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If we focus on a positive future for social care, change can happen – Innovation in action partnership at #NCASC 2022

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” – Walt Whitman

Social care is under a cloud right now, for many good and well-rehearsed reasons, but if we give up on the hope that things can get better, things will get only worse.

Luckily, you don’t have to search very hard to find cause for optimism. There are some great things going on across the length and breadth of the UK that are making a difference to people’s lives every day. We’ve seen that when individuals and communities are involved together with decision-makers, it creates new opportunities. For example:

In Bury, Verity who is supported by Shared Lives told us

“What I like about Shared Lives is the people who I work with are very kind and caring. It gets you out and about and making new friends.”

In York, you will hear something similar from people who draw on the support of a Local Area Coordinator to build their own vision for a good life. Like Dee, who told us:

“There is a great power and confidence in knowing that support is available to you but also knowing that you are in charge of how you receive that support.”

And in Kirklees, you will learn how people are changing services for the better through their Coproduction Board which was set up with the support of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).

These examples are glimmers of what is possible but these really person-centred and strengths-based solutions are not available everywhere, to everyone. This needs to change!

We have formed a partnership at this year’s National Children and Adult Social Care Conference (NCASC) to show that there is a different way; a road towards a different approach to social care and support which is characterised by decency, hope, love and relationships, rather than fear, fragmented lives, frustration and despair.

The Social Care Future vision developed by people who draw on support underlines the importance of this approach: “We all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us.”

How do we get there?

 If we work together – galvanising the voice of local people in decisions about support – encourage and champion innovation and shift more power to individuals and communities which draw on support, then a brighter future is possible.

Key actions are:

  • Developing a clear, shared story about how we work and what we want to change. This needs to be developed jointly with people who draw on support in every local area. We need to build confidence and skills in doing this so that all voices are heard and people are able to contribute to what is developed and delivered locally. We call this coproduction – the involvement of people in the design, development, delivery and evaluation of support – which needs to inform everything we do. We encourage local authorities to adopt and be guided by Making it Real, a framework which guides personalised support, which was coproduced with people who draw on support, and which underpins the CQC Assessment Framework.
  • Connect up and invest in community assets, local community-led organisations, voluntary organisations and work with innovative support organisations to ensure that asset-based approaches are implemented in ways that reflect local conditions and have a lasting impact. Think Act Local Personal’s Directory of Community-Centred Support, also known as the ‘Rainbow’ provides examples of innovative organisations that can help.
  • Building equalities into everything we do. The pandemic and the resulting recovery have exacerbated and widened what were already stark inequalities between different communities. As Clenton Farquharson, Chair of Think Local Act Personal recently wrote, “If inequality is designed, it can be redesigned. How? By involving the most marginalised people in the decisions which affect their life.” All of our plans need to be underpinned by a commitment to equality and inclusion.
  • Commission differently. In determining what is developed locally, we need to focus on outcomes rather than on ‘purchasing’ a narrow set of activities or outputs. This will enable us to co-commission a wide range of local enterprises and back entrepreneurs and innovators, such as micro-enterprises, Shared Lives, Homeshare and Local Area Coordination.

Make systems and services simple and human, so that people stay in control and make choices. We know that social care is hindered by excessive and often obstructive processes and outmoded systems. We need to make systems and services simple and human, so that people stay in control and can make choices. This is one of the aims of the IMPACT centre’s Demonstrator site in Northern Ireland which is testing out how new forms of asset-based support for older people work in practice to understand how these can be implemented and scaled up effectively across a whole health and social care system.

  • Share power, resources and risks fairly and openly, learning when we get things wrong. Mayday Trust deploys a Person-led, Transitional and Strengths-based response (PTS) to develop ways of working which create an environment where people have choice and control over their lives.
  • Use really good and shared measures of wellbeing, resilience and equality. This does not mean we give up on some of the traditional measures completely but it does mean we value and invest in different things, such as people feeling more connected and in control. In the London Borough of Camden, for instance, service impact is increasingly understood in terms of how much people are enabled to draw on their own strengths rather than what services they receive.

Reaching the vision of a better care and support will not be straightforward of course. We know it will take time, commitment to coproduction and realignment of resources to enable the innovation and culture shift needed. This isn’t easy, but the current financial pressures we all face, far from distracting us, need us more than ever to focus on what is important to everyone who wants to live in thriving, connected communities. If we work together – galvanise the voice of local people and champion innovation then a brighter future is possible.

Want to find out more? Visit us in Manchester this week at NCASC 2022, stand E11

  • Pip Cannons, Chief Executive, Community Catalysts
  • Clenton Farquharson, Chair, Think Local Act Personal
  • Alex Fox, Chief Executive, Mayday Trust
  • Professor Jon Glasby, Director, IMPACT
  • Ewan King, Chief Executive, Shared Lives Plus
  • Ian McCreath, Director, Think Local Act Personal
  • Kathryn Smith, Chief Executive, Social Care Institute for Excellence

 

 

 

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

What is Pragmatic Radicalism?

 What is pragmatic radicalism?

At Mayday we believe that improving the current support system can simply be a way of perpetuating something which is harmful, so the goal has to be to replace the current system, and particularly the dysfunctional relationships at its centre, with more simple, human systems and services.

But calls for radical change, however grounded in real people’s lives and wishes, can be heard simply as angry shouting by people who are giving their heart and soul to support people within systems that are under-resourced, over-demanded and teetering on the edge of burn out.

Captivating those from within the system

So can we create steps towards that radically re-imagined future which people and organisations not currently thinking as radically as that feel able to take but will be irreversible in terms of changed consciousness….

To get people who work within the current system to engage with us, our offers must be:

  • Clear, practical and distinct from other offers

  • Useful now, addressing a problem they recognise

  • Hopeful: offering a better future which feels achievable.

This means meeting people where they are, developing some insight both into what time, money and regulatory challenges people within a broken support system are working within, and the ways in which they already are trying to work in more human and strengths-based ways. Our offer includes a specific support approach in the PTS Response, which is tailored to each individual or community, but is based on consistent values and key practices, which people and services can access through resources, communities of practice, learning materials and outcomes tools: tangible stuff which results in support which people can see working on the ground.

It’s time to bring system change not system tweak

But our end goal is not to improve the current system a bit: that would just perpetuate a model which isn’t working and which in some cases is exacerbating inequalities. So we also need our offers to result in:

  • The voices of people who are currently voiceless getting heard

  • Raised ambitions as people see that more human and effective support is really possible

  • ‘No turning back’ moments

‘No turning back’ moments do not have to be big strategic leaps. Indeed, many Strategic Vision launches simply reframe the existing direction, values and belief systems of an organisation and as such are moments of renewed stasis, rather than real renewal.

But no turning back moments can happen when we stop seeing people as patients, service users, customers, and start seeing them as fully human. At those moments we can no longer sustain the cognitive dissonance required to conform to the expectations of being a professional within a system that isn’t working for people, and we become human again.

In my book, I referred to this as the ‘invisible asylums’ that so many of us work within becoming visible. For me, getting to know Shared Lives carers was when the institutionalisation I’d been accepting, and perpetuating became visible and unignorable. For many of my colleagues at Mayday, it is experiences of coaching after years of working within traditional support services.

Those moments are daunting. They can be moments which just add to the guilt about everything we know is wrong with the systems we are part of. Or they can be the first steps on a long, hard journey back to feeling human again.

This is what I mean by ‘pragmatic radicalism’: aiming for somewhere very different, but recognising that we can only get there one small, practical, achievable step at a time

 

Alex Fox – Chief Executive, Mayday Trust

 

Wisdom from Strength-based Working Intro, image of smiley face among plant life

An Introduction to Wisdom from Strength-Based Working

Mayday Trust worked with the Frontline Network to capture the experiences of those who take a strength-based approach to working alongside people experiencing tough times, such as homelessness.  This Wisdoms is part of a suite of Wisdoms where the voices of people who either experience or deliver services are captured and shared.

Frontline workers were offered a variety of platforms to share their voices, including group Zoom conversations, individual conversations, WhatsApp messages, email, and social media. Conversations took place with people from across the UK during COVID-19 restrictions, so face to face meetings were not possible. It was agreed that all the contributions would be anonymised when used in this listening exercise.

We used the Mayday Trust approach of deeply listening through ‘Wisdoms’, which poses just one open question and listens to what each person wants to bring to the conversation.

A total of 66 people contributed to Wisdom from Strength-based Working, all of whom were directly delivering strength-based work, and some of whom had lived experience of homelessness or other tough times. The conversations and comments were initiated with the question – What is your experience of delivering strength-based work? The following document captures the main themes which were identified from what was heard. For context please also see our previous Wisdoms work: Wisdoms from the Pandemic, Wisdoms from Behind Closed Doors, and Wisdoms from the Street.

 

What Does is mean to Work in a ‘strength-based’ way?

Mayday Trust, as a result of more than 11 years of extensive research, listening to people going through tough times and practical experience, has developed the Person-led, Strength-Based, Transitional (PTS) Response. Mayday’s experience has shown that being strength-based only works when the person has choice and control, is able to accept or reject support, able to define the goals of that support on their own terms, and where PTS coaches have a high degree of autonomy to be led by the individual, hearing what’s important to them and together working out what will move them toward the life they want to achieve.

 

  • Strength-based – To be strength-based requires more than just focusing on the positives in someone’s life. In order to be truly strength-based, you need to be led by what is important to the person and respond on an individual basis. The work of a strength-based practitioner is to listen, be curious and reflect with the individual to contextualise their experiences and to work alongside them on the things that the person feels are the most important. The aim is not to fix things for the person, nor to manage their situation, but to identify and build upon the individuals’ skills, talents and abilities to tackle situations themselves whilst leveraging the right support at the right time.
  • Relationship Building – this is what it’s all about. Once trust is developed, conversations open up to include areas of the person’s life including their aspirations, interests and what they’d like to achieve for themselves. These are positive goals and hobbies that people can develop within their communities. By doing so, people prove to themselves that they have the strengths to achieve and this realisation can spur them on to make the changes that they want in their lives.
  • Commitment – it requires the continuous commitment of the whole organisation to also become strength-based, adapting organisational systems and structures which support strength-based working, and to seek funding that allows for the person to truly lead the relationship without tightly defined targets of success which are not meaningful to their lives.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

time to do something

Talking the talk and walking the walk

Why do so many charities talk confidently about radical change, but so few really try to achieve it?

Alex Fox OBE shares his thoughts on radical change as he takes on his new role of CEO at Mayday Trust.

I’ve spent over ten years working with people who are brave and radical in their own lives. Our members at Shared Lives Plus share their own homes and family lives with people to offer and seek support. Over 15,000 people now live good lives as a result, instead of risking being lost within a social care and health system that does not always feel human, caring and respectful. We have built a UK network and organisation which thinks like they do, demonstrating the kind of social change we call for in the way that we work, and in who gets to do that work.

Over the years, I’ve admired Mayday’s work and heard Pat McArdle speak about the radical path that Mayday has taken. Now that Pat has retired from Mayday, I know that I won’t be able to replace or replicate her unique vision and inspirational style, but I hope to have learned from it.

Mayday is an organisation that changed radically because it listened to what people were saying about what Mayday and other organisations were doing, and was prepared to hear some very uncomfortable messages. The support that people were getting when they went through tough times like being homeless, trying to recover from substance misuse, or leaving prison, wasn’t working for lots of people, and it may even have been inadvertently keeping them locked into those tough times and the services and systems built around them. I wrote a book about some of the things I’ve learned from the people involved in Shared Lives, Homeshare and now Family by Family, with the subtitle ‘Escaping the invisible asylum’, because I believe that even though we talk about ‘community’ services, ‘empowerment’, focusing on ‘outcomes’ and so on, the culture and thought-processes which led us to build asylums, workhouses and other institutions is still deeply ingrained in many of our public services.

In Pat’s final blog for Mayday, she writes that there has not been the radical ‘revolution’ in homelessness support she once dreamed of. But there has been change, and there is no doubt in my mind that Mayday has played a role in that change. Not just dreaming of doing things differently, if only there was enough time, enough money or any of the other things we’ll never have enough of, but showing how to do things differently despite those multiple challenges. In other words, putting the idea of a person-led and strength-based response,  which is at the heart of Mayday’s mission, into the way the whole organisation works. Through the New System Alliance, Mayday and its partners are just starting to model that person-led response to drive change and inform an entirely new system. Like many of the people it supports, the organisation has had to come so far already, just in order to take the first step on a brand new journey towards being the hugely impactful organisation and movement for change that I know we can be.

Pat also says something in her final blog which resonates with me deeply: “My time at Mayday has taught me that my view is one of many and the direction to challenge the failing homeless system needs to be led by people who are experiencing it, who are often trapped within it and who want to act.” One challenge for us in the journey to come will be to be as ambitious as allies, as we are as leaders. If we can realise the ambition to impact thousands of lives, with the humility to stay led by people, we will have achieved something truly radical.

An Introduction to Wisdom from the Pandemic

In July 2020 Mayday was asked by Westminster City Council (WCC) to capture people’s experiences of lockdown during COVID-19; specifically, people who were sleeping rough, offered a space in a hostel, hotel or sought another solution.

Mayday put together a team of seven people who went to London to strike up conversations with people who were on the streets, all of whom were happy to talk with us.

The Wisdom methodology is focused on unstructured conversations in places that people feel comfortable talking. With implications on COVID-19, this method was adapted and social distancing measures were put in place when required. Teams also ensured that everyone was comfortable in face to face situations.

The Mayday team carried out a total of 60 conversations in the Westminster area during July and August in 2020. The conversations took place over the phone, face to face and via email. The following document captures the main themes which were identified from what was heard Conversations were initiated with a single question – What was your experience of lockdown during COVID-19?

Supported and temporary accommodation will not end rough sleeping by 2024

Why?

You can’t end rough sleeping with a temporary solution. Even during an international pandemic when the doors to hotels and other forms of accommodation were opened, some people still feared the system that was supposed to help them so much that they chose to remain on the streets.

Supported and temporary accommodation doesn’t cut the negative cycle of people returning to the streets and services. In 2020/21 at the height of the pandemic and the ‘Everyone in Campaign’, London saw more people returning to rough sleeping than it had seen in the last four years. This equated to nearly four people every single day, returning from services and systems that had failed them – this figure shockingly makes up a third of the total. (Greater London Authority (GLA), Rough Sleeping in London, Chain Annual Report, Greater London, April 2020 – March 2021)

“I do know a few people that didn’t want to go inside. Being on the street is a desperate thing, it’s not a choice.” 

Sam, rough sleeping on Oxford Street, Wisdom from the Pandemic

Council responses to a freedom of information request by the charity Shelter suggest only 23% of those helped through the ‘Everyone in Campaign’ had moved into settled accommodation – somewhere they could stay for at least six months – as of February. Shelter termed settled accommodation as accommodation where people had a right to be. So rightly, forms of temporary accommodation such as supported accommodation, hostels and those staying with friends or family were not included. (Shelter 2021, Everyone In: Where are they now?)

Everyone In was a phenomenal response to an international health crisis, it was not a sustainable response to a national rough sleeping crisis.

Mayday Trust’s latest listening enquiry, Wisdom from the Pandemic (carried out in London during July and August in 2020), clearly demonstrates that, for some, the COVID response resulted in a fresh start, an opportunity for people to move on with their lives. However, for others it was another example of the system failing; people being pushed into large hostels and shared accommodation, people expressing feelings of being out of control, scared and isolated.

“COVID has brought my life together and I’ve been handed help that I never got before…. I’m 68 years old and have been on the streets 5 years.” 

Kareen, outside the Portrait Gallery, Wisdom from the Pandemic

“Living in a hostel is no life. It doesn’t help me with my depression. The atmosphere feels like a graveyard in there.”

Gemma, outside Joe and the Juice on Oxford Street, Wisdom from the Pandemic

“I’m being told I have to go to a hostel; I really don’t want to go. I know I will relapse. Everyone there takes drugs. I’m trying to stay sober but they are forcing me to go.”

Richard, begging on Victoria Street, Wisdom from the Pandemic

Negative experiences of living in temporary accommodation, such as hostels, are supported by a report carried out by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which found that people living in insecure accommodation experienced worse or diminishing positive outcomes when compared to those with secure accommodation, who were given the opportunity to live independently.

Respect and dignity are protected under the Human Rights Act 1998 and are absolute necessities for supporting people through tough times

So, what should we be doing?

Dignity and respect should not be a luxury afforded to those that society deems worthy. Counter to this, those going through the toughest of times benefit most from being treated as people, rather than problems.

The answer to ending rough sleeping is not more money, but to think of ways to reduce service intervention and service dependence. Further investment into an already expensive system that isn’t working, into hostels and supported accommodation that people do not want to live in doesn’t make sense.  This is why we must move away from commissioning into siloes for problems and into commissioning for people. If you have met a ‘rough sleeper’, you have met one ‘rough sleeper’, each person wants and needs something different, we must develop a system that affords the same choice, autonomy and access that you and I expect for ourselves.

“I’ve become more independent in a way of I can do more things for myself rather than other people doing them. I feel happy with my family environment.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

The report by NEF includes an in-depth analysis of what happens when you respond to people going through tough times such as homelessness in an entirely different way using the Person-led, Transitional and Strength-based (PTS) Response.  Choice underpins this. Instead of being forced down set pathways, people were able to choose the support they wanted at a time that worked for them. The focus was placed on people’s strengths, passions and interests, rather than problems. People were encouraged, rather than ‘fixed’.

The research from NEF shows a correlation between being treated with dignity and respect and a person taking positive actions. When an environment was created where people had choice and control over their lives people reported that they felt encouraged to achieve their goals. Still, importantly they did not feel pressure to make changes faster than they were ready to. Furthermore, in direct comparison to other services, respondents described their PTS Coach as speaking to them, “like a human being” and meeting them “where they were” (physically, as well as mentally), rather than having to jump through hoops to get something done. As a result of this, people were able to progress positively with their lives in a sustainable and independent way.

“The way he encouraged me then is still with me now. And I still intend to get on the courses I had planned. He’s given me the determination to do it and the belief in myself that I will get this sorted.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

“They don’t judge you on your past. It’s about what you are now and where you want to go forward.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

The media and wider societal perception of homelessness, as well as the relationships between people accessing support and those offering the support, are also key to positive change. Mayday’s Wisdom from the Pandemic heard that many people felt that they were seen as subhuman, a problem or weak, when people found out they were rough sleeping.

“It was as if we weren’t human. Homeless people are not seen as human and no one cares about us.”

Mo, Trafalgar Square, Wisdom from the Pandemic

“Before we weren’t important, left outside. Then all of a sudden we’re in. It’s only because they thought we might make them sick. As long as they’re ok.”

Faye, Embankment Station, Wisdom from the Pandemic

When the focus is put on building a positive relationship with people, something which is often seen as a luxury in the current Social Care system, positive change can flourish. During interviews carried out by NEF, people working alongside a PTS Coach described their relationship as trusting, empowering, supportive and non-judgmental. Respondents explained they felt heard, and the relationship had a good impact on their well-being and confidence. The data backs this up, those that positively engaged with a PTS Coach improved their life satisfaction scores to that of the national average, up from before they worked alongside a PTS Coach.

“I’m not so moody all the time. I can do more stuff because I’m more confident and happier.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

“I like me a bit more. I’m a bit kinder to myself. I don’t blame myself when it isn’t necessary.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

“I have full responsibility for my life now.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

A practical response to the Housing Crisis

What action can we take?

Finally, we must consider housing, we cannot escape the fact that there is insufficient, genuinely affordable housing available to people that need it. A medium-term option could be to improve access to private rented accommodation. Shelter stated for a briefing in this very Hall in 2019:

“Firstly, the government must immediately lift the freeze on Local Housing Allowance (LHA) and restore rates to at least the bottom 30th percentile of the market. Secondly, the government must invest in significantly more social housing.”

The government listened two years ago and did restore rates. However, they have immediately frozen again and people are now having to live with the negative consequences of this with limited accommodation options and landlords being forced to evict tenants as their LHA doesn’t cover the cost of rent. People going through tough times continue to experience these challenges, so why are we not removing the benefit cap, removing shared room allowances and making the LHA fit for local purpose.

“I don’t get violent no more. I don’t get angry. I don’t get put in them situations now I have my own flat. I’m not aggressive I’m happy. I have safety. I have a secure home. I only let in who I chose to let in.”

Interviewee working alongside a PTS Coach, NEF Report 2021

The standard of living accommodation, rogue practices of landlords and inappropriate living solutions are yet more barriers that people going through tough times have to overcome. What would happen if we strengthened laws around the prosecution of rogue landlords, putting a stop to continuous reoffending and allowed people to freely choose where they live? Perhaps people would have a better experience and would be able to move forward with their lives.

“They gave me a room in a hotel. It was miles away. I was lonely, everyone I know is here. I didn’t know what was going on, how long I was going to be there, so I came back here.”

T, Westminster Tube Station, Wisdom from the Pandemic

“They’re talking about moving me on to private rented but I don’t want that, I want a studio council flat. You hear bad stories about private, it’s expensive and there’s no stability. If a landlord decides to sell you have to leave. I want a council flat for the stability.”

Ivano, Waterloo Bridge, Wisdom from the Pandemic

So what next?

We must see a commitment from this government to explore new ways of commissioning services, pushing local authorities to respond to their communities and their constituents and no longer commissioning services based on what funding stream they can apply for or what problems they wish to fix. People going through tough times must be able to decide what support they want and need and the state has to be ready to respond.

All public references should be linked, but if you spot anything please let us know.

Watch the Westminster Hall Debate on Rough Sleeping (Wednesday 8th September 2021) here 

An Introduction to Wisdom from the PTS Partnership

By 2016 Mayday Trust had been prototyping a new Person-led, Transitional and Strength-based (PTS) Response to working with people experiencing tough times for over four years and had started to see positive and statistically significant results.

People working with the PTS, formerly known as the Personal Transitions Service, reported an improved, more respectful experience; they were developing new networks, feeling more stable in their accommodation, and getting into work and training that built on their strengths and personal motivations. Early indications were that people weren’t coming back into services as they were finally able to get on with their lives.

Mayday fully adopted the PTS as the sole response across all areas. This meant undergoing a complete organisational transformation to shift the culture, internal systems and structures toward being fully person-led, and implementing a unique way to measure impact based on assets instead of deficits. But, being a small organisation, evidencing the approach and modeling systemic change would require other like-minded organisations to join together to model a new system as a collective. It required PTS Partners. Together it was hoped that real and sustained change could be created by exposing the deficit system and the barriers it creates for people experiencing tough times.

Two national events were held in London and Manchester to share the evidence, the ‘warts and all’ learning and the potential of the approach with providers, funders and commissioners. Where this resonated, participants were invited to join Mayday to form the first PTS Partnership.

This required brave, passionate, mission-driven, and like-minded mavericks to take on the challenge with the aim of offering the PTS to 2000 people over an initial three year period. This was more than modelling a new approach; it required a commitment to listen and learn from the grassroots and the real, raw experiences of people in order to challenge and change internal culture and externally disrupt and influence the norm.

Seventy organisations expressed interest, and after a year of travelling up and down the country, the original PTS Partnership was formed. First to join was Changing Lives in the North East, followed by The Brick, Wigan; Derventio Housing Trust, Derby; Nomad Opening Doors in Sheffield; Cherry Tree also in Sheffield; SHYPP (now Citizen) in Herefordshire; 999 Club in Deptford and South Northamptonshire Council. Investment was provided by our trusted learning partners, Tudor Trust and Comic Relief.

Over the three years, the PTS Partnership and Mayday came together to test, learn and clarify what systems change meant, as well as uncover the ‘why and the how’ things needed to change. The PTS Response continued to evolve, highlighting the need for systems change, recognising systems failure and its causes, and finally uncovering the ‘system damage’ experienced by people.

The Partnership has achieved a huge amount over the years. This includes an evidenced strength-based data set, a robust PTS Response, a university-level PTS qualification for practitioners, new ways of attracting social investment through Social Impact Bonds, a PTS Accreditation and a strong Wisdoms methodology for exposing systemic barriers through deeply listening to people at the grassroots.

The following Wisdoms have been captured as a ‘psychology informed’ way of listening. They have derived from conversations, reflections, challenges and changes in many different organisations and contexts. These Wisdoms will be used to uncover what we need to consider and act upon if we are to achieve the mission of a full paradigm shift in the systems encountered by people experiencing tough times – leading to systems that work.

A Move for Change

Mayday welcomes Robert White to the team.

“Are you nervous?” “Are you scared?” “That’s quite a change, what will you actually be doing?” These were all valid questions, but all they really did was make me increasingly concerned that I hadn’t made the right decision. Leaving the Local Authority and joining an organisation that is constantly evolving in major ways to lead on an ambitious vision across London and the ‘South East’ (a geographical term I found myself Googling the night before) – what was I thinking?!

Hello. My name is Robert White and I have just joined Mayday Trust as their Director of Change. I did start as the Director of Change and Innovation but on my second day, a colleague told me that the term innovation was wrong and the whole thing sounded “a bit wanky” – Director of Change it is, then.

I have just left Westminster City Council where I was the Lead Commissioner for Supported Housing and Rough Sleeper Services (I know). I had been at Westminster for six years, working my way through various versions of commissioner roles. I joined the Local Authority after a couple of years leading a team in a high support, 40-bed hostel for rough sleepers. As long as you could prove to me that you smoked enough crack, drank enough vodka, heard loud enough voices and that a commissioned outreach worker had seen you “sleeping, or readying for a nights’ sleep on the street”, you could stay in my hostel and I would fix you right up. You’re welcome. I knew at that point that something wasn’t right and that we could do better, and I figured if I joined the team that designed these services I could change these services.

I think we changed services for the better…No, we definitely did. We worked hard at making sure that trauma-informed practice, person-centred support, and psychologically-informed environments were at the heart of our service provision. As a team, we balanced the expectations of residents and businesses in Westminster with the ever-growing demand for houses, places of safety, and support that was right for the individual.  The scale at which we had to do this puts our country to shame. During some of our most challenging times, outreach services could expect to meet at least six new people a day, every day. Systems, pathways, hostels, support services were all creaking at the seams with demand. During my time at Westminster, we removed over £2m from the system due to the austerity agenda and, with the invention of the Rough Sleeper Initiative, we drip-fed £3m back in.

It wasn’t until 2018 that I began to recognise that, politics and policy aside, there was something about the system that had to change. That year, we had received an effectively blank cheque from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.  They had been clear with us: do whatever you can, focus on the numbers on the street and reduce rough sleeping. The idea was, ‘if we can nail it in Westminster, the rest will follow’. The pressure was intense. We doubled the size of our night centre, housing 80 people instead of 40, we increased the size of our outreach team to reach more people, faster, we increased the capacity of the mental health team to assess and diagnose more people and get them into treatment. Housing First opportunities were doubled, and we continued to develop our assessment centre to process more and more people, as quickly as possible. All was leading to the annual street count, the questionable measure of success, a litmus test of progress; in 2017 we had seen 217 people, all services were full, teams working overtime to get people off the street, over £500k was thrust into the system to make it work…

The morning after the street count I remember feeling sad, overwhelmed and confused. We had found 306 people that night, a 30% increase in the numbers. All that work, all that time, all that money and it had made no difference. What followed was a lot of soul searching, involving, amongst other things: an inspirational trip to Scotland, a fact-finding mission to Bratislava, having a second child, a period of Parental Leave, and, dare I mention it 704 words in…coronavirus.

Where I arrived at was this.  It all boils down to one point: “change the system and not the person”. Until we truly challenge the status quo, until we collectively recognise that we are not here to fix people’s problems but to facilitate their strengths and work with them to grow in the way they want to grow, then we will continue to see numbers rise, more and more people institutionalised in a system of mass fixing and a revolving door of challenge and frustration.

I am proud of the work we achieved at Westminster, and the tenacity, passion and belief of my former colleagues is unquestionable.  But moving to Mayday Trust is a move of activism, a move to a place of true change, surrounding myself with the most incredible people who believe in a world where systems work for people going through tough times. Yes, I am nervous, yes, I am scared and yes, it is quite a change. Deep breath.

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