of SCVO’s diverse and inspiring programme. We hope to spark discussion and reflection with those working across the sector, and look forward to sharing information about who we are and what we do.’’
Flora Henderson, Alliance Manager, In Care Survivors Alliance
The Gathering is the largest free voluntary sector event in the UK and it is organised by the SCVO (Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations). This is an opportunity for Future Pathways and many other services to showcase their work and learn from others. The Gathering will take place at the EICC in Edinburgh on Tuesday 7 November and Wednesday 8 November.