Our last meeting was 25th November, co-hosted by the ALLIANCE. We heard from 3 contributors to our story project, about Recording Outcomes. Below are the intro slides and slides from two contributors, as well as the brief report from the webinar.
The PON ran a COVID story project during the first 18 months of COVID19. We wanted to capture the learning while everyone adapted to the changes. While the cost-of-living crisis emerged as we completed the project, we could not have anticipated continuing challenges faced by people and services, five years on. While there is no pretending that times are not hard, the PON was keen to capture new stories of how organisations are still managing to achieve outcomes for and with people. We were delighted to receive ten stories from diverse areas of practice.
We hosted a webinar on 10th June 2025 on our 2025 story project – stories below .
Roxie’s story: This is a story from Wales, about working differently in home care, in close partnership with social work and occupational therapy staff, towards better outcomes for older people at home.
Sarah’s story: Staff in Sense Scotland wanted to find out more from people they support who don’t communicate in words. This is their story about using a simple measure to understand the people they support better.
Paul’s story: Dundee Community Planning Partnership has worked with the community of Linlathen and diverse partners over the past few years on a new approach to tackling poverty and unemployment. This is a story about the power of connection and link to outcomes for people.
Julie’s story: Following inspection feedback, the Thistle Foundation wanted to improve their support plans, to be more consistently meaningful. Julie shares how workshops with staff helped them to re-engage with their purpose and to find joy in their work.
Paula’s story: This is about commissioning differently, to support families of children with additional support needs. The story involves Paula working in partnership with a local mum’s group, a charity and the local authority to make a free sensory room available to families who need it.
Nick’s story: Working with supported people, practitioners and managers, Nick explored a story and dialogue based evaluation method ‘Most Significant Change’. His story shows how evaluation itself can also improve outcomes, with a link to a lovely video to explain further.
Louises’ story: This story is about work in Ayrshire and Arran to bring together people with neurological conditions and staff to decide priorities for a new network. Louise shares learning about both ways of genuinely involving people and the outcomes of being involved.
Kelly’s story: ‘Just Enough Support’ is a strengths based approach involving local community assets; improving outcomes despite tightening eligibility. Kelly describes the process of bringing the training inhouse which has built staff confidence and contributed to a strengths based culture in East Dunbartonshire.
Maggie’s story: Working with care experienced young people from across Scotland, Maggie was involved in making an animation to draw attention to a new transitions toolkit. While most of the work was online, a get together in Glasgow in May 2025 resulted in diverse outcomes for the young people, reminding us of the importance of face to face contact in our increasingly remote lives.
Jon and Ainsley’s story: Ainsley ran workshops with residential support staff, with a focus on outcome focused recording. This shift in attention has helped staff to recognise how small things they do can make a big difference to the people they support, including the importance of relationships.
Meetings
Our webinar, Time to Talk about Personal Outcomes, co-hosted by Social Work Scotland, attracted more than 60 delegates who shared great examples of outcomes in practice. The report is below and a video is available courtesy of Social Work Scotland:
November 2024 webinar
Following a long pause, while we waited to hear about funding, we held a webinar in November, titled: Time to Talk about personal outcomes. It provided a chance to regroup, hear some updates, share learning and identify priorities for the year ahead. We heard some impressive examples from members about practices and approaches they are embedding to keep the focus on what matters. Look out for the video link and brief report very shortly.
Feb 2024 – Chinks of light in challenging times
Our last event was in the Doubletree Hilton, Edinburgh on 5th March 2024. The morning focused on similarities and differences between personal outcomes and other person centred approaches. This included an opening presentation from Ashleigh Spalding and Emma Miller from the PON
This was followed by a panel discussion consisting of Donna Murray, Social Work Scotland; Laura Martin, Improvement Framework, Scot Gov; Shaun Maher, Person Centred Care, Scot Gov; Anne Leitch, Realistic Medicine, Scot Gov and Susan Kelso, PON. This was chaired by Margaret Reid Arbuckle.
The afternoon included focused on reports from practice on finding chinks of light in challenging times. This included consideration of how hope theory links to a personal outcomes approach – look out for more on that when we post our report here shortly.
This also included an inspiring presentation from Laura Hill from VOCAL
And further inspiration from Dianne Ferguson from the Alcohol and Drug partnership in East Ayrshire
December 2023 meeting – PON evaluation and values based health and care
Colleagues from Scottish Government and NES gave an informative presentation on Realistic Medicine and Values Based health and care. Their presentation is here
We heard from Rhiann Maclean who recently concluded her evaluation of the PON network and its impact. The results were very encouraging and give some useful pointers for the direction of the PON. You can see Rhiann’s presentation here
September 2023 meeting – carer outcomes
We concluded a series of three meetings on recording outcomes at the Mercure Hotel in Perth on 19/9/23 . This was a world cafe style event, hosted by representatives of 11 diverse organisations, with a focus on unpaid carers. As this was a world cafe, we don’t have presentations from this event.
June 2023 meeting – recording and evaluation
We hosted an online workshop on recording on Wednesday 14th June.
The video, including the video of a carer story and the presentations is available here
Our colleagues Jess Matthews from Social Care Wales, and Lucy Richardson from Commissioning Care Wales shared the following presentation:
Julie Gardner from the PON shared a really useful recording exercise with us
March 2023 meeting – recording and evaluation
This meeting was at the Apex Hotel in Waterloo Place in Edinburgh on 15th March 2023. The theme was outcomes, recording and evaluation. Our brief report is here:
Presentations are below.
First, Matter of Focus presented on use of information on personal outcomes for evaluation
We had two policy presentations. The first was on Getting it Right For Everyone
The second policy presentation was from the Person-Centred team on developing measures
We also had a presentation on three waves of work on recording practice by Iriss
October 2022 meeting – leadership, wellbeing and outcomes
This face to face meeting was on 26th October in the Studio in Glasgow. The theme was leadership, wellbeing and outcomes. Our report on the event includes links to resources as well as key messages from the presentations
Tracy McLeod. Midlothian HSCP talked about the importance of adopting a strengths based and outcome focused approach to conversations in the organisation as a whole
You can also find Tracy’s presentation here
Julie Gracie from SSSC talked about compassionate leadership in a crisis
Fiona Dee from NES talked about Leading to Change and free leadership resources
June 2022 meeting
We hosted a meeting for members on the morning of 22nd June at the Golden Jubilee hotel to help plan the year ahead. Twenty PON members contributed to an energising morning. The report was sent to members in July 2022, available in the following link
Covid story project 2021-22
For the first year of the pandemic we focused on our COVID story project.
Between October 2021 and April 2022 we focused on our good (outcome focused) conversation project. We published a short report on that project in April 2022.
To join the Network or for further information, please contact pon@nes.scot.nhs.uk
Earlier meetings
Our meeting on 30th March 2022 concluded our Conversations Project. Rebecca Johns, consultant social worker from Wales talked about a whole system approach to embedding outcomes in Neath and Port Talbot
Our meeting on 14th October 2021 was Good outcome focused conversations
A whole system approach to personal outcomes in Wales Social Care Wales
The Midway Approach Tracy McLeod
Understanding and supporting outcome focused conversations Julie Gardner and Emma Miller
We screened our new video – produced in collaboration with Karen Barrie
Our meeting on 7th July, 2021 was Using Stories in Services
You can find our brief report on the workshop and videos of the presentations below:
- Narrative Dialogue: Using Stories to Navigate Difficult Conversations, Tim Chapman
- Magic and Tragic Moments: Ideas and Methods for Storytelling, Nick Andrews
COVID project (April 2020 – April 2021) related webinars:
- At our members workshop in February 2021 we tested the resource on stories of changing practice under COVID. Attendees contributed to the finished product.
- Our second webinar in November 2020 Meaningful conversations in a virtual world
- Our first webinar in June 2020 Recovery, wellbeing and outcomes for people.
Face to face events
- 25th February 2020 in the Beardmore Hotel, Clydebank. The theme was recording and measuring personal outcomes.
- 27th November 2019, Beardmore Hotel. The theme was understanding outcomes. See our report and some useful slides for understanding outcomes.
- 5th September 2019, in the Beardmore Hotel. The theme was enabling risk and personal outcomes and we produced a report.
- 28th May 2019, Beardmore Hotel. The theme was supervision for staff.
- 28th February 2019, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 232 St Vincents Street, Glasgow. The theme was Personal outcomes and planning
- 6th December 2018, Hilton Grosvenor Edinburgh: The theme was outcomes for carers in the context of the Carer (Scotland) Act 2016
- 11th September 2018, Trades Hall, Glasgow: The theme was using information about outcomes. (Video presentations from our December 2018 session on using information about outcomes are available here)
- 14th June 2018, Queen’s Hotel Perth, Leonard Street, Perth: The theme was around how personal outcomes can be embedded in roles which focus on ‘task and time’ with a range of examples from practice.
- 13th March 2018, Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh: The theme of this meeting was around personal outcomes and the new health and social care standards.
- We held a range of meetings from 2015 to 2018 on diverse outcomes related topics.
Personal Outcomes Network 