‘I was detecting a kind of, a from the heart kind of dialogue’: understanding the role of reflective spaces for transitional safeguarding innovation

ABSTRACT

The ESRC funded Innovate Project has explored how innovation is undertaken and experienced by professionals tasked with the responsibility of introducing new practice approaches in welfare provision for young people at risk of harm outside the home. This paper reports on our experiences of facilitating reflective discussion groups for professionals engaged in introducing Transitional Safeguarding into welfare settings in the UK. Within these reflective spaces we became aware of how the emotional impact of innovation is under-recognised and needs to be attended to, in order to ensure that the investment of peoples’ time and energy, alongside public monies, is not compromised. We draw on the psychoanalytic concepts of borderline states and the analytic third to highlight how such reflective spaces can provide the ‘emotional infrastructure’ to protect and promote the efficacy of innovation in challenging contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Innovation
• transitional safeguarding
• extra-familial harm
• analytic third
• borderline states

… because when you were talking there, my heart was … like you stirred my heart, it was just so … authentic what you were saying then, and you were very honest and …

(Abena, Reflective group 2)

Setting the scene

There is an established and continually growing understanding of the importance of reflective practice and reflective discussion groups for professionals working in human services (Ruch, 2007a, 2007b; Williams et al., 2022). The context for the reflective group experiences that inform this paper is the xxx research project (anonymised). The UK-based project has explored innovative practices in relation to three promising practice interventions designed to respond to the needs of young people encountering or experiencing safeguarding risks or harms beyond the family home, such as sexual or criminal exploitation, peer-to-peer abuse or violence. These are: contextual safeguarding, trauma-informed practice and Transitional Safeguarding. During the project we became awareness of how little time and opportunity the research participants had to reflect more deeply on how they were making sense of and experiencing the innovation activities they were engaged in. This recognition led to the introduction of the reflective discussion groups, reported on here, being introduced into the Transitional Safeguarding research strand of the project. The groups were designed with the intention of them being a resource to support social work managers and practitioners in their innovative work to develop Transitional Safeguarding services and systems.

The paper title and opening quote are taken directly from comments made by participants in these reflective discussion groups. Unexpectedly inter-woven throughout the group conversations was the word ‘heart’, illustrating the emotional impact of innovating in the context of the lives of young adults experiencing risks outside the home. In this paper, we examine the insights afforded by the psychoanalytic concept of ‘borderline states of mind’ when applied to innovation in the context of Transitional Safeguarding and present the findings of a psycho-socially informed, relational narrative analysis of the reflective discussion group sessions. We conclude by suggesting that the value of such reflective spaces lies in their capacity to create a ‘third position’ that: firstly, illuminates the deeply human nature of innovation processes; secondly, recognises the emotional impact of undertaking innovation work in the context of Transitional Safeguarding, and thirdly, enables the innovation work to remain focused on its objectives, namely improving services for young people experiencing vulnerability outside of their family.

The transitional safeguarding context

Transitional safeguarding approaches

Transitional Safeguarding is a relatively new term to describe an approach to support young people at risk as they move into adulthood and to bridge the gap that exists between children’s and adults’ welfare systems. Importantly, it recognises that when young people who are known to welfare services reach the age of 18 they can encounter an alarming ‘cliff edge’, or ‘gap’, in terms of their access to children’s services ceasing and there being a paucity of suitable support available from adult services. These young people encompass individuals who are known to professionals working within social care, education, health, criminal justice and housing services. Situated often on ‘the edge of care’ they do not benefit from services provided for care leavers and, therefore, are moving into early adulthood with heightened risks of encountering mental health issues, criminal punishment and homelessness.

The innovation agenda in child care social work emerged in 2014 with the government funded Innovation Programme. Since then the idea of innovation has taken hold within the sector but remains contested and problematic in scale, scope and substance (Lefevre et al., 2024). In the case of Transitional Safeguarding it is still in the early phase of innovation, namely the prompting, persuading and mobilising stages (Lefevre et al., 2022). For many local authority children and adult services and the wider statutory and voluntary services (education, health, housing, justice) that they work with, familiarity with the term ‘innovation’ is only just beginning.¹ In their seminal strategic briefing Holmes and Smale (2018) set out the key principles needed to underpin Transitional Safeguarding innovation work. In summary, they outline an approach (not a model) that is evidence-based, contextual, developmental and relational, and which uses inclusive, participatory methods to develop practice that involve young people from the outset. The primary objective of Transitional Safeguarding is to ensure all young people have a smooth and safe transition to adulthood, hence, paying attention to issues of equity, equality and diversity is also a fundamental tenet of the approach. Importantly, Transitional Safeguarding is not just about redefining services for young adults, but also about widening perspectives on safeguarding per se - Holmes (2022) phrases this as re-claiming safeguarding as a verb, rather than treating it as a noun, that is as a label attached to an age category or a narrowly constructed vulnerability.

Theoretical frameworks for understanding transitional safeguarding: borderline states of mind

In their book Borderline Welfare: Feeling and Fear of Feeling in Modern Welfare, Cooper and Lousada (2005) explore the conundrum of why we fail to recognise that the collective level of experience is as much imbued with feelings and emotions as the individual level. Their approach recognises the central role played in individual and organisational contexts ‘by powerful emotionally charged forces that are replete with tensions, contradictions and inconsistencies’ (p.19). For Cooper and Lousada it is essential, if the aims of welfare provision are to be achieved, that the ‘contradictions and inconsistencies’ (p.19), alongside ‘political inequalities, disjunctions between ideological rhetoric and daily lived experience, the ambivalent character of modernisation’ (p.21), are acknowledged and engaged with. To realise this requires ‘an approach to knowledge that includes social experience of the emotional aspects of relationship as a core dimension’ (p. 21).

Early on in our project we became aware of the centrality of binary positions – adult-child; victim-perpetrator, vulnerability-agency – as key characteristics of the Transitional Safeguarding approach (Huegler & Ruch, 2022). Their existence, however, rather than simplifying our understanding of the innovation terrain we were researching, served to complicate it. Drawing on psychoanalytic understandings of borderline states helpfully offers some explanation for this state of affairs as, according to Cooper and Lousada (2005), borderline states are characterised by:

Fear of closeness and an oscillation between seeking intimacy and then retreating from it. Borderline states of mind mobilise primitive thought processes of an extreme either/or kind … The scope for negotiation, freedom of thought and considered risk-taking becomes narrow to the point of disappearing. (Cooper & Lousada, 2005, p. 43)

A borderline state is defined as:

a domain governed by the intense need to simplify complex and ambivalent structures of feeling and to eliminate uncertainty. (p. 51)

Cooper and Lousada outline how these borderline states of mind are often associated with ‘intolerable fears about separation, the terror of loss and fear and denial of the anger that any separation arouse’ (p.51). Citing Rustin (2001, p. 131) and applying understanding of borderline states beyond the individual to organisational and societal levels, Cooper and Lousada (2005, p. 51) underline the important role played by organisations in, ‘acknowledging the extent of mental pain and anxiety, and bearing some of its costs’ and see this as ‘a precondition for bringing about more responsive practices’. In Transitional Safeguarding contexts the ‘intolerable fears’ associated with borderline states of mind are manifest, for example, in the binarized nature of service structures. These service configurations prohibit professionals being able to hold in mind the whole lifespan and circumstances of a young person (Huegler and Ruch, 2022). As a consequence young people located in the Transitional Safeguarding space are vulnerable and at risk of significant harm.

As the Innovate Project has progressed, our affective awareness and critical understanding of the complex nature of the transitional space, the heightened vulnerability of the young people navigating it and its impact on professionals working in this field, significantly expanded and deepened. In keeping with Cooper and Lousada (2005), we too found ourselves frequently referring in our research conversations to the verb to ‘oscillate’, reflecting the dynamic and unsettled nature of the Transitional Safeguarding space. This recognition of borderline states and what organisations, and the individuals that make them up, have to bear in responding to the welfare needs of vulnerable young people, provides a generative conceptual framework for understanding the complex features of the Transitional Safeguarding space and the content of the discussions held in the Innovate Project’s reflective groups.

The reflective discussion groups

The structure of the model that the group followed has been described in detail elsewhere (Ruch, 2007b) but one of its significant characteristics is the dual theoretical framework that informs how the model functions. First, psychoanalytic theoretical perspectives seek to get ‘beneath the surface’ (Clarke & Hoggett, 2009) of behaviours. They pay attention to the emotional content of experience and the defensive behaviours that individuals can exhibit in response to difficult and painful situations. Second, systemic understandings focus on the inter-relationships and connections between people and the multiple perspectives and narratives they generate.

The group operates by members taking it in turns to bring an issue relating to their innovation work for discussion. Following a brief presentation of the issue the person bringing it moves to sit outside of the group in order to listen to the group discussing the issue. After a period of discussion the presenter returns to the group and shares any thoughts or ideas that have been prompted from listening to the conversation. The group and presenter discuss these ideas and the group ends with the presenter having the last word. An important ground rule of the model is that the group is not a problem solving space; rather the primary responsibility of the group is to think more deeply (psychoanalytically/affectively) and expansively (systemically/polyphonically) in order to generate more ideas for the group member bringing the issue for discussion to reflect on in, and after, the session.

The Innovate Project reflective group (between 4 and 7 members) met online on five occasions for an hour and a half and was facilitated by the Transitional Safeguarding strand lead (Ruch). Invitations to the group were extended to individuals who had taken part in other research activities convened by the Transitional Safeguarding strand. Members represented five rural and urban local authorities in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland and were from both adult and children’s services. This absence of group members from services other than social care does restrict the extent to which the findings can be extrapolated into other professional settings. Most of the members were female, with a mix of ethnic representation and role status (strategic/operational managers and practitioners). Ethical approval for the Innovate Project was obtained from the ethics committee at the University of Sussex and all the participants consented to the data generated by the groups being used within the project. In using the content of the groups as research data the anonymity of the group participants has been adhered to through the use of pseudonyms, selected by the participants themselves, and their work locations have not been disclosed. Given that the reflective groups were an unexpected development of the research project it was important that we recognised the differing purposes served by the group. For us, the research team, the groups were primarily a source of new data on the nature of innovation processes. For the participants the groups had a dual purpose, serving both as a space where their everyday experiences were explored in the here and now, and as a space where these activities could be aligned with aspirational new practice approaches.

The analytic process

Following each of the online reflective group sessions, which were video- and audio-recorded, written transcripts were generated. In keeping with the psycho-social ethos underpinning the reflective discussion groups, the transcripts of the sessions were subjected to a psycho-socially aligned analytic process. The core principles of this approach involved keeping the transcribed data as a whole in order not to fragment it and risk losing the sense gained from the whole being understood as ‘more than the sum of its parts’ (Hollway, 2009).

The first stage of the analytic process involved reviewing the video recording and reading each session transcript using a voice-centred relational approach, following principles derived from the Listening Guide (Doucet & Mauthner, 2008) and Cooper’s (2018) abductive analytic approach. Through a process of listening and watching the online recordings of the sessions, reading the session transcriptions and asking ‘What is the story and what is my response?’, a psycho-social attunement to the data began to emerge. A second reading of the transcripts was around the question ‘Who is speaking and with what voice?’ A third reading asked about ‘others’, ‘Who is spoken about, the relationships, emotions, statements and stories associated with each?’ and a fourth reading looked at the context through the question, ‘What are the broader social, political, cultural, professional and structural contexts surrounding the participants’ story, experiences, actions and interpretations?’. At the end of the first reading, short case summaries for each session were produced, which developed across the subsequent readings. As the readings progressed an ongoing analytic memo-ing process was undertaken that sought to keep the data in a gestalt (whole) format and enact an iteratively inductive and deductive analytic process. Retaining a holistic sensibility towards the data is a distinctive feature of psycho-social methods. In contrast to many qualitative analytic approaches that disaggregate and thematise datasets, psycho-social methods seek to work with the subtlety and complexity of textual data, recognising that meaning lies within and beyond words and that the whole is more than the sum of its parts (Price & Cooper, 2012).

Through the combined analytic process outlined above, the compilation of discrete case studies to capture each reflective group session and an overarching composite case study for all five sessions it was possible to answer the main research question underpinning this paper: What is the role of reflective spaces for professionals leading on Transitional Safeguarding innovation?

Reflective findings

The following section considers three psychosocial narratives that emerged from our analysis: i) being your authentic self; ii) recognising intuition and igniting imagination and iii) sustaining realistic expectations, tenacity and solidarity.

Being your authentic self

As the excerpts referring to the heart that open this paper illustrate, a distinctive feature of the reflective groups was their capacity to offer a space where the whole person – professional and personal, rational and emotional, head and heart, conscious and unconscious thoughts and behaviours – could be experienced as integrated and individuals could draw on their whole self in order to respond to the innovation issues and challenges they faced. This characteristic of the group was explicitly noted by David, one of two men who attended the sessions, who commented in the first session (as noted at the opening of this paper) in response to Nicola’s presentation that he was picking up on her passion and empathy. Later reflecting on how he had experienced the session he went on to say:

It felt much more human in its contact and consideration, it didn’t feel like we were … I think often it can sort of feel like we’re just speaking in the way that we have learnt to speak from an organisational perspective …

Visually it was also possible to observe from the video recording of the same session how David’s body language reinforced this point as he turned his head, as if unscrewing it or shaking it up, to take up a different approach or perspective.

Nigel, the other man in the group, expressed a similar sentiment in the first session regarding how the space invited its members to behaviour:

… well I felt we brought our whole self into the kind of engagement with what Nicola brought to us, so it’s made us think of not only that but also how we connected as whole beings, you know both cognitively, emotionally … But that made you think, well how do I operate … in terms of actually making things better for young people and protecting them and giving them their rights to live safely in their communities … So actually the process makes you think you know about how you’re working?

The theme of bringing one’s whole self to the work space was echoed in the first session by Nicola, who acknowledged how the space was helpful in allowing individuals to share their professional vulnerability. She developed this idea further in the second session:

I suppose what I’m thinking about and what I’m feeling is how much we suppress of ourselves maybe sometimes and then you don’t realise it by all these different kind of social norms and … and things like that. And when we come together and … I find it absolutely mind-blowing actually how this is only the second time I’ve been on this call, and actually I can relate so much to people.

In the third session, this theme re-emerged as Abena underlined how crucial it was for her to be her ‘authentic self’ in work. An important feature of the reflective space for her was how it facilitated this possibility for everyone:

I think just echoing what’s been said in terms of, I think it’s very powerful how we can connect with each other, like we … none of us know each other, we’re in different parts of the country, and yet this is the second time where I think we’ve been able to talk authentically and bravely about things and courageously …

The significance of this affordance of the group – to be true to yourself and secure in your personal and professional vulnerability – was further illustrated by the emotional depth of the issues group members brought to discuss in this reflective space. For Mary-Ann the experience of being her authentic self at work related to her personal history:

… the bit I always try to hold on to around kind of bringing my authentic self to it is that I really believe in this, I genuinely believe in this, not only because I see what it potentially could do, but actually as a young adult … there were times where I was sitting in this space and arena, and years ago we didn’t have this, but if we had have done, if I was a young adult now, I’d be in your cohort!

In all the sessions, there were moments when individuals spoke candidly about the emotional significance and impact of working in the Transitional Safeguarding domain on both themselves and their colleagues. This was powerfully expressed by group members describing how they often found themselves havering between feelings of helplessness and hope. A reference made by Abena to a young person ‘not dying’ being a ‘good outcome’, vividly illustrated the extent to which ‘life and death’ scenarios were literally in people’s minds all the time with this group of young people. In the third session reference was made to working with Transitional Safeguarding-related issues to being akin to working in ‘critical care’. The tendency, as an individual practitioner or manager, to want to split off conscious awareness of the vulnerability evoked in them, that is a reflection of the vulnerability of the young people at risk, is all too understandable. In the same session Abena powerfully articulated her serious concerns about the risks a young Black man was facing. In the course of bringing this issue to the group she removed her professional lanyard and laid it aside, an action subsequently commented on by the group’s facilitator (Ruch). On re-joining the group Abena reflected on this observation:

… and almost like the lanyard coming off was almost like me taking off my work clothes and just being relaxed in myself somehow, like that isn’t all there is to me is this ID card you know, I’m more than that. I’m a person who is very compassionate and very driven to try and do well.

It was apparent how this action represented the capacity of this type of group to ‘bring the humanity first’ (Helen, session 3), and to support the integration of the group members’ personal and professional selves. Commenting on Abena’s presentation, Mary-Ann reinforced the importance of the humane nature of the reflective space:

Breaking out of some of those protective sort of service functions, service kind of headspaces that people are forced into or … you know or kind of find refuge in, and coming back to that humanity … So … yeah, it’s interesting because they’re not … you know innovation sort of sounds all technical and kind of you know like let’s invent something new and we’re actually just talking about being more human and being more accessible …

Echoing these experiences, Bev underlined how important it was for professionals to stay close to the reality of young people’s lives in order to remain committed to ‘the grit and the depth of this Transitional Safeguarding work’. To do this she saw the need for professionals to build their ‘emotional infrastructure’. In her view reflective groups were one part of this construction process.

Invisible in the written format of this paper are the ethnic identities of the group participants. The importance of making visible this feature of the group was particularly apparent in the third session when all three participants were Black women. Highlighted within this session was the additional burden that these women carried in this professional space. As Abena acknowledged in relation to Mary-Ann’s position as a Black woman working in a predominantly white context, it made the challenge of being your authentic self even harder:

And it’s … you know as you were talking Mary-Ann, you know like … you know it’s very emotional for me to hear you talk, because … not being able to be your authentic self is … is very hard, you know because I know that kind of double talk, where you’re trying to say something in a way and know that people may not unders … have an experience of … of difference. And that’s not easy, it’s not easy. It’s not easy.

As white women facilitating the group it was unsettling for us to realise the additional work that Mary-Ann, Abena and Bev were required to do to be able to be their authentic selves, a point we pick up in the discussion below.

Recognising intuition and igniting imagination

In Transitional Safeguarding training spaces attendees are invited to use their imagination and challenged to reflect on how often they are invited to ‘be imaginative’ in their work context (Dez Homes, personal communication). The procedure-driven contexts of many welfare profession settings may not always seem conducive to the idea of practice being led by imagination, yet as Holmes argues, this is essential if systems and professionals are to effectively engage with an approach – Transitional Safeguarding – that, as yet, has not been fully conceptualised or operationalised in practice. Compared with their everyday work settings, the reflective sessions, appeared to offer a space where professionals were able to access their intuitive responses and exercise their imagination.

In the third session Abena brought her experiences of chairing a newly established panel that specifically dealt with young people in transition to adulthood who were at serious risk of harm outside their home. Through sharing her experiences of adopting a more person-centred approach in the panel Abena explained how she had become aware of the power differentials in her relationships with the young people whose circumstances were presented in this forum but who were not themselves present. The detailed consideration that Abena and the group gave to this small but significant aspect of her role and practice allowed Abena to get in touch with her own strong feelings. This led her to realise that she needed to be able to ‘navigate through the noise’ in order to make the service she led, and the young people’s panel she chaired, more humane and person-centred. As a result Abena decided, in her role as the panel chair, to introduce a post-panel practice of writing personally to the young people whose lives the panel had discussed and to share with them her thoughts and concerns about the risks they were facing. It was evident that Abena’s reflections on her practice resonated with other group members and allowed them to also get in touch with their own professional intuition and imagination.

For Mary-Ann it was the ’human bit’ of Abena’s account that impacted on her:

We talk about the system, we talk about workforce development and we talk about culture and behaviour but actually we don’t do it at a human level. And I think it was that bit, that moment of Abena saying there about you know that … write to the kid, tell the kid you care … we need to remember this is all about human relationships and human life … it’s not about the computer, it’s not about Ofsted, it’s people.

It prompted Mary-Ann to recall the imperative to ‘Write your reports in a way with the child on your shoulder, as they say’.

Imaginative engagement, however, was not easy to realise, with group members articulating the extent to which they encountered resistance to new ways of working. For Abena this was expressed in terms of a lack of organisational and systemic buy-in to the Transitional Safeguarding agenda:

… but I can’t hear the organisational buy-in to the mandate, what I can hear is a lot of … we need to gather the data, we need to look at this, we need to look at that. It was making me think about … the … what’s the logic to that behaviour, … And it was making me think about organisations are such fantastic beasts because in … in the same organisation you can have a really clear understanding and vision and next door no one knows what you’re talking about

A powerful example of intuitive responses to the challenges presented by Transitional Safeguarding innovation was provided by Mary-Ann. She spoke vividly about how difficult she found it not to respond instinctively, as she put it, ‘not to fly too hard with my gut’, when she encountered resistance from her colleagues to progressing the agreed Transitional Safeguarding innovation plans. The challenge for Mary-Ann was to hold a balance between a position of complete honesty and vulnerability and one that offered some self-protection, without being defensive. This latter position was one that was also acknowledged as being familiar to other group members. In session five Helen brought an issue that through the group reflection process alerted her to the defensive dynamics at play in her multi-professional setting. Being able to give a name and explanation to what she had unconsciously intuited meant, that without mirroring their defensive behaviours, she could consciously respond to how these professionals were blocking engagement with the innovation work they were all ostensibly committed to.

Realistic expectations, tenacity and solidarity

As the earlier references to borderline states highlighted it is widely recognised that in the face of unbearable anxiety we have an instinctive inclination ‘to split’ the experiences being faced. Metaphors used in the groups made reference to mountains, walls and fences. They seemed to relate to the ‘vastness’, a word used by a group member to describe the space, that the professionals felt they were working in and the need to divide it up – split it up – and create boundaries that made it manageable. In the first session this was powerfully expressed by Nicola in relation to the scale of the challenge on account of societal-level responses to young people’s circumstances. For Nicola the lack of societal recognition that young people were worthy of support was a cause of consternation:

So something that kind of bothers me I suppose is that sometimes I can get overwhelmed with how big a task it is to get society to look at teenagers differently. I see … I’ve had a number of conversations with the violence reduction unit in [location], and there’s something about … [name] kind of frames it as going from a wee shame to a wee shite… And sometimes I think there is so … you can work as a kind of professional network to change things, but who’s changing kind of the overall society?

Against this backdrop Abena emphasised the need to be realistic as to what was achievable and underlined the tenacity that it required:

I was thinking about the amount of work it takes to … to do justice really, and the amount of … emotional and physical and mental energy that is required to hold others in mind and to develop and design and create in a way that is justice doing … I just have this notion that we’ve just got to keep doing it (laughing) all the time! Just got to keep chipping, chipping, chipping, and it’s never-ending in a way.

Maintaining a realistic perspective was of particular concern given the number of occasions the word ‘passion’ and personal factors were mentioned as being driving forces behind individuals’ commitment to the Transitional Safeguarding agenda. The risk of individuals taking on unreasonable levels of responsibility on account of their passion for the work and the importance of a supportive system to avert this happening, was articulated by Nigel, in response to Nicola’s presentation to the group:

… that while we’ve got a commitment and we’re able to be relational, if you haven’t got a system that supports that, then it can very easily lead to burnout and … you know where does that passion take you, could it take you down a difficult road, rather than just a transformational one, which is obviously where we want to be.

This recognition of the risks associated with inadequate support for innovation practice was reinforced in the fourth session when Abena described the inclination of local authorities to instigate ‘transformational traps’, namely introducing something disingenuously ‘transformative’:

train everybody, everyone’s got to speak a new language, but there’s no sustenance to it, there’s no sense of longevity or a sense of ownership.

These powerful images convey the intensity of the challenges professionals encountered that were associated with the unfamiliar practices and newly configured organisational posts that had been created specifically to respond to the Transitional Safeguarding innovation. A particular challenge articulated by Mary-Ann was how her newly configured role appeared to require the creation of what she described as endless data gathering and outcome-related activity, with little focus on direct engagement with young people. The privileging of administrative processes over face-to-face practice was a reminder of how easily binarized, imbalanced and unintegrated practices could come to the fore. Abena’s response to Mary-Ann’s situation was direct and to the point:

we have to do all this managing and holding, and then somebody’s asking about my service plan, like I don’t give a fuck about my service plan! (laughing) I don’t give a shit! (laughing) My service plan is that this boy’s not dead, how about that?!

The group conversations underlined how maintaining a balanced and realistic perspective on the young people at risk in the Transitional Safeguarding space was not easily achieved. It required professionals to be hopeful about young people’s prospects, whilst not denying the level of risk the young people were facing and the professionals were seeking to manage:

Is the fact that he’s still alive, you know is that a success? It’s about what we can sustain and what we can maintain … (Helen, session 3)

For Nicola being realistic required the professionals to:

‘take or embrace some of this risk and actually share … share the worries that was at the … actually verbalise what it was that people were really worried about’.

This view was echoed by Abena who described how, in order to ‘keep him alive’ (referring to a young man at risk), they had intentionally withheld information about his whereabouts from the police as they felt that was less risky for the young man than telling them.

Across the sessions there was a recurrent theme amongst the group of feeling relieved to hear that others were facing similar struggles. In session three Bev described the system as one ‘that we would not have designed for our enemies’ and Helen in session five emphasised ‘how embedded and entrenched the behaviours, the systems, the processes are’. In session three, speaking directly to the additional challenges that the Black professionals in the group faced, Bev provided encouragement to Mary-Ann about how:

We [Black people] build with one hand and we fight with the other. And our fight is not the (laughing) … it’s not the kind of the traditional and conventional methods, we fight with the way we smile! We fight with the timely entry of words, we fight with … we make the incremental changes, we make every day, but only those who have to fight in that way know how much energy that costs us.

Whilst not diminishing the expressions of righteous anger made by the Black members of the group in these contexts and the additional burdens they bore, in light of the group discussion, it was apparent that all the group members were able to re-configure their experiences of the system in more bearable and realistic ways. As part of the group functioning as a ‘reality check’ for individuals’ innovation experiences, it was possible to witness how group members’ initial frustration, in response to the unwieldy and rigid nature of the system, were alleviated by their experiences in the group. The sense of collective solidarity and tenacity in the face of adversity that the group exuded was palpable in the tone of voice that individual members used to express their relief at recognising what was more realistically achievable. Helen referring to the work indicated the need to see it as ‘a much wider picture and a much longer picture than some of the things we feel able to do at the moment’., In response Mary-Ann encouraged her to:

… recognise small steps, like every day is a new opportunity to take another small step and actually it creates a bigger picture and scene. But that’s really hard to hold on to when it feels very overwhelming from the start.

Within these spaces it was evident that for any degree of success with innovation tenacity was an essential human quality that those in positions of responsibility for the innovation needed to exhibit. For David the non-linear and recursive nature of the innovation journey required a particular professional commitment and determination to avoid being constantly derailed by unexpected and enmeshed barriers. Helen spoke to this feature of the innovation journey in her response to her colleague Nicola’s presentation to the group, where the frustration associated with the pace of and obstacles to change was particularly highlighted:

But there was a really … I suppose a really … a really impressive bit in there, where Nicole was showing all of those links really clearly, we’ve already established that she’s working to those links, and so about giving yourself credit for some of the progress that has been made, as well as recognising the journey to go, recognising the journey that we’ve already succeeded in, the way … the progress that’s already been made in there, and remembering to recognise those steps that are already made, if that makes sense?

Discussion

Analysing the group’s activity in detail has revealed the power of reflective spaces to counter the widely recognised tendency for individuals and organisations to resort to splitting behaviours in the face of unbearable anxiety. The process and content of the reflective groups provide vivid examples of how dysfunctional, defensive behaviours can mask the impact of anxiety on the system and in so doing generate barriers to progress in the innovation space. Young people experiencing vulnerability remain perceived as ‘disaggregated wholes’ in the minds of professionals and the system is prevented from working in joined up ways to improve safeguarding responses to young people’s needs. The enhanced risk of such dysfunctional responses emerging in response to the borderline features of Transitional Safeguarding contexts, reinforces the valuable role played by reflective groups. The shared experiences of the professionals in the group provide important evidence of the capacity of the groups to enable individuals and their organisations to: avoid defensive responses; develop ‘joined up’ thinking; remain ‘on task’; experience professional and personal wellbeing; and be efficacious in their innovation work. Building on our findings we have sought to conceptualise the dynamics of the group through the psychoanalytic framework of the ‘analytic third’.

Borderline states, reflective groups and the analytic third

The psychoanalytic concept of the analytic third speaks particularly to the idea of three distinct relational positions: being observed, being an observer and observing self. Through these distinct stances the reflective group acts as a third space that allows participants, in response to painful and challenging practice contexts, to get in touch with emotions and to notice the defences that arise individually in themselves and collectively within the system.

The tripartite observational stance that characterises the analytic third was evident in various ways in our reflective sessions. In the example cited above of Abena ‘being observed’ removing her lanyard, the impact of this verbalised observation was evident in her realisation of how she ‘managed’ and separated out her personal and professional identities. Following this ‘moment’ she came up with her creative idea for communicating with young people. To what extent this notion would have been reached without the reflective space is unknown; it felt, however, as if this was a moment when an ‘unthought known’ (Bollas, 1987) was realised. Similarly, Helen’s realisation of the defended behaviours of other professionals in her innovation space, speaks to the power of the reflective space to allow individuals to ‘observe the self‘ and enlightened her understanding of her own unconscious and uncomfortable experiences.

Throughout the sessions the group members were observing each other, evidenced especially in the solace they took from each other as they recognised shared experiences of what Bev referred to as ‘the grit and the depth of Transitional Safeguarding work’. Conceptualising the reflective group as an analytic third, makes it possible to see the impact of group members adopting inter-changeable positions within and between the sessions. Through this dynamic positioning associated with the three discrete and complementary observational viewpoints of the analytic third, the experiences of individual integration and inter-personal connection, evidenced in our findings, have emerged.

In Winnicott’s (1971) explanation of the analytic third he describes it as ‘the transitional and potential space, the intermediate area where culture, play, creativity and imagination reside’ (Diamond, 2007, p. 146). The realisation of a new position rests upon the extent to which the analyst (or in our case the group) ‘provides containment and fosters innovation and creativity in setting and solving problems’, which is achieved through ‘shifting an organizational culture from an unconscious state of defensive denial and fantasy to one of consciousness and attunement to social and political realities’ (Diamond, 2007, p. 147).

The references to creativity and imagination in particular resonates with our own acknowledgement of the need for such behaviours in innovation spaces. It further underlines the important role that reflective groups play in helping professionals, paradoxically, to be contained and remain realistic about what is possible, whilst simultaneously generating imaginative ideas and interventions. Importantly, and conversely to how it might sound, a containing space is one that welcomes and embraces difficult feelings. The resonance of the conceptual idea of the analytic third is particularly pertinent in the field of Transitional Safeguarding innovation due to the defensive behaviours that the highly charged emotions associated with this life stage and experiences can evoke (Firmin et al., 2022). Being realistic also needs to be understood correctly as an attitude that fully acknowledges the place of rightful anger that was expressed in response to system shortcomings and structural racism. Reflective spaces, acting as an analytic third, help professionals to avoid the over-simplifications that Cooper and Lousada (2005) recognise accompany borderline states and serve to keep emotional complexity alive:

In the midst of a fury of projected and introjected emotions, the theory of the analytic third is a process and potential space from which to articulate and differentiate self and other, me and you, container and contained. (Diamond, 2007, p. 149)

Taken as a whole these group dynamics and functions might be described as a form of ‘grounded imagination’.

Conclusion: the integrative nature of reflective spaces

At the end of the first group session each member chose a word to express what they were feeling. The words that were chosen were: inspired, overwhelmed, hopeful (three times) rejuvenated and motivated. Hearing these words takes us back to the beginning of this paper and the questions posed in the opening section. A further question now arises: if reflective spaces, that act as analytic thirds, were more commonplace in practice, might it be possible in their everyday practice for practitioners to feel and express emotions similar to those articulated in our sessions? This, in turn, would support practitioners to become more skilled in ‘noticing what they notice’ and more emotionally attuned and professionally authentic. Whilst the choice of the word ‘overwhelmed’ to describe what someone was feeling might not be perceived as particularly desirable or positive, the naming of it represents a positive, reality-based response, that allows the sense of being overwhelmed to be thought about and responded to, rather than buried and denied. It reinforces the position that all emotions are welcome in the reflective space and that the work of the group is to help to integrate the positive with the negative. The paradoxical concepts of ‘grounded imagination’ and ‘emotional infrastructure’, that have emerged in the course of this research, helpfully underline the integrative role that reflective spaces can play in generating deeper and more inclusive responses to the demands of practice innovation. Returning full circle to the imagery of the heart, our experiences in facilitating these reflective groups resonate whole-heartedly with Cooper and Lousada’s ideas of ‘borderline welfare’:

‘We believe the evacuation of the personal from the heart of the welfare enterprise extends beyond questions of discourse, language, or representation and reaches to the very centre of how we think, feel, behave, relate, and imagine ourselves within the conditions established by modern social policy and government’. P.26

Ethics information

This research was approved by the University of Sussex Ethics Committee Application Ref No: ER/NEH24/2

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, University of Southampton [ER/FAFG8/18]; Economic and Social Research Council, University of Sussex [ES/T00133X/1].

Notes on contributors

Gillian Ruch

Gillian Ruch is Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex. She teaches and researches in the areas of child care social work and relationship-based and reflective practice and is committed to enhancing the wellbeing of children, families and practitioners. Her particular interests are in promoting psycho-social research methods and reflective discussion and supervision forums that facilitate relationship-based practice and promote practitioner wellbeing. Gillian has co-edited, with Danielle Turney and Adrian Ward, Relationship-based Social Work: Getting to the Heart of Practice and publishes widely on relationship-based and reflective practice. Her most recent publication with colleagues (see below) focuses on the benefits of reflective groups for practitioners.

Jeri Damman

Jeri Damman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex. Her research area focuses on child welfare, family support, and system improvement and reform. Jeri’s particular interests are in participatory practice approaches to promote child welfare system improvements that achieve improved outcomes for children, young people and families. Jeri teaches in the area of child welfare and social work research methods. Her recent projects have focused on innovative practices including parent peer advocacy programs in child welfare, transitional safeguarding, and establishing university-based child welfare parent researchers.

Nathalie Huegler

Nathalie Huegler is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex where she worked on the Innovate Project from 2019 to 2023 (https://theinnovateproject.co.uk), focusing on research about how different local areas seek to adopt Transitional Safeguarding approaches. Her wider research and praxis interests focus on transition themes across a number of areas: youth to young adulthood; innovation and systemic change incorporating social and ecological sustainability perspectives; migration, as well as cross-national perspectives. Nathalie originally trained as a social worker and social pedagogue in Germany and has since worked in a variety of research, academic and practice roles in the UK. Web profile: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/484689.

Susannah Bowyer

Susannah Bowyer is the Assistant Director of Research in Practice’s work with child and family services sector. In this role Susannah is the senior editorial lead on Research in Practice publications for the child and family sector and leads on content development and information design to support evidence-informed learning and development in a range of digital, written and active learning formats. Susannah is involved primary research, has strategic oversight of the research and evaluation activities of Research in Practice and actively supports evidence-informed policy and practice development across the Research in Practice partnership network of c. 140 local authorities, Children’s Trusts, third sector organisations and universities.

Notes

1. https://theinnovateproject.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Stages-of-Innovation-Framework_for-circulation-1.pdf