Background

Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) aims to combat homelessness, creating opportunities in education, training and employment; and promoting change. BHT develops initiatives to encourage and enable service users to take an active role in service delivery. BHT support a comprehensive range of services that work in partnership with organisations to the needs of homeless, insecurely housed and vulnerable men and women.

These services include:

• General and legal advice
• Mental Health
• Floating support
• Work and learning
• Support for those with addiction to drugs and alcohol
• A homelessness Hostel and Day Centre

The BHT Service User Involvement Consultancy provides a co-ordinated structure for the views of people who use BHT’s services to have a voice at all levels. Service Users work together through forums, events, training opportunities and by undertaking research commissions for outside agencies. A quarterly magazine, ‘Express’ is produced through the Consultancy and aims to improve the quality and responsiveness of services. This acts as meaningful activity for service users to increase skills through active participation in the services provided to them. The Consultancy supports service users from the homelessness, mental health and substance misuse sectors.

Project approach and delivery

The approach of the project was to initially set up a ‘Consultancy’; this Consultancy contained service users from homelessness, mental health and substance misuse sectors. The use of ICT was, and continues to be, central to the operation of the Consultancy. The Consultancy operates through regular structured professional meetings where minutes are taken throughout and subsequently distributed to attendees. Feedback reporting from both service users and staff is critical throughout and clearly defined through policy review. The service user decides their level of participation in the Consultancy and there are many functions that they are responsible for including creative projects and administration. The BHT service user involvement magazine, ’Express’ aims to break down any barriers between staff and service users. Generally, half of Express contains articles about service user interests and half about staff work – in particular good practice across BHT; this reflects the ethos that the project is not simply ‘led’ but a ‘partnership’ between staff and service users. BHT, through input from the Consultancy, also produces a directory of local services aimed at staff and service users and developed from their experiences of accessing them.

Peer to peer training is a key facet of the Consultancy; basic computer skills and support from existing members to new service users encourages empowerment and ownership over their personal development and the services they access. This has a good response from new members as it helps put them at ease in their new environment.

The use of ICT is key to the operation of the Consultancy - each new member given a comprehensive induction with a ‘welcome pack’. This covers the structure of the organisation, expectations, policies and confidentiality agreements. Each member is set up on Google mail and meetings are scheduled through Google calendar - once again responsibility lies with the service user to maintain these. ICT forms a key part of the creation of the magazine and is utilised in many ways including creative design, writing and word processing. Once again, the use of these resources encourages participation and raises ICT skill levels. More specific training in ICT has been provided to cover areas such as desktop publishing and Photoshop.

Impact and lessons learnt

The project has successfully strengthened the relationship between staff and service users within BHT. It acts to empower service users to comment on, and to facilitate the services offered by BHT. ICT skills are improved through active learning and the opportunity to teach other service users. Consequently self esteem and confidence is raised and makes the Consultancy a positive environment for structured self-development at the level the service user feels comfortable with. The cross sector nature of the Consultancy has resulted in experience sharing of the differing life experiences of the members and increased peer-to-peer support.

The project has found that the facilities, room and PCs have produced the positive environment in which the group is run. Having a separate designated PC area and meeting table area allows the consultancy to follow professional working and allows multiple functions to take place. Positive and enthused staff have also been key to ensuring that the Consultancy meets the needs of service users. Supervision is offered by the co-ordinator to support service users involved in the project; once again service users are empowered to decide when they feel they require it and are responsible for organising the meeting through the Google calendar.

The Consultancy has had a high level of success with 14 to 18 members regularly attending the meetings. The Consultancy is flexibly organised to encourage continued engagement. The meaningful occupation and skill development through ICT offered by the group, even if accessed for a short period, aids service user movement towards training and employment, and helps to increase self confidence

Future

BHT intends to continue with the service user involvement programmes it is currently engaged with including the publication of Express. The increasing skills of users mean there may be an opportunity to expand the activities of the Consultancy (e.g. produce short films and delivering of presentations about service user experiences - including through using PowerPoint).