How Golden Key’s three pillars are an integral part of its success
As a service coordinator with Golden Key and One25, Tabitha Horsfall has been successfully applying the three pillars to her work for some time. Here she explains why she believes other organisations could also hugely benefit from using it.
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Golden Key’s framework takes an intersectional and systemic approach to system change activities when working with people who experience severe and multiple disadvantages (SMD). This means considering all the things that might affect an individual’s experience, and think about the intersecting issues and systems which may be present in their lives. This approach has brought to light the true complexity of the system. In response to this, the Golden Key Service Coordinator Team (SCT) developed the concept of the three pillars, which encapsulates how we have navigated working within this complexity.
The three pillars have helped us to frame the work we do under three themes: relationships, collaboration and reflection. When considering our work within these areas, we have not only been able to contain some of the system’s complexity, but also improved the efficiency of the services we coordinate for people who experience SMD.
Indeed, while we have been applying the three pillars to our work at Golden Key on a daily basis with success, it is still largely unknown or misunderstood by the wider system. We are therefore keen to share how the concept works with the wider social sector and to support other practitioners and organisations in using it to impact their work and their commitment to create sustainable system change.
What are the three pillars?
The three pillars concept was developed to explore and make sense of the work the SCT has been doing throughout Golden Key’s lifespan. As a team, we identified that when working with people who experience SMD, three foundational themes emerged that we could use to ‘hold up’ and support our activities and action experiments. These were:
How do we apply the three pillars?
Within the team we use the three pillars in several ways – for example:
As a reflective tool
As a supervision exercise
As a way of better understanding a client’s situation, when thinking with other professionals
As a way to help frame discussions during multi-agency meetings
We have also applied the concept to client cases during our fortnightly system change meetings, during which we have discussions about our observations of the blocks and barriers that clients are facing.
To help understand how we apply the three pillars in our day-to-day work, I describe below an example of how I used it to support a client’s journey. I will call this client Alex – though this is not their real name.
Relationships
Building good relationships has been a crucial part of the work at Golden Key – both with our clients and with the organisations and services we work with. Our learning has taught us that by building trust through healthy and positive relationships we can improve a person’s experience of the system, and the subsequent outcomes.
I found that the most positive way to start a relationship with a new client is by being introduced to them by someone they already know and trust. That is how I met Alex - our relationship began when a previous Golden Key worker introduced us. This allowed for a smooth transition between workers, at Alex’s pace. The three-way meeting also presented an opportunity to explore Alex’s preferred method and frequency of contact, which were crucial to the development of our relationship from the outset.
After some time, and having built a good foundation for the relationship, we were able to replicate another positive introduction when I introduced Alex to the Assertive Contact and Engagement (ACE) worker, resulting in further positive engagement. Once again, this new relationship took some time to build, and due to the Covid-19 lockdown, it was formed through regular and consistent phone calls and text messages. Additionally, it was also crucial for me to build a positive working relationship with the ACE worker, as well as the other professionals involved including BDP Shared Care and Alex’s housing caseworker, to ensure the best opportunities for us to collaborate effectively.
Collaboration
Collaboration with and between professionals from other agencies and services is vital when coordinating services for a client. From the moment I started to support Alex, I also began regularly communicating and collaborating with their housing caseworker, BDP Shared Care and ACE worker. This collaboration allowed us to create opportunities for flexibility within the way we worked together to support Alex. While the ACE worker was building their relationship with Alex, we too established regular check-ins to discuss how things were going and share ideas on how best to continue to support and engage with Alex. While adopting a strengths-based and person-centred approach we also sought to collaborate with Alex as much as possible by making sure Alex was aware of any meeting that were taking place and giving Alex the opportunity to attend them. We hoped to support Alex to feel empowered to be a part of those discussions and share their own views and expertise by experience to inform the direction of support.
As Alex had shown an interest in talking therapy, we also began meeting every 6-8 weeks with ACE’s psychotherapist to explore how best we could support Alex on this long journey. These meetings created opportunities for us to share different perspectives, as we each came with our own diverse level of expertise. It took some time before Alex felt ready to start talking therapy, but during this time I remained in regular contact with the other professionals involved a d with Alex in order to collaborate and support Alex towards their goal. This collaboration allowed us to understand and overcome any challenges that arose, while ensuring that we remained reflective about the work.
Reflection
Reflection forms the final principle of the three pillars and is equally important as it creates an opportunity for learning, through the ongoing process of questioning our own professional practice and experiences. Within the SCT we have created multiple reflective spaces such as a monthly reflective practice, formulations and supervision, and fortnightly system change meetings. Along with a number of my colleagues, I have completed reflective practice facilitator training, and use these skills in many different ways to unpack and understand the impact of complex situations.
I met regularly with ACE to check in and reflect on how things were going for Alex. I was impressed to learn that while the psychotherapist had not begun one-to-one sessions with Alex, they continued to offer one-to-one supervision with the ACE worker and offered to support them, as they supported Alex towards talking therapy. Through this reflection the ‘team’ around Alex was able to think deeply about the complexity of the circumstances surrounding them, as well as our own interactions with them. Reflection helped us to remain engaged with the work, consider Alex’s own strengths and resources, and provided the opportunity to work through some challenging moments. Regular reflection also allowed us to support each other while holding Alex at the centre of our work.
Key benefits and challenges of using the three pillars
The three pillars concept promotes person-centred and strengths-based approaches. It supports discussions and thinking around complex issues; it enables us to remain progressive and creative when looking at new ways to flex or unblock the system, and find the most effective approach for our clients. It also helps to highlight the impact of our activities, both on our clients, and on the system.
The three pillars have helped me to reframe complex circumstances surrounding a client’s interaction with the system so that I could make sense of it and overcome some of the challenges that arose. Additionally, it helped to promote my own wellbeing within the workplace. Indeed, for the three pillars concept to work successfully it needs to be fully embedded in the culture of a team. This requires commitment and is one of the biggest challenges to implementing it more broadly.
Another challenge is the perception that it may be a tokenistic set of principles, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The three pillars don’t simplify a client’s circumstances, but rather they enable us to communicate them to others more easily, in order to find creative solutions to overcome challenges.
Recommendations
How would I recommend you begin working with the three pillars? Start by embracing the three principles. This may feel challenging at first, but simply taking time to think about how you could apply them to your work is a hugely beneficial and supportive process.
As practitioners, the more we actively think about and discuss the systemic issues surrounding clients who experience SMD, the more we understand how our interactions fall under the principles of the three pillars. This is how we can integrate them into our practice and the culture of our workplaces. If you start to apply them when trying to understand and hold complexity, before you know it, you will find yourself using the three pillars every day without even realising it.
Find out more about the origins of the three pillars and why we use it here.
-By Tabitha Horsfall