Blogs

What are these money workshops? We’re really proud to be taking our confidential and small group workshops to people in work in Greater Norwich. From January, we’re delivering 2-hour workshops in Norwich, where Your Own Place’s facilitators will create a confidential and safe environment to discuss money concerns, experiences and tips. There will be no more […]

Your Own Place is recruiting. We’re seeking a new part-time (30 hours a week) Office Manager. You’ll be joining a dynamic and passionate team and playing a vital role in supporting them in their impactful work. Our office is based in Norwich, where we will expect to see you for around half the week. Otherwise, […]

After three co-production workshops in early 2023 with team members from Colchester Borough Homes, Colchester YMCA, Emmaus Colchester, Peabody Colchester, and YES Colchester, we’re entering our next phase of the project. These workshops focussed on developing shared values with the organisations involved. Through these workshops, we explored strength- and asset-based approaches, open questions, incentives, and […]

At Your Own Place we support all those individuals and charities appealing to the government not to criminalise rough sleeping in tents or the giving out of tents by charities and others. We acknowledge the issue is complex, as we have seen before and will again at Christmas, in discussions about whether to give cash […]

This World Homeless Day, as we at Your Own Place mark our tenth year in existence, we are needed more than ever. You could say we’ve failed. But I don’t think even our harshest critics would blame this appalling state of affairs in housing and the rise in homelessness, on us.  I support Crisis, The […]

Wishing Your Own Place a very happy tenth birthday.  ‘It’s inextricably linked to you’ is a phrase I’ve enjoyed hearing less and less over the last ten years.  Founders create social businesses that reflect their values, their outlook, their experiences and their place in the world. I’m no exception. But this makes it harder to […]

The key responsibility of non-executive directors at Your Own Place is to provide support, strategic oversight, challenge and scrutiny as well as oversee adherence to the company aims and due diligence. They provide general counsel – and a different perspective – on matters of concern to the CEO.  We think of them as ‘critical friends’ to […]

What is the best way to make a difference right now?  If you’re anything like the members of the team at Your Own Place CIC, it can at times feel all but impossible to support people whose budgets simply don’t add up. Citizens Advice tells us that 47% of people they see are in negative […]

10am – 4:30pm onThursday 19th October 20231st Level Castle Quarter, Norwich  Times are hard.You’re not alone. We welcomed anyone and everyone to Castle Quarter on Thursday 19th October 2023, 10am – 4:30pm, to a free event to address the cost of living crisis. We worked with our Advisory Board to co-produce and event aimed at […]

Some time ago we started to remove the word ‘independent’ from our brand Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS). In social care and supported housing in particular, there is an obsession with ‘independence’. Whether this is wishful thinking around people no longer being dependent on their services is unclear. That ‘independence’ is neither desirable nor […]

It’s a week when Prince William shows a commitment to ending homelessness with ‘Homewards’. At Your Own Place we launch ‘Steps to a Successful Tenancy’, in partnership with Sovereign Housing Association. What the Prince recognised in his figure of 300,000 people, is that this includes people in supported accommodation and other temporary (and often pretty […]

At Your Own Place we work with people of all ages and many backgrounds. What they have in common is a risk of homelessness. This can be as simple as having been homeless before, or something much more nuanced that doesn’t have a label and isn’t perceived or counted. If you’re familiar with Your Own […]

Your Own Place Advisory Board (YOPAB) is a group of people who have experienced Your Own Place’s services – workshops, mentoring or employability support – and who provide lived experience perspectives to inform our work. The aim of YOPAB is to be mutually beneficial. YOPAB is all about co-production, shared influence, building experience and developing […]

Leah joins our team as Online and Co-Facilitator after playing a key part in our Advisory Board I’m Leah and I am joining Your Own Place as an online and co facilitator. I love dogs, dopamine dressing and being outside. Having been supported by Your Own Place in the past and felt the impact, I […]

Long term partners are the best partners.  Which is why we’re thrilled to announce a third year of partnership with Saffron Housing Trust.  Operating out of Diss and Harleston foodbanks, our latest support offer sees us taking our award-winning workshops into local communities. By working in foodbanks we can reach people who most need our […]

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week from 15th to 21st May, so our Chief Operating Officer (COO), Jess Luce-Rackham, has written about how Your Own Place strives to prioritise team wellbeing and to embed values-led team support.  We embed our values into everything we do. From induction through to workshop delivery to partner relationships, our values […]

If you follow Your Own Place or me on social media, you may see and read lots of posts about the team. As a social enterprise preventing homelessness, isn’t the most important thing the work we do and the impact we have? Arguably, but let me tell you a little why they both matter and […]

We’re recruiting Once again, Your Own Place is delighted to be recruiting. We wanted to share this post as you may have noticed, that since the job went live last week, something has changed. We had been in a position to recruit two people and this is now one person – an Online and Co-Facilitator. […]

Review of our Vision and Mission In the autumn of 2022 Your Own Place undertook a thorough and robust strategic review. Working with partners past and present as well as those we exist fo support, such as the diligent members of YOPAB, we explored in a series of workshops where we are in the current […]

So said a team member of our small but mighty Your Own Place conglomerate (currently eight team members and counting). But what does yoga have to do with the housing sector and homelessness prevention?  Yoga’s early branding, when it arrived in England and North America in the 1960s, was all about flexibility, and receiving teachings […]

For the third year, our CEO and founder, Rebecca White, is thrilled to be amongst the company of 99 other women making up the best of the social enterprise sector. The WISE100 recognises the most inspiring and influential women in social enterprise, impact investment and mission-driven business. Find out who is in Pioneers Post’s top […]

With all the usual fun, values-based, engaging and interactive delivery, this year takes us further into old as well as new territory.  We’re thrilled to announce a new partnership with Freebridge Community Housing, who we have previously worked with during 2022.  At the vanguard of good tenant engagement and ahead of the Tenant Satisfaction Measures […]

Unhelpful negative messaging or is there hope in the dark? Blue Monday, we’re told, happens on the 16th January this year. According to Wikipedia, it is ‘the name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) said by a UK travel company, Sky Travel, to be the most depressing day […]

Again, our Advisory Board (YOPAB) say it best. Two young carers, Jordan and Katie chat openly and vulnerably about their hopes and fears of being a young carer, the support they get (or not) and how their identify as a young carer plays on their mind as adulthood listen. A must-listen podcast if you care […]

This article is written by Jess Marsh, Facilitator at Your Own Place. ‘Good things come in threes’.  ‘Three is a magic number’. And my favourite… ‘First the worst, second the best, third the one with the hairy chest’ (apparently!).  After celebrating my three year YOPiversary on 2nd December, you’ll be as disappointed as I was […]

You know you’ve been around a while when the same idea that was a good one seven years ago is a good one again now, but this time for different reasons.  Put simply, the obvious reason for awarding our trainees accreditation certificates back then was to help them get a job.  At a time of […]

Your Own Place are thrilled to have won the Impact in Social Enterprise award on 13th October at the Sheraton Hotel, Park Lane, London. This award is in association with the School for Social Entrepreneurs. It is for our commitment to building public trust through open, fair and insightful reporting.  With this award Your Own […]

It’s impossible not to have an opinion about foodbanks.  Whether informed by the media or having visited one yourself, with so much coverage of the cost of living crisis, it’s unlikely you don’t have a view on their place in our world. As I write this, we’re no longer where I thought we were. Our […]

Practical tips for people working in housing In the face of the latest crisis, it is to be expected that we get into reactive advice and help mode. This feels better than preventing the crisis in the first place and to prevent it you have to spot it ‘upstream’ anyway.  This might be why prevention […]

If someone needs a life ring, I don’t want to see them drown. But once they’re out I also don’t want them to fall in again and again. This is a wasted opportunity and has no dignity.  We’re in a cost of living crisis. As the summer rumbles on and many think of heading off […]

In the volatile space of social media, social landlords are challenged on their commercial business models. The case for size and sustainability often conflicts with being person-centred, having authentic relationships and ensuring all voices are heard – or good ‘engagement’. It is these voices going unheard that has led to The Charter for Social Housing […]

Our Your Own Place (YOP) Advisory Board (AB) is a group of individuals who have experience of what we offer: they’ve joined us through mentoring, employabiliy, or TILS+ workshops. YOP + AB = YOPABThe involvement of those with lived experience is vital to our development and that of wider services. Our people are at the […]

What do you get out of conferences?  Is it meeting people? Networking? Space to think? Hot topics? Or simply time away from your desk? Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to network, connect and come away with new ideas. Having consciously removed all that pressure from myself, it felt good to have new […]

After two years of pandemic, The New Tech Economy, citing many of us as glancing at our smartphones upwards of 55 times a day, also finds increasing numbers of people wanting to move away from them. Before the pandemic most of us made use of digital devices in a range of ways to enhance, streamline […]

You’ll be aware that Your Own Place turned eight in October last year.  Both a huge milestone and a source of great pride.  What is often unseen beneath the veneer of glossy social media, is the knock backs, the failures, the disappointments and frustrations.  I’m thrilled to say that very few of those relate to […]

But for Covid19, we wouldn’t have made it blended for a start.  But let me go back a bit.  Over the years we’re run a few Open Days.  We’ve planned as a team to showcase what we do and invite a few partners. In the early days they were often previous colleagues of mine or […]

Engagement. It’s a word our sector uses a lot and we all do it a lot. There is undoubtedly some very good practise in the housing sector and some really poor practise too. And then there’s those that pretend they’ve got good practise nailed and those that wonder why it doesn’t work.  Here’s the thing. […]

Tenancy sustainment work has long been important for landlords not only wishing to ensure the rent is collected, but to support their tenants to thrive in their homes. In this piece Rebecca White explores why it matters now more than ever and shares her organisation’s empowering approach to achieving it.  We’re all emerging into a […]

How did you feel when you read about the cultural revelations at Brewdog?  And if you’re a founder or leader, how did you feel? With plans to scale these stories hit hard. In recent times though, and not because of Covid19 (or Brewdog), I’ve come to the view that small(ish) is beautiful (the horizon is […]

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that Your Own Place hasn’t always gone to plan. As far as there has ever been a plan, a good deal has been jettisoned and I’ve not always even admitted it or had time to reflect.  Thanks to the extraordinary (and mostly hugely positive) experience of leading a team in […]

In the midst of a complicated schools project, recruiting 100 new volunteers and multiple commissions in new areas with new customers, 2021 hit us at full speed.  When Jess, our Operational Manager, kept speaking of things we’d get done in ‘quieter times’ I didn’t have the heart to say that there probably wouldn’t be any. […]

Even before Covid19, if you were remotely interested in your team, your income or the world around you, then employment was probably on your radar.  If you’re lucky, unemployment may have been less so.  We all started somewhere and when earlier this year we ran a social media campaign to ask people to describe their […]

Our mission is to prevent homelessness and we’re acutely aware of the fact it can affect anyone at any time. By helping trainees unlock their potential they can stay safe and secure in their tenancy with a greater understanding of the skills they need to thrive. We facilitate so much but there are still lots […]

As well as delivering our own in-house training we work with partners across the country to facilitate workshops that work for tenants and housing teams. Here are just some of the reasons housing associations and authorities love working with us. We’re all about building confidence AND skills Our training not only covers everything trainees need […]

People often tell us that they didn’t realise we work with every age group, or we can travel anywhere, or we work with other organisations. There’s so much you might not know about Your Own Place and the work we do to prevent homelessness. We’re so much more than a young persons’ organisation, although we […]

We’re pleased to share with you are own road map over the coming months. All being well, with a vaccinated team passionate about the difference we make face to face, we will be returning to face to face delivery, whilst remaining flexible with our blended offer.

With cautious optimism and the team having their vaccines, like many businesses we are eager to return to time spent face to face. We are in the business of building relationships and with all due caution and safety measures in place, will be returning we hope in the following phased way: 12th April – maximum […]

How you’ll find you fit into Your Own Place and YOPAB no matter who you are! My name is Chanel and I am going to take you down my journey through Your Own Place (YOP) and their Advisory Board (YOPAB). It all started when I was sitting down with my leaving care advisor and I […]

We’ve spoken before, haven’t we about my lack of a plan, my fear of failure and that if I go public, well, people will know about the failure? You’ll be pleased to know that this particular ailment is getting better – oddly thanks to the nightmare that was 2020. There’s somehow an equality of failure […]

Your Own Place CIC and Hopestead have joined up with a goal of preventing homelessness and helping people to keep their home Through their partnership, bespoke, fun, and engaging training will be offered to Flagship Group tenants from April The training has been designed collaboratively and will allow delegates to gain skills and feel empowered […]

Whether you’re organising the family holiday (I wish), running the local choir, or in my case, a social enterprise, there’s simply no alternative.  Doing so isn’t easy or quick. By definition, more people means more time. Additionally, many people in my situation are lone-wolves and it might not come naturally to us. We have an […]

Following our commission in 2020 by The Carnegie UK Trust to complete five blogs and vlogs providing a learning insight into going digital during Covid19, we have now pulled it all together into a final report. This final report provides quick links to all the blogs and vlogs, an overview of each one, and most […]

Like many businesses, following the horrific events of 2020, we want to do more to recruit from a diverse pool of talent. Unlike many businesses, we work with people who have experienced homelessness. In short, black people are three times more likely to become homeless. However, in our own data, not only are they under-represented, […]

This isn’t really a blog, rather a proud, emotional and humbling moment. Anyone who works anywhere near our sector, knows that measuring the difference we make is incredibly hard. Wanting passionately to prove it statistically, it doesn’t mean that feedback from individuals isn’t worthy and of value. And when it’s this good it deserves to […]

We absolutely will.  Because it matters and it’s what we do.  I’ve honestly little truck with those selling up their office space and saving money by shifting the costs to people working from home. The benefits to the planet are huge of course and flexible working done well can make a difference to people’s lives […]

Isn’t prevention a bit of luxury during a crisis?  Even in the ‘good’ times prevention seems to be the poor relative, underinvested due to more immediate emergencies taking all the attention.  During a pandemic, we have all become even more reactive and necessarily so.  Every one of us changed our behaviour and so did our […]

Charities and the third-sector are undoubtedly key to ensuring the country emerges from this pandemic as unscathed as possible. Now is the perfect time to recruit volunteers – both due to increased demand for services and the general public’s very real willingness to support local initiatives.  As demonstrated in Danny Kruger MP’s Levelling Up Our […]

What keeps YOU awake at night? I’m very lucky. Not much keeps me awake at night.  Thanks to regular exercise, a cold house, early rising and no kids, I’m blessed with eight hours a night.  This may seem a pretty odd thing to say, running a small social enterprise in the midst of a pandemic […]

Even before Covid19, a lot of our lives, passions and pastimes were online. In an increasingly virtual existence, many of our workplaces are now almost entirely online too.   In teams of people with differing skills and motivations, moving business online can pose a significant person-shaped challenge.  Small enterprises like ours, existing on a limited […]

We all have a role in dispelling the myths about young people being digital natives. We know from The Tech Partnership, that even prior to the pandemic, as many as 300,000 young people lack digital skills and as many as 750,000 may be digitally excluded.  Just because you can upload a photo to Instagram doesn’t […]

In a week when our new Board of six Non-Executive Directors are being fully inducted, it feels like a pertinent moment for some myth busting. When people misconceive what we do my first reaction is to take offence.  My second is to assume I’ve done something wrong.  Granted, we’re complex, accomplish a lot and not […]

As I ventured into the unknown nearly seven years ago, marketing was something that fashionably dressed and overpaid young professionals did in cool offices with slides.  I now understand some of that (perhaps not the slides!). Not only is marketing done by trendy types, it also commands vast sums of money, huge tracts of time, […]

Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself clicking on articles, posts and blogs.  I’m searching for the answer, an answer, the silver bullet, the good advice and hope.  What I find is a mixture of soul-searching, clickbait and unhelpful advice. It was only after an eye opening conversation with a someone I respect, that […]

Like so much during this pandemic, we can’t be absolutely certain, as we’ve not been here before. The ban on evictions in the private rented sector was announced by government on 18th March.  What seems like a lifetime ago, was a moment of reassurance for many that eviction by their private landlord was on hold […]

No matter what you’re doing, you need a detailed plan to make things happen. Or so we often think. In a post Covid19 world it’s hard to imagine a worse time to make a plan for big changes to our lives. How can we possibly plan in this vacuum? Setting up Your Own Place in […]

The first thing I realised this week following a call with my learning programme and helping a friend with their new business, is that our sector doesn’t network. What’s that about? We’re told endlessly to work in partnership and collaborate, but this fundament of business simply hasn’t made it over to the third/social enterprise sector. […]

What can we do, with limited resources, limited budget, massive business challenges and right here in Norfolk? What is utterly clear to me that doing nothing isn’t an option. ‘It’s just Norfolk’, updating our Equality & Diversity Policy and gnashing my teeth really isn’t going to cut it. I’m pretty certain that there’s no evidence […]

So in the interests of this not being a rant, I thought I’d include a list of ways we show, in the professional sphere, how we value others. For clarity, people have intrinsic worth, whether we plan to do business with them, know them or like them and now more than ever, I believe it’s […]

As if major changes and challenges in your job weren’t enough during normal times. Sometime around late April Simone and I chatted about how we could develop our own highly regarded mentoring training online. It already seemed pretty clear that that we weren’t the only third sector organisation that didn’t want the safety and competence […]

What I love about this real quote is that although it’s from a lifer that we have mentored, it could be any of us in any situation in our lives. We’re well known for being champions, ok, evangelical, about taking a coaching approach to moving people forward. So I’ll tell you a little story about […]

As a social enterprise that claims to be innovative and looking for solutions to homelessness, the last few months have been exhausting. We are that organisation and I aspire, at this time of all times, to be more so. In this sector nothing stands still for long. Needless rounds of short-term funding, short-term thinking, changing […]

I’ve learn’t a lot and you’ll be thrilled to know that like any parent, I’m about to make a whole new raft of mistakes as we recruit new Non-Executive Directors! But as the Cycle of Change goes, you have to know you have a problem before making change. It seems that there isn’t a company […]

Fifteen weeks and fifteen blogs in lockdown is finally over. Last week was ‘back to school’ for us at Your Own Place. For many, back to school has so many other resonances right now, and I can only imagine how this uncertainty feels for many. So what do you do when you’re welcoming a team […]

It’s been a funny old month… at Your Own Place. The team has been furloughed, I’ve had some time off and things have gone quiet. So of course that sounds like an easier month than usual – fewer interruptions, time to strategise, no personal crises and time to focus. Whether it’s the perversity of the […]

And we’re seeking new skills We haven’t even finished our recruitment for an Operational Manager and we’re seeking yet more people with the skills we need.  Against a backdrop of ongoing turmoil for many, it remains the case that we must strive to be decisive. This is not the same as being certain. Whilst decisions […]

So I’m back at work. I’ve had two weeks leave and skilfully managed to choose the two worst weeks of weather this summer! Seriously, I needed a break whilst the team break on furlough. Following twelve weeks of very full-on work, I’m not sure I had quite the holiday I needed. More time alone and […]

This feels like a missed opportunity and disappointment, kind of blog this week. Did anyone else experience a curious moment of this? A moment of inspiration – an almost euphoric moment of possibility in amongst all the horror of the last three months? In the last few weeks I’ve used the word ‘mandate’ a lot. […]

This one should be called furlough, but it’s not. Because after ten weeks of hard graft we enter this period of pause with huge expertise and knowledge under our belts. Now of course, everyone is a digital expert. We’re not. We’re experts at us, so that means finding the digital solutions that chime with our […]

Thanks to a kind share of a Volunteers’ Week post on LinkedIn, I got to thinking about volunteering in the current crisis. There seems little doubt that there have been truly magnificent (don’t like the term ‘hero’) efforts by so many to support those in their time of need. Of course we work with people […]

It’s a much overused analogy, but boy, what a rollercoaster. Is this why it’s so exhausting? As a CEO founder entirely responsible for the continuity and wellbeing of a small enterprise, the lows have been very low indeed and the highs, well, not really high at all. They can’t be when there’s so much suffering. […]

We’re thrilled to announce that Norwich Consolidated Charities have provided Your Own Place with funding to continue our community mentoring service. New funding means we can: 1. Continue to support all those existing mentors and mentees who are still meeting virtually at this vital time. 2. Continue with new referrals and make new face to […]

Floating in the sea with nothing to cling to. That’s very much how it feels. I know I have to do something, but there’s nothing to grab, no-one to ask let alone knowing what the right questions are. At night in my dreams I am metaphorically calling in the middle of the ocean with little […]

We talk so much now of mental health awareness it can almost feel like ‘job done’. Everyone’s an expert and yet there is so much more to be done. In the last two months at Your Own Place we have supported people right on the edge. One extraordinary volunteer mentor was an absolute life-line to […]

Why do people suddenly care about inequality? Maybe it’s that I exist in my fairly leftie echo chamber, maybe it’s that we’ve never had more time for virtue signalling or maybe we’ve actually woken up. Having always worked with people experiencing more barriers than me, I’ve had many a holiday overshadowed by unanswered questions. Never […]

As surely as we have passed the peak of Covid19 and a slow return to the office beckons, we are faced with more decisions than ever. I for one would not wish to be part of the government team developing the Recovery Plan. This feels like the new unknown, much as this whole situation was […]

Something positive for you this week. We are thrilled to have accepted a £10,000 donation from Saffron Housing. The vagaries of the contacts we make and the people we touch on our journey through life perplex me more by the day. At this time more than ever we find out who our friends are, who […]

So we’re still here. I’m feeling terribly lucky. Whilst a furlough ‘holiday’ is quite appealing right now, most of us define ourselves, at least partially, via our professional lives. Founders probably do this more. As we evolve (I can’t bring myself to use the word pivot until I understand what it means), I’m coming to […]

The great leveller fallacy. This is not an equal opportunity pandemic. If you didn’t see Emily Maitlis on Newsnight last week, it’s worth a listen. Whilst the disease comes for everyone, our ability to survive it, self-isolate and avoid exposure to it is very unequal. Let’s look at those briefly in turn. Next week I’ll […]

Aren’t humans just brilliant? How quickly we adapt to a new way of living and working. I consider myself amongst the most inflexible of the race and nearly wobbled with my daily routine. However, I’ve maintained my 5am start. My early morning getting on top of emails, meditating, exercise and a good breakfast seem more […]

This blog isn’t inspirational and won’t give you any answers. Many out there are showing how resilient they are, writing blogs on ‘command and control’ and how they are adapting. We are being told how to behave in a crisis by army chiefs and are all experts at managing remote teams. How can we possibly […]

No this isn’t a blog about Coronavirus or taking a rest. It’s about finding solutions for impact and whether this is inherent in who we are – a social business. Last year we picked up the last year of a schools mentoring project. This forms one tiny part of a three-year Department for Education funded […]

I’ve been lucky enough to watch this biographical film twice. It charts the transition of six people incarcerated, along with roughly the other 83,000 we lock up in this country (fewer in Europe only than Russia and Turkey), to freedom. Working with the Timpson Group, who have to date provided jobs for over 600 people […]

With so much written in the wellbeing space I’m a natural sceptic about lots of non-expert people doing very well out of ill-informed recycling of advice. Of course it’s big business amongst the busy, stressed and self-loathing. Generally I’m of the belief that I know what’s best for me and will listen, reflect, test and […]

When’s you’re not in a position to make one. This blog is a series of thoughts that have distilled over the years. Rarely am I in the company of suffiently ‘lefty types’ to find much agreement and too frequently come across indifference or a lack of compassion. I’m still unsure which is worse. I use […]

Your Own Place is seeking simply the best Operational Manager. We don’t get hung up on qualifications, perfect CVs or the finished article. Here’s our top five for this post. We recruit for values. They are: equality, being innovative, fun and engaging, asset-based, restorative and high quality. Whilst we remunerate competitively, we’re also offering an […]

If you haven’t been over to The Independence Hub yet then you may not have met Stacy.

What will you be doing to support the community around you this year? Many of us will volunteer, buy from charity shops, fundraise with your business or something else. How do you decide? And how do you know it has an impact? These can be difficult questions to answer, especially when there is a wealth […]

Taking on a loan is never a decision to be taken lightly. Ironically (or not), just as we promote due diligence amongst our trainees around borrowing, so we at YOP have considered this very carefully, starting the conversation over a year ago. Why have we done it? Being a social enterprise is tough. In that […]

It’s my last blog of 2020 and I’m delighted to tell you about a new partnership. We can share what we will be aiming to achieve as well as a few reflections about what makes a good partnership. The sector is constantly told to collaborate. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. After all, you […]