This is an update about Future Pathways’ fund, 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 work towards their goals.
It is important that we use the fund fairly, that the fund is available to everyone, and that we can make the fund stretch as far as possible. With that in mind, we are making two changes to the fund for the purchase of items:
- There will now be a limit on how much an individual can access the fund in a 12-month period. An individual will only be able to access up to £5,000 in 12 months for purchasing items.
- There will now be a limit on the amount that an individual can request in a single application. For items and goods, we will accept single applications of no more than £3,000.
For requests of over £1,000, a Support Coordinator writes an application to the fund on a person’s behalf. Before these new changes take place, four weeks will be given for pending applications to be completed. ‘Pending’ means applications that have already been agreed with Support Coordinators. These must be completed before 1st December.
For applications that have not already been agreed with Support Coordinators, the new limits will apply to all new requests from 1st November.
Only in very special cases, where there is an immediate and clear need, requests outside the limits may be approved by members of the Alliance Leadership Team. The Alliance Leadership Team oversees Future Pathways.
We would rather not have to add limits to how much you can access from the fund. We know that it is an important part of support from Future Pathways. But making these changes now, helps us to make sure that:
- the fund can be accessed by everyone supported by Future Pathways
- the changes affect as few people as possible
- we can continue to make the fund available
The reason for needing to make these changes is due to a number of factors that have been impacting the fund:
- Many people we support are affected by the cost-of-living crisis. This has led to more requests being made to the fund.
- The cost of items and services has gone up which means the fund is stretched even further.
- We are trying to support a larger group of people as more people come forward for support from Future Pathways.
Following the changes, we will review how much of the fund is spent each month. We hope that no further changes will be needed. But we might need to look again if costs continue to be higher than planned.
We know that change can be difficult. We have taken the time to really consider these changes. Our hope is that we can maintain our service in the best possible way, and with as little disruption as possible to the people we support.
The role of Future Pathways remains the same. We are here to support people with their goals and to help people work towards them.
We issued further information on the Discretionary Fund in an information sheet.
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
We have sent communication to all people in active support. The information about these changes were sent via letter and / or email (depending on their communication preference). Letters were dispatched on Monday 23 October and emails were sent the same day.
Our latest Quarterly Report is now available to view. It covers our work from April to June 2023. It shows what we’ve learnt, and includes key stats and feedback from those who access Future Pathways.
What happened in Q1
57 people registered with Future Pathways.
15 people started working with a Support Coordinator.
80 people accessed support from 26 Delivery Partners.
Who we worked with
The average age of people who registered with us was 46.
77% of people who register with us live in the Central Belt of Scotland.
We learned that most of the people we support may have a disability or a health condition.
How people felt
Most of the feedback we received was positive.
Some people told us they felt listened to and able to trust the service.
On the other hand, waiting for support can make people feel frustrated, unable to progress and unimportant.
What people gained
People gained access to a wide range of supports.
Accessing mental health supports and exploring creative interests were most helpful.
What changed for people
Someone we supported shared what is different for them:
“It has given me a lot of confidence […] Now I want to give something back.”
What difference we made
Someone we supported shared the sense of purpose they now feel:
“I know I am there for the right reason, to make people realise that they have a voice […] I feel passionate about Voices for a Better Future.”*
Our full report features further infographics, feedback and a breakdown of our financial spend. Read the full report.
A note that our Registration Line is closed Monday 16th October to Friday 20th October. The line will open again at 10am on Monday 23rd October.
If you’re finding things hard, it can be good to talk to someone.
The Samaritans
Breathing Space
Shout
We are delighted to share our final report from the Action Learning Programme. Created by The Lasting Difference, the report highlights the learning and feedback from engagement sessions held with a group of services we work alongside.
These sessions helped us to:
- Explore best practice and ways to remove barriers to support.
- Explore how partnership working can contribute to lasting change for individuals and the wider system.
- Identify ways to increase collaborative working.
- Inform how we think about our collective impact going forward.
Together we considered the challenges to collaborative working, and how we could address these. We also discussed what supports effective, impactful partnership working.
We found that our collaborative approach to commissioning brings trust, choice and flexibility to our outcomes-focused support. It also creates a network of support, knowledge and learning with Delivery Partners which, in turn, helps navigate complexity and offer holistic support.
We also found that our collaborative approach to commissioning can face systemic challenges. For example, inaccessible services, capacity challenges or confusion around national programmes of support can hinder the way we can work together.
Thanks to the insights from participants, we also learned more about what we do well and where there is room for improvement so we can address challenges to enable wider impact.
We would like to thank all those who took part in the process. Their insight and feedback was invaluable.
“This Action Learning Programme helped us consolidate what we have learned about sustaining collaborative relationships with partners. This project was an opportunity to work with our partners to explore how we can enhance our approach to working together, so we can continue supporting people to work towards their personal outcomes. It highlighted the importance of building ongoing communities of practice, and of evaluating our wider impact.”
Louise Hall, Impact and Evaluation Lead, Future Pathways
“It was so helpful to better understand Delivery Partners’ experience of working with Future Pathways. For me being relatively new to my role, the voices of everyone in the group and the learning that was shared about what works, helped to shape my own approach as partner relationships lead. The opportunities for learning and improvement can’t be overestimated.”
Nell Glen, Partner Relationships Lead, Future Pathways
“People are better supported when the different parts of the system work better together. Future Pathways have shone a light on this by convening partners and exploring how the capacity within the system can be used better. This report shows that more collaborative, trauma-informed commissioning is not only necessary, it’s clearly achievable.”
Graeme Reekie, Director, The Lasting Difference
Our Impact is a short overview of the difference we make.
We recently published our latest impact report, Stepping Stones, and a summary version of the report. We now also have a short version of our impact report. It gives you key information from our report in just 8 pages.
The short version tells you what we learned about:
- What we do
- The people we support
- The impact we have on the people and services we work with
We also share the ways we would like to learn more. And how you can help us by giving feedback on our service.
Did you know that you do not need to live in Scotland to access Future Pathways’ support? Ian, who registered with Future Pathways in 2019, was sent to Australia as a child migrant. He has lived there since he was around 7 years old. Ian is also supported by Tuart Place, a West Australian support service for adults who were in any type of out-of-home care when they were children, including former child migrants.
Here, Ian shares his talent for model making.
Ian started making model windmills when he retired about 12 years ago. Since then, he has made around 2,500 of them! Ian explains, “It’s just something that I taught myself to do because I knew all about them after working in the bush and on farms”.
Ian was of the generations that depended on windmills more than most because he grew up in rural, remote areas. Years ago in Australia, these windmills were everywhere, even in the suburbs. It was the main way for many people to draw water up to the surface.
Talking about making his windmills, Ian shares:
“I get a lot of pleasure out of it. I make the frame one day then the next day do the spindle at the top. It takes me about 10 hours to make one, whatever the size. The bigger ones are easier to make because you can get your hand in. My design is good too because I put extra things in, like chairs on each landing. Some of the windmills are quite small, others are as tall as a person. When it comes to the end of making one, I’m so happy.”
Ian, who recently turned 80 but says he feels about 40, makes windmills in all different colours. He has used football colours, Irish colours, aboriginal colours (red, black and yellow), and others are silver, like windmills in the bush. Ian made one in yellow and blue which was auctioned off to raise money for Ukraine. Another he made as tall as a door which raised $1500 for kids. He even presented one to a member of the Australian parliament who came to Tuart Place and took it back to Canberra with them.
Ian’s talents extend to other models too:
“I’ve also made a model of Sydney Harbour Bridge about 3 meters long, and a beautiful dolls house on wheels. I even made the furniture to go into it and battery-operated lights. That one got raffled at Tuart Place. Everyone who sees my models, they fall in love with them.”
And now Ian’s windmills have even travelled half-way around the world to Scotland after he very kindly made one for Future Pathways, and we love it! As Ian put it, “it’s a little bit of Ian and a little bit of Australia, in the middle of Scotland.”
Growing stronger together
Tuart Place is a support service for adults in Western Australia who were in any kind of out-of-home care when they were children. Funded by the state government, it is based in the city of Freemantle, just south of Perth. Its motto is ‘growing stronger together’, and it provides a lot of different services, including counselling, social activities, informal support groups, training courses and records tracing
www.tuartplace.org
Flora Henderson, Alliance Manager, explores how working together as an Alliance can strengthen the service we deliver.
Delivered by the In Care Survivors Alliance, Future Pathways was set up to offer something tangibly different to people who experienced childhood abuse or neglect in Scottish care settings. The aim was to directly reduce the inequalities that come from such experiences.
Our vision was for people to have fuller, healthier and more independent lives.
And that this could be achieved by focusing on what was most important to someone and by providing tailored support according to the personal outcomes or goals they wished to progress.
It is known that the impact of childhood abuse is individual and wide ranging. No two people were alike in their experiences, therefore a personal response was vital. Having consulted with people about what was important to them, the challenge was to respond to a wide range of needs in a personal way. It was hard to see how a single organisation could respond.
Early evidence highlighted the importance of this: by the time our first scoping report was completed, it was clear that people usually had multiple needs and few supports. Indeed, we found that people had shown great resilience in the face of services that did not always understand or respond to their needs. More of the same would not do.
In an alliance, each partner is required to act in a certain way to achieve a common goal.
The Scottish Government identified that alliancing had the potential to offer something new and different. The initial test was whether alliancing would enable partner relationships that allowed for a flexible response to individuals. Done well, it is a culture of innovation and learning, with all partners sharing risk as well as opportunities, never losing focus of the person’s needs and requirements.
In Care Survivors Alliance brings together four partners:
While each organisation has specific qualities, experience or remit that we can draw on, we also know that working together enables more effective support for those who access Future Pathways.
Each partner can share learning, knowledge and expertise to strengthen the service we deliver.
Our collaborative approach also extends to our network of Delivery Partners and beyond. These are the organisations, services and individuals from which we commission support. Over time, we have developed and strengthened our network and we now work with around 62 active Delivery Partners. This commissioning model also offers the flexibility to respond to individual need, offer real choice to people and to truly tailor our support. For example, our network includes organisations and practitioners working across counselling, therapy and record searches, as well as in life coaching, or creative writing services.
Our hope was that alliancing would lead us to a style of working that fostered inclusivity and learning.
There is a sense that a consistent priority placed on relationships and learning. There are examples of support being offered in new and different ways, improving the response to individuals.
We have more to learn about the unique contribution that Future Pathways and our partners make in understanding what is most important to someone and convening support around them accordingly.
Collaboration is essential to any alliance model. This is clearly the case for Future Pathways: our aims can only be achieved through the joint working and shared values of our four Alliance partners. We are committed to building relationships, learning from each other and reducing barriers to support where we find them.
Alex has been working with us for about a year. We helped him to write a book – and he’s already planning the next one.
Alex is in his early 70s, and had never written a book before. However, when the idea came up during a call with his Support Coordinator, he was interested. Alex says, “I knew I had enough stuff to say, but I just wasn’t sure I was ready at that time.”
Alex decided to go for it, and the book was recently printed. It’s called ‘Priests Don’t Dae That’. It’s about Alex’s life, mainly his childhood in the 1960s. He wrote it with the help of Lea Taylor from the Book Whisperers. The Book Whisperers help people to write books.
The writing and editing process worked well. Alex explains: “I’d put pen to paper, and then I would meet up with Lea and give her my pages. She would then put it all together for me. And she designed the book cover for me too.”
It took Alex just a month or two to write the book: “Once I started writing, it came quite easily.”
Lea really enjoyed the process too. She told us “It was a joy working with Alex on so many fronts.” Lea told us how dedicated Alex was to writing his book. She said that “best of all was witnessing such a wonderful change in him as the work and his confidence progressed.
His story was fascinating, and I’m delighted to have helped Alex produce this powerful piece of work.”
The people at the Book Whisperers believe that just the process of writing a book can make you feel better about things, and that was true for Alex: “It was a great experience. I wish that I got it all out sooner, honestly, but I’m glad I have done it now, and I’m now more level-headed. I’m very thankful to Future Pathways and to the Book Whisperers.”
And what’s next for Alex? “I might write another couple!”
Dan Ross is a transformational life coach, helping people to move towards their goals using the resources and relationships they already have. As Dan says:
“My work is all about working in the here and now, and making a plan for the future.”
He has developed a programme called “Ignite Your Inner Warrior.” The programme is about helping people to discover their inner potential.
Previously Dan was a counsellor, working in crisis settings. This gave him a wealth of experience of working with people in challenging life circumstances, which he is able to apply in his current role as a life coach.
The process
Dan works with people from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences, and feels that it is important to treat everyone equally. Central to Dan’s work is developing a mutual, trusting relationship with people so that they can work effectively together.
The process starts with a free session before starting to work together. During this session Dan meets the person he will be working with, and together they explore if life coaching is right for them. They also talk about how they will work together. Dan finds this helps people feel less anxious about it.
During sessions, Dan works with people to become more aware of their limiting beliefs. A limiting belief is a state of mind which can block someone from moving towards their goals. Sometimes people are not aware of their limiting beliefs.
By helping people see these blocks, Dan helps people transform their beliefs about themselves into more positive ones. Dan encourages people to identify values they wish to develop and embody. He says:
“The values you choose should be the opposite of your limiting beliefs. For example, if you struggle with people pleasing, one of your values could be assertiveness.”
Dan supports people to master their values and make them part of their identity and everyday life. He helps them to reframe their thinking and find new perspectives on challenges. This can help people to feel more able to work through self-criticism, and to feel more in control of their life.
Dan also runs a free mindset group for people he works with. People in this group attend events and workshops, and take part in challenges like cold water exposure, climbing mountains, or even free-falling.
Working with Future Pathways
Dan heard about Future Pathways when a Support Coordinator, Andrew, called him to enquire about his services. Andrew was working with someone who wanted to explore how life coaching could help him achieve his goal of becoming a motivational speaker. Dan describes his experience of working with Future Pathways:
“It has been first class. The Support Coordinators have been personable and positive. I have had no communication issues at all. Any questions I had were quickly answered.”
Dan believes that life coaching is most impactful when people are ready to commit to change in their life, and he feels that everyone Future Pathways has connected him with has been ready to work together.
He also encourages the people he works with to stay connected with Future Pathways, and to share how they are doing with their Support Coordinator. This helps Dan work alongside Future Pathways to help people achieve their goals.
Impact
Many people who Dan has worked with have achieved things that might have seemed impossible before their work together. For example, some people have started businesses or overcome fears to complete personal challenges. Some people tell Dan that his coaching has changed their life. It’s clearly a very successful partnership, which we hope will continue and develop for many years to come.
Find out more about Dan’s work at www.danrossmotivation.co.uk
Pat has been working with us for about a year and a half. He wanted to share his experience of working with Future Pathways.
How long have you been working with Future Pathways?
About a year and a half now.
How did you find out about us?
It was a friend. He got me to go to Wellbeing Scotland, and they told me about Future Pathways.
How has Future Pathways helped you?
Well, I didn’t really have much self-confidence and stuff. My Support Coordinator helped me to learn to ask for help. It’s a thing I found hard before, because of the way I’ve been brought up in life: basically, help always cost me something.
How did you manage to make that change?
One of the first things my Support Coordinator did is she got me a laptop: it’s a type of thing I would never spend money on just for me. She got me to understand that I’ve got to look out for me as well. And in the long run, that will help everybody else.
I found it great just sitting on the laptop. I like to learn, but I never had the confidence to learn and I was never encouraged. A website about photography came up. Years and years ago, I had a small camera and I loved it. I would just go out and walk and take photos.
So Future Pathways helped me get a camera, which helped me. It gave me a reason to get out there and do something just for me, basically.
How is life different now?
It’s definitely different. See the name Future Pathways? It’s like before, my pathway was always leading around about and coming back again, but they helped me make a different pathway, which has opened up the inner belief in me. I can do this, I can take photographs, I can do whatever.
I’m going to start a writing course in a couple of weeks, and that’s something I would never have even considered. I’ll be nervous! I’ll be uptight still, but I’ve got the belief to try it.
It’s great that you’ve got more self-confidence and you believe in yourself…
A while ago, my boy got me and my partner a Christmas present: a flight to Dublin. I never used it, because I didn’t have the confidence. But Future Pathways helped me, so I went for it, me and my partner. It’s the first time that we’ve been on a plane. I’m over 50 years old, and it was the first time I was on an aeroplane, the first time I’d looked at the clouds from the other side.
It was only a short flight, but it’s something I would have never attempted, never thought about. But now I know I can do this. It’s the simple things in life, that other people take for granted… they’re the most important things for me.
