News Archives - Mayday Trust

Mayday and Platfform logos with an image that reads 'come together'

A Message from Mayday and Platfform

In the New Year, the Mayday mission, work and team will fully integrate into the Platfform team as we finalise our merger.

Platfform is committed to taking forward the Mayday Trust mission for positive and lasting change in our public services and charities. This means that we will attempt to be led by the people we aim to serve, that we will fight for social justice, and that we acknowledge that we have much work to do ourselves to become organisations that live our values and work towards becoming equitable, diverse and anti-racist.

We have a huge amount of work to do, much to learn from the people and communities we serve, and a vital mission in difficult times. We look forward to working with you in 2024.

Farewell from Mayday CEO, Alex Fox OBE

As you may be aware, this year I alongside the Board of Trustees, led Mayday Trust into a merger with a brilliant and radical mental health charity called Platfform.

We share a mission to change how public services and charities think and behave, and for several years we’ve been collaborating on developing strengths-based and trauma-informed approaches to working with people and being led by them, challenging what isn’t working in public service systems. Mayday is now a subsidiary of Platfform and over the coming period the Mayday team and work will transfer across to Platfform.

This has put Mayday on a stable financial footing and will in time enable the organisations’ work to be scaled sustainably in England and Wales, at a time which has never been harder to sustain charities. As a result of these changes, my role with Mayday will finish at the end of 2023 and I will be moving on.

I joined Mayday because it is a rare example of a charity that was able to hear the people it sought to support saying, “This isn’t working for us” and then to change everything it did as a result, building a model of working that I’ve heard countless people and organisations describe as a beacon of hope and possibility in tough times.

I want to say how grateful I’ve been to work, even if only for a short time, with a truly unique charity, and a brilliant team of radicals. I want to thank the Mayday team and Board for everything they’ve done to keep the mission alive during an exceptionally difficult year. I wish them and the wider Platfform team all the best in their continuing mission for a better, more human way to walk alongside people during their toughest times.

Be Kind written on wood with a red heart

Introducing Wisdom from a Journey to a Good Life

In this Wisdoms exercise, led by Caritas Westminster, representatives from local charities and organisations went out across London and Hertfordshire, to engage in deep listening with people on the streets, in day centres, in foodbanks, at coffee shops, and in families’ homes. This listening exercise was open to anyone who had migrated to the UK seeking sanctuary. The diversity in avenues for identifying participants reflects the complexity of the systems faced by those seeking sanctuary.

This included: newly arrived residents of an asylum hotel, families who have emigrated through the Community Sponsorship Scheme, and those who have come through the Homes for Ukraine programme. Participants included those who have received refugee status, those who are waiting for a decision, and others who were without documentation, with many individuals not having recourse to public funds. Individuals migrated from many countries, including Iraq, Iran, El Salvador, Ukraine, Punjab, Eritrea, Vietnam and Syria, while other participants came from the Roma community.

These conversations took place between May and August 2023. In total, we spoke to 57 people, asking the question:

“When you think of a good life, what does that mean to you?”

For those we spoke to, a good life means having the freedom to make choices and have control over their lives, where they can feel safe and secure. It is a life where people are treated humanely and with compassion and understanding by those they rely on, including friends, family members, their community, and services.

The people we spoke with wanted to feel able to become a part of their local communities, to feel that they had a purpose, and, for many, that included ensuring they were contributing positively towards the world around them. However, where people did not have residency status and/or could not meet their basic needs, this could overwhelm the ability to focus on anything beyond survival, including their need to find a space to sleep, access enough food to eat, and/or work towards getting legal residency.

We heard that a good life is one without worry, where people can feel confident that they will have a place to sleep away from violence and war, where they have enough food to eat and that their family and friends have the same. This included knowing that close family still in their home country were safe. For some, a good life included being reunited with children, parents, and other people they were close to.

Developed by Mayday Trust, the Wisdoms is a research-informed listening exercise. The power of the Wisdoms is that there is a collective and inclusive voice, one which is listened to respectfully, without causing power imbalance. The findings are raw and honest, prompting critical reflection for organisations and local areas, but easy to read and accessible to everyone. Wisdoms aim to create a different type of relationship between your organisation and the people you work with, putting people at the heart of the direction and strategy.

This Wisdoms exercise and report were commissioned by Caritas Westminster, and co-designed by Caritas Westminster, the Mayday Trust, and participating organisations. Those carrying out the Wisdoms attended a half-day training delivered by the Mayday Trust.

Acknowledgements:

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to this Wisdoms, especially the people who courageously shared their experiences, hopes and worries about living in the UK. The opportunity to capture these voices would not have been possible without the hard work and leadership of Caritas Westminster, as well as the many staff members and volunteers who went out into the communities to engage in this exercise, including: Hitchin Pantry, the Jesuit Refugee Service, the Passage, Hope for Southall Street Homeless, Camden Welcomes, Sutton Deanery Refugee Community Sponsorship Group, the Roma Support Group, Companions of Malta and Homes for Ukraine. Many more people were vital to the carrying out of this listening exercise, including volunteers, project leaders, and interpreters. We are extremely grateful for the many people without whom this project could not have occurred, including Reset, who kindly provided a Lead Sponsor Growth Grant.

A new chapter for Mayday Trust

We are excited to share that Mayday Trust is merging with Platfform, a leading mental health and social change charity based in Wales. Mayday is currently operating as a subsidiary of Platfform and will be merging into Platfform in the coming months.

The decision to merge represents the clear alignment of both organisations’ visions, missions, and purposes and provides us with a natural progression of an already strong partnership. Mayday and Platfform have collaborated successfully as the founding members of the New System Alliance and, together, have developed numerous innovative approaches and projects.

Importantly, by combining our experience, resources and learning, we will strengthen our ability to positively impact people’s lives and change public service systems for the better.

We want to reassure you that this merger will not disrupt the work we are currently delivering and the communities we serve.

Alex Fox OBE, Mayday CEO explains: “Mayday Trust has been on a radical journey. It’s been over ten years since we started to listen deeply to people experiencing homelessness, who access support from Mayday or other service providers. People told us that traditional support and accommodation offers weren’t working, so we decided to pursue a radical alternative, and bring person-led and strengths-based support to the people most excluded from services. Platfform shares that vision and has been one of our closest allies, so we are excited to be bringing together our work and our shared ambition for radical change. Watch this space!”

Ewan Hilton, Platfform CEO continues: “Mayday and Platfform connected several years ago because of our shared belief in the need for deep system change across many of our ‘helping systems’. We became Mayday’s Welsh partner as part of the New System Alliance four years ago. Coming together as a merged organisation feels like the logical next step, sharing our knowledge, experience, learning and resources to continue working to realise our ambition for strengths-based, relational and trauma-informed public services across our two nations.”

Be the Change SIB – relationships matter!

We’re delighted to share the final in-depth evaluation of our Be the Change SIB, Alex Fox, Mayday CEO, shares his thoughts below.

Read the full report here.

The National Lottery Community Fund Commissioning Better Outcomes CBO programme supports social impact bonds (SIBs) and other outcome-based commissioning models. This funded Mayday Trust’s initiative, “Be The Change,” in partnership with Bridges Fund Management and commissioned by Northants County Council to make a real difference in the lives of young adults facing homelessness and joblessness. We worked with young people aged 18 to 30 without education, training, or jobs, and who are homeless, offering them coaching, creating opportunities, and building positive networks. Some had needs deemed too high/complex to manage within a supported housing scheme such as substance misuse or significant mental health issues.

It was one of the first programmes evaluating the PTS Response where coaches and individuals form a support relationship which is shaped and led by the individual, enabling them to identify their strengths and build on their potential, including through community development work and access to personal budgets. People often say their coach is ‘the first person who has really listened to me in years’.

The strengths-based and person-led approach worked – Mayday over achieved on nearly every measure as the table below summarises. It exceeded its median targets for successful starts, and for both entry to and sustainment of accommodation, and nearly hit a high target of 105 entry-to-accommodation outcomes, achieving 103. It narrowly missed its education and employment targets but exceeded its ‘outcomes cap’ – the maximum number of outcomes by value that could be claimed under the contract. So it generated the maximum value of outcome payments that it was possible to achieve across the local commissioner and CBO, but did not stop achieving positive outcomes and achieved an extra £57k beyond the total outcomes cap of £474k.

There were challenges though, particularly in changes in commissioning bodies which limited the potential for continuing or scaling successful work. The evaluators feel that the SIB approach was only partly responsible for the success, with a lot being attributed to the drive and vision of my predecessor, Pat McArdle. Although the achievement of education/employment goals was good, it could still have been stronger and the evaluators feel that other project approaches suggested that intensive, targeted support from education, employment and training specialists would have helped. (I’m aware that Kirklees Better Outcomes Partnership (KBOP), who drew heavily on the Mayday approach in developing their highly successful support partnership, combined strengths-based working with access to values-aligned support in linking people up with employment opportunities to great effect.) Depressingly, some employers tended to dismiss agency employees before they hit a 13-week employment target, to prevent them from gaining employment rights, which undermined some of this work.

So the upshot is that this was a successful programme which demonstrates the potential of strengths-based and person-led coaching to achieve better results, but there is also a sense of frustration in the learning: while our public services are organised through a commissioning system based on short-termism and competition, with little capacity for commissioning bodies to build corporate memory, learning and deeper partnerships, great work will remain fragile and undervalued. This reflects our learning and is why we are working with partners like Human Learning Systems and Collaborate CIC to build strengths-based commissioning (see a recent video about our partnership’s work on alliance commissioning Devon) and ultimately strengths-based areas.

Read the full report here.

Sustaining a change in approach

Alex Fox, Mayday CEO

Meg, a PTS Coach in Northants, recently shared this insight into the experience of someone she was working alongside.

J is a young man who was experiencing homelessness, struggled to access health and mental health services, and had debts unrelated to his own spending. All of this had a negative impact on his mental health.

Initially, J was speaking with Meg several times a week and this was often after or during times of crisis; but today J’s support consists of an exchange of voice notes every couple of months – a change that J initiated. After building an honest and trusting relationship, supporting him to implement tools to respond to sources of stress, such as letters about housing benefit debt, or accommodation challenges. He began to talk about what was important to him, what he enjoyed and was good at – what made his life full. J successfully found work again and even felt empowered to advocate for a higher wage; as well as actively seeking mental health support through his GP, which then allowed him to access medications related to his medical diagnosis. J applied for a Mayday personal budget, a pot of money available to people working alongside a Coach, which paid for driving lessons to enable his career and independence in a rural area. J was able to decide what he wanted his relationship with Meg to look like and has subsequently transformed his situation. J no longer makes emergency calls and uses the skills, resources and support networks he has built up to navigate the ups and downs of life.

For instance, J has recently been made redundant, something that previously he would have struggled with. Rather than returning to previous behaviour patterns of making rushed decisions at the detriment of his mental health, J has taken this in his stride and isn’t rushing into a new work situation. He is giving himself headspace and hasn’t allowed this change to take over his life.

This is just one example of the power of forming a different kind of relationship with someone who has lost trust in services, and who is often ironically labelled by those services as a problem – “complex needs”; “disengaged”; or “challenging.” By recognising that behind every label there is a human, and being open to the idea that it might not be that person who has or is the problem, but the way that a dysfunctional public service system approaches people it wasn’t designed for, Meg walked alongside J as he built a very different future for himself, which has ultimately taken him beyond ‘service land’, hopefully for the long term. For me, this is was strengths-based and person-led work is all about.

Meg would say that it was J who did all the work, but we know how challenging, as well as rewarding, being a Coach or taking a strengths-based approach can be. It brings Coaches and practitioners into contact with people’s trauma and asks them to walk alongside people who are often marginalised and oppressed as they experience conflict with agencies which are used to seeing themselves as the good guys, and those they cannot help as ‘difficult’.

Meg explained her approach as: “To truly see a person and understand where they are at and the barriers they might face, you have to walk a day in their shoes!”

As much as strengths-based work can be hugely worthwhile, it can be equally as lonely. “It can feel like you’re swimming in the wrong direction or going the wrong way down the motorway.” was how someone described it during Wisdom form Strengths-based Working, a deep listening exercise carried out by Mayday to capture the voices of people delivering a strengths-based approach.

Mayday has spent many years developing the PTS Response, as well as working with other organisations to take on the PTS or develop their own strengths-based approach. Initially, I believe it was tempting for us to think that through the PTS we had found the magic formula for change, it was THE way to work. However, through listening and learning from many brilliant people, with a multitude of different experiences, and points of view, we have arrived at the place where, although we still believe wholeheartedly in the PTS and its ability to create more human and fairer systems, we also recognise the magic in others finding their own PTS Response, their own strengths-based formula for change. Because, together we are stronger, change comes more easily and there is more hope for people who are currently being let down by systems that don’t work for them.

This week we officially launch the Mayday Strengths-based Network, something we believe will make this crucial work less of a lonely task and nurture organisations as they navigate a change of approach. It will connect passionate people and offer a supportive space to share learning, gain knowledge and explore ideas. Currently, over 30 skilled, thoughtful and supportive practitioners and Coaches like Meg have joined the Network.

“Some of my best learning comes from the Network spaces!” Explained a Strengths-based practitioner.

The Strengths-based Network allows Coaches and practitioners to share what they learn, celebrate what they achieve with people who know how much it means, and for once, not be the only person in the room who ‘gets it’.

For Mayday, this feels like the next chapter in our mission to create public service systems that work for people going through tough times.

find out more about the Mayday Strengths-based Network

The Mayday Strengths-based Network is Here!

It’s here – a brand new network for organisations and practitioners who are working in a strengths-based way and looking to transform the systems that surround public services, so that people accessing them can take back control of their lives and futures.

People seeking support often become trapped in services and face barriers created by the systems that have been set up to help them. Traditional support services focus on people’s weaknesses and the problems they are facing, and the support is based on the service’s priorities, not the person’s.

To change this, organisations and practitioners in the Mayday Strengths-based Network are modelling a different approach with people who are seeking support. Our approach focuses on forming a trusting relationship with people, focusing on their strengths, potential, and aspirations, and empowering them to challenge and change what’s not working for them.

Creating change alone can be tough, but by joining the Mayday Strengths-based Network, your practitioners will be supported to develop their practice, grow in confidence and be nurtured by a community of like-minded peers. Working as a network means your voice and the experience of the people you work with is louder, giving us a shared platform to influence systems change for the better.

Find out more about the Mayday Strengths-based Network

Navigating Invisibility and Regaining Control

Brook works with some of the Mayday team in Haringey, North London, using what he has learned from his own experience of systems surrounding public services to help the council and other organisations design more compassionate and effective responses to people going through tough times. Brook joined the Mayday team to speak at Shelter’s Conference ‘A system’s response to housing’ in March 2023. Brook shared:

When I was 19 or 20, my mental health broke down when I was at university, and I was sectioned. When I was deemed to be well enough, I was discharged with a support worker/ social worker who was tasked with supporting me back into society, which included support into housing. Which did not work. Everywhere you went, you had to present yourself and detail your experience. Which meant continuously living under the umbrella of your condition. So I made the decision to leave and start afresh. Which to me meant being employed and housed (privately). It also meant I had some control over setting a life not stigmatised (or defined) by my mental health collapse.

I don’t think many people take into consideration how impactful the labels that follow these situations are. Your social standing, personal pride and how people see you are affected on top of your situation.

What most magnifies the impact of labels is the systems for claiming support. I had to repair the degradation of this and recover from the humiliation. There is little support in coming to terms with your circumstance, acknowledging it and moving on with a better foundation.

After I got better, I was feeling good about being in work and having my own place, but I had a relapse in my mental health and stopped going to work and paying my rent. Because I’d managed to build a new life away from mental health issues, I had no connection with any organisations or support mechanisms. When I got evicted, it was like the people at the court didn’t even see me. I got home and found the locks were changed. I just decided to go for a walk and that was the start of living on the streets.

Something I want services to understand is how hard it is to find them when you are in a crisis and finding it hard to function. As a vulnerable person, your visibility is low and sourcing support is very laborious. It requires you to be very active and to know your way around the systems, which people don’t. So I ended up sitting in A&E for a few days because I remembered seeing homeless people using it for shelter, and it was the only option I could think of, but I couldn’t stay there forever.

The services I needed had nothing on the buildings saying they were for people who were homeless- why not make it really clear where to go? It’s like they are trying to hide or gatekeep their resources rather than helping people who need them most to find them. Feeling like they don’t want you to find them has a deep impact on you at your lowest point.

Services don’t think about what it’s like to be someone trying to access them when you are at your lowest. They have their ideas of what you need, and what the next step is, but that wasn’t my idea at the time. Being homeless was a terrible experience but it was also a way out of the stress of rent, bills, and a job: commitments and interactions which I hadn’t been able to keep or manage.

My situation was robbing me of any control; in comparison to how much the system required of me to navigate and engage, homelessness gave me back control without any stigma, which may seem strange looking at it from my current perspective.

Services said you are at A, so next you go to B, then C. You are homeless, so in their eyes, each step has to be better than where you are, but I was thinking What then? I could just end up in crisis again. A lot of people want to get back to who they were before their circumstances changed. It is hard to come to terms with what you have lost when you are stuck in trauma, and that you may not be able to get back to where you were. That becomes a major barrier to accepting support. People working in services don’t understand that and define people as problematic. You have not necessarily come to terms with it. So your attitude is questioned.

I wasn’t seeing my problems in pieces, it felt like it was all one big thing and they couldn’t see the whole picture for me. They see your crisis as the starting point, but the crisis is always the last thing in the long series of events that led to it. It is the beginning and the ending. And the trauma means that you still see yourself not at point A but at point Z: homelessness, which is what you believe will happen again. So when you are put on this conveyor belt of support, your attitude is questioned. You’re not being problematic, it’s just that what you want to do is work backwards. Go back to who you were pre-trauma not necessarily to a new you which you still assume you will succumb to the last tragedy.

All my confidence had gone, I couldn’t express myself clearly. You get so far away from society, that bringing you back in from the cold is not simple – it’s not just practical help. The message feels like ‘it’s your fault’ but if that’s true, it wasn’t clear how being on this route back to being housed was going to fix everything, and with every step, another safety net was taken away. Also, as I was seen to be progressing, there was a delayed effect of the trauma of what had happened to me, which only really hit home afterwards – I could see later that I didn’t know how unwell I was at the time it was all happening. So services got frustrated with me. They couldn’t see that I was experiencing new trauma as a result of my progression, but the progression also meant I no longer qualified for the support. So ‘progression’ for them, was frightening for me.

I needed services which would build a system with me that worked for me, and where I felt more in control. It’s only when you have experienced what it’s actually like to be homeless that you can really understand how people think and feel when they cross that threshold and everything it takes to start coming back in from the cold again.

If you have any questions or would like to find out more then please get in touch. Read more blogs here

New Report: What next for strengths-based areas?

Report from the Social Care Institute for Excellence, Mayday Trust and Think Local Act Personal.

Published: November 2022

In 2017, Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) published The asset-based area, a briefing paper written by Alex Fox, formerly Chief Executive of Shared Lives Plus and now Chief Executive of Mayday Trust, which described 10 features of an ‘asset-based area’ necessary for developing strong communities and sustainable public services. Strengths and asset-based approaches in social care focus on what individuals and communities have and how they can work together, rather than on what individuals don’t have or can’t do.

A strengths-based approach to care, support and inclusion says let’s look first at what people can do with their skills and their resources – and what can the people around them do in their relationships and their communities. People need to be seen as more than just their care needs – they need to be experts and in charge of their own lives.

Alex Fox, Chief Executive, Mayday Trust

The paper identifies that strengths-based areas need to:

To read the full paper, What Next for Strengths-based Areas? click here

The Charity Impact Podcast with Alex Fox

Mayday CEO, Alex Fox sat down to discuss all things strengths-based and systems change for the Charity Impact Podcast. Listen here