November 2018

20th November

The Ylab team visited our offices in Flintshire. At bootcamp, we felt that the question we were asking in the research phase was fairly obvious - Can we save the local authority money and improve outcomes for looked after children by implementing Mockingbird? And we thought that this question wouldn't change.

Within a few minutes of our meeting starting, it did.

We soon realised that it was important to be realistic about what can be measured between now and July 2019. 8 months! And how long would it potentially take us to find a suitable hub carer, implement our first constallation and see results? It's going to be a lot longer than that, maybe even years.

But the encouragement from the Ylab team reassured us that this is a good idea to implement. Their growing understanding of our field of work and the questions asked , really helped to focus on how we can get there.

The question changed to:

How necessary is it to modify the Mockingbird model in order to recruit hub foster carers and satellite carers to implement the first constellation in Flintshire and for a sustainable roll-out of further constellations?

This seemed far more achievable in 8 months.

22nd November

Meeting with senior staff. Discussed how we can overcome potential barriers for foster carers becoming hub carers. Received an encouraging response and invitation to attend Chief Officers Team meeting. Agreement received to advertise for additional staffing to enable current team members to continue development of Mockingbird.

27th November

Internal advertisement for senior practitioner (7 month) post.