What if… what if, all forces children and young people in Scotland were supported to reach their potential and thrive?
The purpose of this blog is to kick off a series of articles reflecting on the co-production of our new strategy as an organisation. It has a call to action for the readers to leave some comments at the end, which will impact our thinking and planning.
I joined Forces Children Scotland just in December there, and I have to say I am LOVING it so far. I won’t share what day number of employment this is, as my spider senses are telling me that my colleagues are starting to get bored of that one.
The forces children and young people I have been lucky enough to meet are just incredible. What a lovely (and talented) bunch our staff team are. Our Co-Chairs (and wider Board of Trustees) govern the organisation very effectively and have been super supportive.
There are so many amazing like-minded organisations out there that I am slowly working my way around; the future partnership and collaboration opportunities are limitless. Super exciting. You can sense the energy and enthusiasm.
On our previous organisational strategy, there is plenty to celebrate. Equally, there are a couple of things that we need to own, put our hands up on, and learn and improve for the future.
Firstly, we attempted to position ourselves as a sector leader; we think we may have got this wrong. We will absolutely show leadership where required, and support forces children and young people to develop their own leadership capabilities. But we need to re-position ourselves. We will be far more of a partner and a collaborator moving forward. There is enough need out there for everybody, and we are uniquely placed to bring the military, voluntary and children’s sectors, and local communities, together in Scotland to achieve our shared goals.
Secondly, we overcommitted. That has come from living one of our values; we are so passionate about our work. But if we try to be everything to everybody, we won’t be effective completers/finishers. Expect us to be a bit more focused on key priorities.
Putting that to one side. Co-producing our new strategy with forces children and young people, with our staff team and board, and with external stakeholders is so pivotal for us. Especially that co-production with children and young people; it is something we do well, it is an organisational strength, it is perhaps a unique selling point. Coming together as equals to make shared decisions on our future is important to us. We are curious about enhancing power-sharing with forces children and young people. Indeed, that’s part of a Trustee Development Day we have pencilled in for April.
I visited our Rights Charter Residential (more on this during the Month of the Military Child!) at the end of January. The forces children and young people had some amazing insights as to what a power-sharing agreement could look like, and gave us a clear steer on their expectations around the level of involvement at different stages of the strategy development. More importantly, they had lots of fun, built some great friendships and helped co-produce an important piece of work that will form part of our future plans.
As part of our strategy co-production, we want to ask ourselves some big questions. Actually, we also want to ask these questions externally. We want you to answer these questions if you have a view. Some of them include things like:
There are several other questions we are curious to understand and to hear a diversity of thought around.
Thanks for reading. Let’s wrap this up by thinking about what success looks like.