The Story of Collaboration: Our journey of learning
At Fullscope we believe in our journey and that is why we invest in building relationships, fostering connections to join the dots and advocating for improvement.
Why have we invested in an evaluation?
Fullscope emerged back in 2017 when some funders challenged a group of like-minded charities to come together to think about how to do things differently for children and young people at risk of poor mental health.
We have evolved and changed hugely since then, and on the cusp of a new chapter, we wanted to reflect on what we have achieved, address some challenges, and plan for our next three years.
In June 2021 we asked two eminent researchers, Harry Deacon and Dr Angela Aristidou at UCL School of Management to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the Fullscope consortium.
We wanted three main outcomes from the evaluation:
To understand the impact, benefits and challenges of working as a consortium
To examine the relationship between Fullscope and the local mental health and wellbeing ecosystem
To explore future sustainable options for the consortium.
What did we learn?
The lessons fell into 4 areas and the messages were clear:
System Change takes time
Collaboration is not easy but there are huge benefits
Communication and sharing learning is key to moving mindsets
Getting the groundwork right is essential for growth and effecting change.
Read more about what we learned here.
So what happens now?
Following the evaluation, we are now more aware of how we work better together as a consortium. We are stronger than we were and more able to deliver change.
We know WHAT we have to change and we know HOW we can change it.
Self-knowledge is powerful and this will help us to amplify and influence.
In order to focus our collective efforts on our priorities we are committing to refining and developing our internal systems and ways of working to ensure we can be a dynamic and influencing force for good in supporting the positive mental health of children and young people.
We’ll talk more about our plans for the future in the next few months so look out for that.