Mayday Trust’s Three-Year Strategy to Systems Change

The Problem we want to solve:

The systemic institutionalisation of people accessing support services.

The Mayday Vision:

A world where systems work for people going through tough times.

The Mayday Mission:

To model a person-led, transitional and strength-based system alongside people going through tough times and to build a movement of people and organisations to change the current deficit-based systems.

The three core principles of our work are:

  1. Listening deeply and learning: We aim to be led by people going through tough times and what matters most to them.
  2. Demonstrating that a different set of values and relationships is possible and better: offering our person-led, transitional and strengths-based response to people going through tough times, and supporting a growing movement of organisations to adopt and develop that approach.
  3. Influencing through doing and connecting: We demonstrate how to think and work differently, and we re-design local systems and national policy, with partners including the New System Alliance.

Our values. We are:

  • PEOPLE LED In everything we do: we are led by people going through tough times.
  • STRENGTH-BASED We always look for people’s strengths and potential in our work, our recruitment and how we work together as a team.
  • CHANGE MAKERS We are radical, creative and imagine a very different future, while always being willing to meet people where they are.
  • KIND AND CURIOUS We are never afraid to challenge others and ourselves, but we do so with kindness and humility. We are curious and want to learn. We take risks, get things wrong and are open to change.
  • RESILIENT We are brave, we persevere and we aim to build our own and others’ resilience. We keep our promises and we don’t give up on people when others write them off.
  • INCLUSIVE We are committed to building the inclusiveness and diversity of our team and our work. We challenge oppression and build equality wherever we can.

What has brought us here?

We have come a long way since Mayday first decided to attempt to embody the radical change we recognised was needed in the charity and support sector. We have established a way of offering support which has a strong theoretical base, a host of learning and resources behind it, and a growing evidence base that it works. Some inspirational organisations have joined us on our journey and been inspired to make radical change themselves. We have been influential beyond our size, and the language of being strengths-based and person-led has become commonly (if not always accurately!) used. We have developed the UK-wide New System Alliance and we are described as an important, even ‘totemic’ organisation for people interested in system change. We offer many people in the sector hope.

What can we achieve in the next three years?

Our challenge now is to remain radical inside and out, while growing our impact and reach, and becoming financial sustainable. This plan sets out how we can do those three things and manage the tensions between them. Over three years, we will:

  • We will deepen our radicalism by sharing our platform with more people and helping people who have experienced broken systems to lead more change themselves, and to shape our agenda, building a vision for a new public service system around their wisdom. We will continue to build the PTS Response around our relationship-first coaching, which also draws on community development, advocacy, coproduction and rights movements. We will draw on self-organising teams’ models to develop a radically devolved approach to decision-making, sharing power and responsibility.
  • We will grow our impact by reaching more people going through tough times with the PTS Response, demonstrating that it can be delivered at scale. We will develop the New System Alliance into a sustainable broadly-based UK partnership and we will launch and grow a UK-wide membership network for organisations delivering coaching. We will explore new partnerships to reach across sector boundaries. We will build our communications reach and support many more organisations and local areas to embed radical but practical change. We will build a person-led and strengths-based approach to outcome and data gathering, and to understanding the impact of system change work. We will share those approaches and use the evidence in creating more impact and shape the national policy debate.
  • We will increase our sustainability through building a range of new charitable and earned income sources, through building the whole team’s financial and commercial competence and confidence. We will diversify our team and our support for people’s wellbeing and performance, exploring how to move towards self-managing teams approaches. We will develop an investment policy which supports our ambitions.

System change is complex and requires us to combine different kinds of practical and influencing work. We will bring the different strands of our work together into a more joined-up whole, with at least three beacon areas as one of the most tangible ways to show how the different strands can add up to more impact than the sum of their parts.

Our focus over the three years will follow this path:

Year 1: capacity building. We will grow the team’s capacity and our services and support offers to councils and organisations, and raising awareness with clearer branding and messaging, while maintaining our current income and activity. We will launch the membership network, also building new bidding and delivery partnerships and developing a sustainable model for the New System Alliance. We will finalise our model for evidence gathering and build relationships with citizens and communities.

Year 2: investing in growth and experimentation. We will redeploy our assets through a balanced investment programme that includes growing our most promising and impactful approaches, services and partnerships. We will invest in our evidence-gathering approaches. We will invest in income generation and new forms of fundraising.

Year 3: expansion and bigger reach. We will raise our ambition for scale and reach, taking more risks based on the evidence of the previous two years, and aim for growth across all of our successful income streams. We will expect to make a significant impact on the government post-election.

Key targets:

By the end of year three, we will be reaching around 3,500 people with strengths-based, person-led work, via our own delivery partnerships, and our membership network.

We will be working with three beacon areas where we combine coaching, community development and system change at a strategic level, and our approach and values will be widely understood and valued.

How do we achieve that impact?

Three strategic objectives:

  1. Deeper impact: continually adapt, personalise and improve all aspects of the PTS Response, based on building our collection and use of evidence about what works for whom.
  2. Broader impact: Grow and diversify the PTS Response and Coaching Network, directly delivered by Mayday and partner organisations, co-designed with and reaching new groups and sectors.
  3. Influence local and national charities, provider organisations, NHS and governments to replace dysfunctional public service systems, & build a movement of activists and organisations.

Four building blocks – what we need to build into our organisation to achieve our objectives:

  1. Build and diversify our income streams including a wider range of grant funders, mission-aligned contracts, membership income and exploring corporate and public fundraising.
  2. Build and spread the evidence, learning and data for the PTS response and for systems change. Improve and adapt our approach based on what we learn.
  3. Develop our communications, brand and messaging, in partnership with people who are directly affected by public service systems.
  4. Make Mayday a consistently supportive, creative and inclusive place for people to work with a high-performing team living our values, and strong internal communications.

 

Housing first, relationships second?

We all know that to get help from public services, people have to jump through hoops. We take it for granted. But why are those hoops there, and what happens if you take them away?

Most were not put there deliberately to make lives more difficult (refugee policy being one exception to that, where the ‘hostile environment’ aims to use misery as a deterrent to coming to the UK). They are usually put there to target services at those most in need, and to manage the risks and costs of providing support to people. That sounds like common sense, but can often result in rules which are dehumanising for people who need support, and self-defeating for services.

If your goal is for people to become ‘independent’, it may not be sensible to start by forcing them to think and talk repeatedly about what they can’t do, and to take all decision-making responsibilities from them, so that their main role is to ask you for help.

Sometimes those barriers to getting help start to demand more and more of people in crisis. Traditional approaches to housing and support demanded that people who were homeless demonstrate that they are ‘housing ready’ before being offered a tenancy. This could mean demonstrating they had tackled drink or drug misuse. But substance misuse can be a way of self-medicating to deal with the stress and trauma of being homeless, and the chaos of rough sleeping can make reducing substance misuse almost impossible: a Catch-22.

Housing First prioritises getting people who are labelled as having ‘complex needs’ into stable housing, on the basis that it will be more feasible to address any other issues once someone has the stability of a long-term home. It’s a global movement and the evidence is strong that it works better than alternatives, despite it discarding the ‘jump through hoops’ traditional approach. People are more likely to maintain their tenancy, reduce substance misuse, avoid reoffending and have improved mental health. The evidence is so strong that it should be the default response, as it is in other countries, but in England, Crisis found only short-term pilots, able to reach 350 people at any one time. It’s not clear that all of these follow the full Housing First model, which involves an open-ended offer of housing (which Crisis notes a pilot cannot do). It’s also not clear why an approach which is demonstrably more cost-effective, breaking a cycle of crisis and use of expensive crisis services, and in many cases helping people to move away from support services entirely, has not replaced approaches which don’t work as well.

It may be that hoop-jumping, and the implicit assumptions about the endless needs of people who seek support are so engrained into our public services that planners and leaders simply cannot contemplate that if they ‘open the floodgates’ they won’t drown.

The incentives to work in ways which help people succeed are not yet strong enough to overcome the often very healthy economics of providing services which, ultimately don’t work. So, we should embed Housing First as the default approach as soon as possible. But what then? The evidence that the approach works better is undeniable, but it doesn’t work for everyone. It relies on the individual being willing to enter the world of services, and often to move away from the place they currently live and the relationships they have there. And it is typically only offered to those with labels such as ‘complex needs’, which can in effect mean that people who don’t reach that threshold of need have to wait until their housing issues reach crisis point, before being addressed by a Housing First solution. These issues show that Housing First, a strengths-based and person-led solution, has not yet been able to escape the deficit-based and rule-bound public service system it exists within.

If we were to follow Housing First’s rights-based ethos to its conclusion, we would aim to offer housing not just to those in the deepest crisis, but to avert those crises. We would ensure that the support and housing which was offered did not slip back into being service-led and infantilising once people had accessed it, but embedded strengths-based thinking at every level. And we would see that a roof may be the first thing we all need to have any hope of living safely and well, but it’s not the only thing. What turns a house into our home is the life we are able to live and the relationships we form from there.

Our relationships – the real unpaid relationships we hope to have with partners, family and friends – are ultimately what keep us safe and well, so support and housing must be organised around and in support of those relationships, not take them away from them.

‘Housing First’ suggests everything else second. But we can offer more than one thing at once. At Mayday our coaches take a Relationship First approach: just as Housing First offers stable housing without strings attached, we offer open-ended supportive relationships unconditionally. That stability doesn’t open the floodgates: it gives an individual a stable base, ends the damaging cycle of case opening and case closing, and enables people to rebuild a life and relationships beyond services. If we combined Housing First and Relationship First we would have something really transformational.

 

 

Come as you are welcome mat

What does ‘Asset-based’ social prescribing look like?

In a recent blog, Mayday Trust’s CEO Alex Fox was asked to explore ‘Asset-based’ social prescribing following an inquiry into the practice.  Alex’s blog explores how pressure on GP practices could be greatly reduced where this approach is taken.

 

Altogether Better’s pioneering work with GP practices consistently identifies a group of people visiting the practice regularly for non-medical reasons which do not improve, often with 80% of the resources being used by 20% of the practice’s patients. So if social prescribing link workers can build a rapport with an individual, find out what matters to them and link them to social and community activities, they have the opportunity to help those individuals in ways that GPs cannot.

 

The emphasis here being on relationship and doing things differently.  Alex says the issue with common models of social prescribing can be:

 

Some link workers having high caseloads, short timeframes, and rely heavily on ‘signposting’ to local charities at a time when they may have high demand and shrinking resources. Some ‘health coaching’ is provided by people with little training and with no obvious change model underpinning the work. This can mean that some social prescribing works best for people with less complex needs, in areas with lots of community activity and less poverty and inequality. This has the potential to exacerbate health inequalities and reinforce unconscious bias among health practitioners about who can be helped. Social prescribing was also not designed to engage with deep-rooted issues like poverty and institutional racism within the NHS.

Mayday Trust has adapted its strengths-based coaching and system model, the PTS Response, to achieve an asset-based approach within the Spring social prescribing contract, with local partners in Northamptonshire and Bridges Outcomes Partnership.

Alex argues that social prescribing works best when following PTS Response principles, a coaching method developed by Mayday Trust now being used as a model of best practice by other organisations across the UK, the key principles being:

  1. Seeing the whole person, their strengths and potential: avoiding forms, assumptions, eligibility criteria or targets. The coach’s primary goal is to build a trusting relationship.
  2. Being led by the person without ‘fixing’: tough times shouldn’t be permanent, but coaches stick with people for as long as they want, and offer personal budgets where needed.
  3. Engaged with the world outside of services: building connection and community, helping people to access resources and to challenge systems which are harming them.

Click here to read Alex’s full blog post on taking a strengths based approach to social prescribing.

To find out more about bringing a strength’s based approach to social prescribing, click to download the documents below:

What is STRENGTHS-BASED social prescribing?

Spring Social Prescribing Information

time to do something

“Mayday is an exciting place to work right now” Rob’s Reflections

It’s 6:30 in the morning as I look out of the window in my makeshift office. It’s the same room I sat in day after day during the start of the 2020 pandemic, working hard alongside colleagues in Westminster, trying to make sense of the Everyone In directive and ensure people had a place to stay safe. My time at Westminster is well documented, it had highs, it had lows, it had mundane parts too, but I learnt a lot and made some life long friends along the way.

 

Fast forward to now and I’m approaching two years in the job that changed my perspective on everything, not just professionally but how I interact with the world as a whole. So it is with a heavy heart that I have decided to say goodbye. My family and I have made the decision to move to Australia, the Land Down Under, to start a new life in the busy City of Sydney. My Partner is from Adelaide and when we met nearly eleven years ago she was about to return home, so I’ve been on borrowed time for quite a while now and for a variety of reasons, now felt like the right time.

 

Mayday Team African DrummingThere are lots of things I am going to miss, too many to list here (and probably not that interesting for you to read…) but leaving my role at Mayday was one of the toughest parts of the decision. I don’t underestimate how lucky I am that the role was developed with me in mind: Director of Change, changing the landscape, changing attitudes, changing systems. An incredibly exciting opportunity to have a real impact in how people going through the toughest of times interact with the services that should be there to walk alongside, listening, responding and focusing on what people can do, not what they can’t. It’s been a challenging couple of years, with lots of change. Mayday’s visionary Chief Executive decided it was time to move on, our inspiring, funny and incredibly supportive Director followed soon after, both of them leaving behind a phenomenal legacy of ideas, change and ambition for how we create a world where systems work for people. We saw almost all of our coaching team change, individuals who never fail to amaze every day, their perspective on life, the way they are able to hold a relationship that can be so fragile and support people to see the best in themselves, whilst vehemently challenging the injustices they see around them, it never ceases to inspire me and keep us all laser focused on our Mission and Vision. In this role I have been able to learn so much about how a charity functions, the highs, the lows, the impact that we should all be having in this sector. No longer were conversations always about what we need to get done, they were so often about what we wanted to achieve, what we believe in and how we will get there. I have been lucky enough to learn alongside some great people, a whole team of dedicated individuals who make finance work, who keep the whole ‘back office’ functioning, those responsible for culture and creativity and those that continually highlight Impact, striving for new ways to show this stuff works. Those that support our messaging and get the word out there.  Not to mention a board of trustees that, on an entirely voluntary basis, dedicate days and weeks of their time to make this small charity work. They’ve all been hugely supportive of me and I know it will be the same for whoever takes on this role next.

 

Mayday Trust is in an incredibly exciting place to work right now, led by a new Chief Executive, a man with so much knowledge and understanding of how charities can and should function it blows me away, he has been extremely supportive of this difficult move and has taught me more than I ever expected in the six months we have worked together. I will be forever grateful for it, but watch this space, it may not be the end – Mayday Australia anyone?

 

If you’re reading this and thinking, I can do that job, go for it, you won’t regret it. You’ll join an Executive Leadership Team alongside an amazing Director of PTS who has taught me all there is to know about approaching situations with a kind and compassionate outlook and a Finance Director who makes me understand numbers (an achievement not to be overlooked!) Apart from working in the chip shop with my best friend when I was 16 – this is hands down the best job in the world, I’m not crying, you are.

 

Until next time.

 

Robert White, Director of Change at Mayday Trust

 

If you are interested in working with Mayday Trust, take a look at our ‘Director of Development, Income and Impact Vacancy here.

Board Of Trustee Full JD

Mayday Board Trustee Member

Location: Remote

Mayday Trust are keen to increase the impact of our work and as such are looking to recruit up to five trustees to join our board.  It is important to us that we reflect the communities we seek to support through tough times and we are dedicated to building diversity of representation, ideas and experiences on our board of trustees. We are interested in who you are and the ideas and experiences that you can bring, so you do not necessarily need prior board experience, we are happy to support you to learn about the role with us.

We are particularly keen to increase the diversity of the board, and to boost our board’s skills in the areas of:

  • Generating both commercial and fundraised income
  • Charity finance
  • Marketing and communications
  • Rights, empowerment and coproduction, including Trustees who may have their own experiences of going through tough times
  • Influencing local and national government

About Mayday

Mayday is an organisation with a network of passionate social activists working to bring about systemic change, whilst offering people going through tough times such as homelessness, leaving care, coming out of prison or experiencing emotional trauma, person-led and strength-based support through its PTS Response.

The Role*

Your general duties as a Board member include:

  • Attending four Board meetings a year (currently three virtual and one face to face) and one face to face away day with the team.
  • If you join the Finance and Investment Committee, this also has four (virtual) meetings a year. This committee looks at budgets and financial performance in more detail, and informs the wider board about progress and any issues and major financial decisions.
  • Helping to develop the Impact Plan, ensuring that the Board and Leadership Team set challenging goals and objectives and monitoring if we are meeting those targets.
  • Monitoring the performance of the Leadership Team.
  • Taking part in the recruitment of the CEO and other senior posts.
  • Ensuring that the Board always acts in the best interests of the people we work with, Mayday’s Team and our communities and the wider public.
  • Ensuring you are up-to-date with developments in the sector and the responsibilities of the Trustee role, and being willing to develop your skills and knowledge to do so.

How to Apply

Please complete the application form (link below) and submit the completed version to: recruitment@maydaytrust.org.uk. Applications close: Wednesday 29th June 2022. We will be inviting successful applicants to an initial informal 10-minute discussion on Monday 4th July, initially via video call.

What is Pragmatic Radicalism?

 

Alex Fox – Chief Executive, Mayday Trust

 

Padlock on rusty door

How do I Feel About Housing First?

Through our Wisdoms series, people have consistently told us that feeling out of control and not having choices in their life are two of the main reasons the system keeps them trapped and unable to transition through their toughest of times.

Having a place to call home, a safe place, a place where you can be who you are, without arbitrary rules and conditions is central to moving away from homelessness and away from services imposing themselves in people’s lives. This may take the form of a Housing First scheme, it may take another form. A range of options is important, but fundamentally we must listen and respond to the person in front of us, we must be person led.

When we treat people fairly, human to human, focusing on relationship building, trust, brokering opportunities in the real world, instead of focusing on fixing problems and achieving outcomes – we see great change in people’s lives. Being led by people, focusing on what they can do, building on strengths. This is the PTS.

I’ve seen the term Housing First taken, manipulated, forced into existing systems and turned into something it was never intended to be. If we continue to look at the system as something that needs to be improved rather than fundamentally changed, we will be in the same situation in ten years’ time and certainly will not have ended rough sleeping by 2024 – thousands of people, locked in systems that they cannot get out of, whether it be mental health, homelessness, criminal justice or any other deficit label we care to dream up.

We need to think bigger than the latest initiatives and approaches. Offering somebody a safe place to live, their own front door, their own secure tenancy shouldn’t be radical, shouldn’t be a novelty only reserved for those where we have ‘tried everything else’. Absolutely let’s implement Housing First across the land, let’s make genuinely affordable housing available to those that want it and need it. And let’s make sure people have the support they are asking for, not the support we think they need, available when they want it, available how they want it.

When this system gives up on the managing and fixing that we have tried and tried again, when it gives up on warehousing people in ‘schemes’ because we’ve decided they cannot cope and replaces it with a re-distribution of power, listening to people, building relationships, it is then that we will end rough sleeping, not before.

 

Robert White – Director of Change, Mayday Trust

 

“Death by 1000 Cuts” Reflective Poem

We asked our PTS Qualification students to express “What ‘System Change’ means to me”. Some interesting reflections from PTS Coach Shauna came via this moving poem we are sharing on #WorldPoetryDay.

 

A death by 1000 cuts. The government carelessly holds the knife and hides the murder, does anyone care or were they just a number?

A cut to benefits,

A slash to welfare.

A stab to community investment,

A puncture to public services.

How do we deal with the people who are wounded? Those who are injured by decisions made without their voices included.

We blame those who are bleeding rather than the ones holding the knife, influenced by a deficit system that should be scrutinised.

We hand out plasters rather than treating the injury, an unsustainable system which has led to a lack of sympathy.

People being stretchered through each system which reopens their wounds, adding in salt with the language they use.

Risk assessments resurfacing old scars rather than allowing people to heal. Everyone has a past, what’s the big deal?

People being attacked with assessment, tick boxes, and sanctions. Their experiences reduced to KPI’s for a funder’s satisfaction.

There are people looking for help but falling through the cracks, being told they don’t have the resources to get back.

The battle of the ‘us vs them’ narrative rather than working collaboratively and listening. It’s time to undo systematic conditioning.

Austerity related deaths, suicide rates, and poverty continue to rise. We need compassion as people try their best to survive.

This is just a small insight to see, a part of what system change means to me.

 

by Shauna Hemphill

 

Change a System

“There’s a System to Run a System” Reflective Poem

This #WorldPoetryDay we are delighted to share an insightful poem written by one of our PTS Qualification students in response to our Module 1 Challenge to express “What ‘System Change’ means to me”. Thank you to Sharron for sharing these moving thoughts with us.

 

There’s systems to run a system

To keep the cog wheels turning

And enlightened few yearning

For a different system, a better way

For system users to have a say

And take back control of their situation

To stop being labelled as a victim

The system has many labels and boxes

Very few options, more deficits and losses;

A loss of identity, a loss of trust

A loss of empowerment because “you must…”

 

I dream of a system that has no system

Where the cogs which are turning actually capture the yearning

Of those once trapped, and desperate to be free

Where the person before us is all we see

Where their voice is the only one we hear

And the path to their success is the one we cheer

Not the one we tick off on an assessment sheet

Or what we tell them they must do at the scheduled meet.

 

There’s systems to run systems

But no-one runs me

I am the change if I choose to be

I am the enlightened, free to create

Free to modify the systems I have grown to hate

I’ll be ridiculed and silenced and argued against

Story of my life, systems are not strength based

But my strength lies in showing compassion

Building relationships makes things happen.

If we understand what lies beneath

Those systems will slowly begin to creak

Power doesn’t lie in the hands of those systems

It comes from words and the impact they give us

So I will shout my words ever so loudly

And argue my case with confidence, and proudly

Because the systems that keep the cogs ever turning

Have less people applauding and more who are learning

That those systems don’t work and the system is broken

No truer words will ever be spoken.

The dream for me will be my reality

And systems within systems will be the fallicy.

There’s systems to run a system

But no one runs me

I’m enlightened, I’m awake

Time to be me.

 

by Sharron Harries

Change Typewriter

“Let’s Offer People What We Would Want” says Mayday Trust CEO

In his latest blog, CEO of Mayday Trust Alex Fox explores the PTS (Person-led, Transitional and Strength-based) Response and suggests that it “shouldn’t be revolutionary to suggest that support for people who are going through the toughest times, like being homeless” should mirror other elective and more positive coaching experiences often reserved for athletes or those looking to push forward in their executive careers.  Those models, like the PTS response pioneered by Mayday Trust, can “help us to identify what we want to work on and what our goals are” allowing us to “see our strengths as well as our problems clearly, and to find our potential” suggests Alex:

“Large and growing numbers of us choose support when we are going through tough times because we expect it to be a positive experience which may have painful moments but will ultimately help us grow. There can even be a status attached to being able to afford and valuing yourself enough to seek ‘executive coaching’ or a personal trainer.”

Having been in post at Mayday for 2 months Alex reflected on his listening and learning during that period saying:

“I’ve heard countless stories from our coaches about people making changes through working with someone who has the freedom to think like a sports coach rather than a support worker. It always starts with people building trust: “You are the first person who has actually listened to me in years”. And it progresses to potential and achievements – big or small – that enable someone “to feel like a human being again”. Much of it has been with people who are homeless, but we’re also using the approach with young adults and with people with long term health conditions, as part of a social prescribing programme. It’s not rocket science, but it is complex, nuanced work with a huge body of resources and learning behind it, and a strong community of practice and support structure including clinical supervision.”

 

Alex’s blog follows the release of a report by the New Economics Foundation that suggests the PTS Response is offering people a significant improvement in their well being, self-esteem and a feeling that they are able to build more meaningful relationships with their coach to support their development.

You can read Alex’s full post here.