Our Background
“We need to be clear on solutions that we want to create, but not just the solutions – but how we are going to get there”
Oisin King
In 2017, The Robertson Trust, Life Changes Trust and CELCIS collaborated with the FrameWorks Institute, internationally recognised experts in utilising communications to support social change. This collaboration helped to build an understanding of what the ‘experts’ (people with learned experience and lived experience) believe are the important themes around care experience.
This research, Seeing and Shifting the Roots of Opinion (Executive Summary, Full Report), and Slipping Through the Cracks (Full Report), enabled us to better understand where there are communication challenges within wider society for those wishing to campaign and advocate for progressive approaches to supporting care experienced children and young people.
Three key commonly held assumptions within the public were highlighted
Care experienced children and young people are seen as ‘forever damaged’ as a result of factors such as trauma and neglect
The care system itself is viewed as dysfunctional and unable to provide the loving, nurturing care that children and young people need to thrive
The public considers that children and young people generally end up in care due to poor parenting and bad choices
FrameWorks UK then tested framing strategies with the public to counteract these communication challenges. This resulted in a series of evidence-based framing recommendations to support care experienced people and their supporters to tell a different story about the care system and the children and young people in it.
Since 2021, Each and Every Child have been working across Scotland to raise awareness of framing, the eight recommendations and how they can be used. We work across the statutory and third sector. As the initial training has rolled out, we have expanded, developed and learned from our work with a variety of partners across the sector, including with individuals of lived and learned experience. This has allowed us to explore in depth how the framing recommendations impact on improving practice and influencing policy.
If you are interested finding out more about the research and design phase of the initiative, please refer to our Evaluation Report by The Lines Between.