Co-designing resilience

Working with ‘Together an Active Future’ (TaAF) and the ‘Family Hubs’ in Blackburn with Darwen local authority.

The family Hubs in Blackburn and Darwen help support parents, carers and families to access voluntary, community health and council services, but they are so much more than just a hub for accessing services. The family Hubs have expert practitioners, the professionals employed to fulfil the responsibilities in terms of supporting families. They have experts through experience, the parents, carers and families that visit, bring in-depth knowledge and unique perspectives that can be shared and learned from. The Hubs themselves support a network that reaches beyond the building, extending to wider family networks and professional services.

The Family Hubs recognised that resilience is a key factor in the long-term future of families in the Blackburn and Darwen area. In 2023 Professor Leon Cruickshank and Dr Lee Brewster were asked to help staff and families stimulate system changes that enabled greater collaboration.

The aim of the project is for participants to have the capacity and capability to motivate system change in an ongoing, sustainable, natural activity that also reflects the advantages of physical activity. Using a collaborative design approach, staff and parents will participate in a series of workshops and events that value their lived experience expertise. These workshops explore the system and process and thinking that supports families. By working together more effectively there will be greater opportunity to build new cultures of innovation and activism that will stimulate and preserve, resilient system changes.