The Parent Panel: Round #1 reflections
A blog series about shifting power to local parents at Impact on Urban Health.
Hey, we’re Emily and Tayo. We’re currently working on the Parent Panel pilot- a collaboration with Impact on Urban Health exploring how to share power with local parents in their decision-making processes.
In this blog series, we’ll share highlights of what we’re learning around power and collective decision-making.
You can catch up on our first blog about the Parent Panel here.
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Blog #2: reflections on the first round of the Parent Panel
About the Parent Panel Pilot
In 2022, Hello Brave partnered with Impact on Urban Health to co-design a Parent Panel. The aim was to design a process that tests whether their Children’s Mental Health team can make decisions about their strategy and priorities with local parents. You can read more about that co–design process in this short blog series here.
Now joined by Emily Danby, Hello Brave are supporting Impact on Urban Health to test a version of the co-designed Parent Panel with a 9-month pilot. At this stage, the panel is made up of ten parents from Lambeth and Southwark and three members of the CMH team.
What’s happened so far
Onboarding the Panel
The Parent Panel began meeting in January this year, when they took part in a series of onboarding sessions. These were co-designed to help panel members connect with each other and digest context.
Onboarding sessions included presentations from the CMH team, and a session for parents to share their own knowledge and experience. We wrapped up with an in-person reflection session and lunch.
As facilitators, our overall sense was that the onboarding time was rich, connecting, and a little overwhelming! The pace was fast for us on the delivery end. And the feedback from parents suggested that a slower start might have helped some people to land.
Parent Panel round #1
From March to May, the Panel took part in a first round of Parent Panel sessions. This consisted of two crit sessions, a decision-making day, and a reflection session.
Crit sessions were designed as moments for the CMH team to share something they’re working on for feedback from the parents, and to give context that supports decision-making.
These sessions helped to explore how easy or difficult it might be for the team to share their strategy with parents in an accessible way (more about this in the reflections below👇) . The team shared their strategy in several different ways, including a presentation with slides in the first session, and a more conversational exploration in the second.
Collective Decision-Making
Our decision-making day in May was the main focus of this first round of sessions; it was the first big opportunity to test whether the parents and team could make collective decisions within this process.
In the run-up, we worked with a core group from the CMH team to identify a question.
We agreed it needed to relate to a decision that was:
Genuinely on the table for the CMH team over the next 6 months
Likely to make a material difference to their work
Possible for the parents to have enough context around.
The team identified this as the question they wanted to bring:
What 5-10 “community measurements” should the CMH team choose to track in the programme over the next year?
As facilitators, we then had the challenge of making sure there was enough shared understanding about what was meant by a community measurement. We aimed for an approach that would keep it practical, and avoid unnecessary theory, using lots of examples and encouraging everyone to generate lots of ideas.
Decision-Making Day
The decision-making day took a 4-part structure:
Time to reconnect and give context
We spent some time giving a quick recap on the strategy, and context to understand ‘outcomes’ and ‘impact’.
Long-listing outcomes
We then encouraged parents and team members to generate as many ideas for outcomes as they could think of, before working in small groups to prioritise 5 or 6 based on:
a. What felt most perfect for parents (i.e. would make a material impact)
b. What felt most perfect for the team (i.e. aligns with the strategy and is feasible)
Shortlisting outcomes
The shortlisting process began with parents voting on up to five of their preferred outcomes. This selection was then put to the team members, who had the opportunity to veto any outcomes they felt were unfeasible or out of scope.
Confirm & conclude
After some discussion and group decisions on these areas, the group agreed a final set of five outcomes that the CMH team will measure in their work over the next year.
You can see the final set of outcomes summarised here.
Reflections on round #1
In the week following decision-making day, we held two separate reflection sessions for parents and connectors, and for the CMH team.
Parents and team members were invited to reflect on the full first round of sessions, in terms of how they’ve felt, what they’ve valued about the process and where they notice obstacles to making meaningful decisions together.
Key reflections from parents
The value of relationship-building 🧑🏿👩🏻
Some parents shared doubts about the amount of time put in before the decision-making day to build relationships and get to grips with the context. More than one parent said they’d eventually decided to ‘trust the process,’ despite some doubt about why we weren’t jumping into decision-making sooner.
However, parents also said that their minds changed after the decision-making day, when it became clear that the trust they’d built with each other and the information they’d absorbed really supported the decision-making process.
Clarity about expectations and roles 🔍
Some parents shared that they had needed to experience this first full cycle of the process to fully understand what was expected of them and what the process was.
Finding a good rhythm 🪘
A couple of parents said that it was difficult to get in the swing fully when there were long gaps (3 or 4 weeks) between sessions.
What happens when a decision leaves the room? 🚪
The main question on parents’ minds at this point in the process is whether the decisions they made with the team in May will now be translated into action.
Parents expressed that, while they were hopeful, it might be difficult to continue trusting the process without evidence that what was decided is leading to change.
Key reflections from the Children’s Mental Health team
Clarity about what makes a ‘decision.’ 🤔
Some members of the team felt that a lack of shared clarity about what was meant by a ‘decision’, and whether the Panel was intended to be advisory, decision-making, or both, was holding them back.
Sharing information 📑
The team recognised a need to share more clearly the rationale and principles behind their strategic decisions. There was acknowledgement that this is an organisational-wide issue, and not just specific to their programme.
At the same time, some team members were uncertain about how much more information to give to parents, and whether it might shape parents’ responses too much if they shared their thinking extensively.
Navigating power 🤝
Some team members said they felt that this process to share power with parents was happening quite late in the day, since the CMH team had already decided their strategy and priorities.
One person said they wanted the team to be more honest about how much scope there was for parents to input on their strategy and priorities. In particular, they wanted the team to be explicit with parents about when the scope was narrow.
Some team members also felt uncomfortable with the veto process used at decision-making day. One person said they were not comfortable with team members having the power to take a parent’s suggestion off the table in this way, and thought it meant the team could choose to make a collective decision when it suited them, and otherwise avoid it.
Coming up: Round #2 of the Parent Panel
The second round of the Parent Panel kicked off earlier this month. The Panel will meet twice in June and September for crit sessions, ahead of our second decision-making day in October.
Questions we’re holding for round #2
As facilitators, this first round of the Parent Panel has already been rich in learning around our main question of what supports the team and parents to make collective decisions.
Here are 3 key questions we’re now holding as we step into round #2:
How does the Parent Panel process integrate with other decision-making processes at Impact on Urban Health?
How does the Parent Panel sit alongside other initiatives the CMH team and wider organisation are exploring to share power with local people?
What other support do the team need outside of this process to enable this work?
Get in Touch
If you’re working on similar projects within your organisation and would like to chat or swap notes, we’d love to hear from you! You can reach out to Emily at emily@emdanby.uk and Tayo at tayo@hellobrave.org.