Your Own Place

Norwich

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Preventing homelessness for ten years

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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 extricate oneself from said business. And yet that must be the aim: for the purposes of sanity (the founder’s) and sustainability (of the organisation).

So in celebration of ten years and to chime with our values, I want to celebrate key milestones in the last ten years. It’s the brilliance and dedication of everyone, inside and outside the organisation, that have shaped Your Own Place into the grown up organisation it is today.

We were able to incorporate in October 2013 because of the inspiration and learning of the people I met at the School of Social Entrepreneurs. They launched their course in Ipswich the same month I founded Your Own Place, and without them, Your Own Place would not have been born. Thanks SSE!

Broadland Housing Group paid me for the privilege of practising my tenancy training prototype on their tenants. I left work at Norfolk County Council early, cycled down to their Norwich office on St. Benedicts, and set up my interactive workshop in a room full of computers and no wall space! The seeds were sown. A tenant attended with her toddler, and shared her story of setting up a repayment plan. I was moved that even though she knew her debt wouldn’t be settled for ten years, she felt lighter and reassured knowing she’d taken the steps she could. Thanks Broadland and Adam Clark!

I’m sure everyone remembers their first successful funding bid. Still working just with young people at this point, and mostly those leaving care, I was travelling the length and breadth of the county delivering 1-2-1 tenancy workshops. I shaped and tested our model thanks to these small one-off commissions. Thank you to the young people who trusted me to work with them as guinea pigs and MAP (Mancroft Advice Project) for helping us start group workshops with their young people. 

We also received funding from Victory Housing to run our first mentoring programme, which meant I could eye up the risky leap to working full time on Your Own Place (for next to nothing, of course). Thank you Norfolk Community Foundation and Victory Housing. 

When I met Antonia Dixey, who introduced me to Pinpoint facilitation, Your Own Place’s facilitation approach changed forever. The British Council brought us together and we commissioned the Participation People to deliver Your Own Place’s first ever Train the Trainer delivery. I’d never met Antonia, so I emailed her relentlessly, asking for the lesson plans in advance, wanting to ensure youth voice was heard right from the start. She arrived, the workshops blew me away, and I met another woman with passion and drive. Thank you Antonia.

Up to this point our delivery model required me to cycle 24 miles round trip every day and shower in various places. But in 2016, we secured The Training Flat as our office: a real social housing maisonette that brought our workshops alive. Delivery now happens across the country and locations, but I recall with fondness a packed living room at 23 Johnson Place, delivering workshops with young people, going outside to read the meter. Thank you Lee Robson for his passion and vision in making this happen, and to Norwich City Council. 

We secured £1400 from the Norfolk Community Foundation to undertake some research into young people’s housing experiences. Young people themselves led this research and Lemn Sissay helped us launch it at the St Giles House Hotel. A poet with care experience who continues to be an inspiration.

The first employees! A huge moment: Alex joined us to provide employment support across two rounds of funding, from the Tudor Trust and Children in Need. Travelling around the county, honing our coaching and restorative approach, Alex was also a whizz with a spreadsheet. 

We also received our largest funding amount to date, from Nesta, for our mentoring programme. This investment enabled us to bring Simone, who amplified and embedded our values, into the team. If you split Simone open, then ‘asset-based’ would be running down the middle. We owe her a massive debt of gratitude in shaping what we have become. Thank you Nesta and Simone. 

Another year, another learning programme: this time exploring solutions to the exorbitant private rented sector with The Young Foundation. The key moment came however, when I met guest speaker, Chris West, from Sumerian Partners. To cut a long story short, they provided Your Own Place with social investment to develop our team and capacity….

Meet Jess Luce-Rackham. Worthy of singling out not just because, after me, she’s been in the business the longest, but because of her rise through the business to Chief Operating Officer. Jess is probably the most exceptional people manager I’ve ever met. Day to day this matters. For the sustainability of the business it matters too. Thank you Jess. 

This year also saw the start of a three-year partnership with North Norfolk District Council, supporting people both homeless and on the cusp of homelessness to access and sustain their tenancies. We also secured funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to embed our Advisory Board. Working with Carnegie Trust and winning their digital exclusion funding was also a highlight, and especially good timing given what happened next…

Covid arrived. This year requires a massive shout out to the team. This year marked the point where we coalesced into a real team, most similar to its current form today. Through this grim and uncertain time, the team blew me away with their fully designed and quality offer to take all our delivery online, losing none of the Your Own Place magic and enabling us to keep supporting people in multiple ways through the crisis. With lockdown starting in March, they’d nailed it by May. Thank you Jarrod, Hannah, Jess M, Simone, Tom and Jess LR. 

This year, I posted the best tweet I’ve ever written, and the Brighton-based Clock Tower Sanctuary got in touch off the back of it. They wanted to work with us to support their young people facing huge housing challenges on the south coast. This is a partnership that continues today. Thank you CTS.

A difficult Covid recovery year, where we buckled down and consolidated the changes. George Vestey of Vestey Foods kindly funded our mentoring at HMP Warren Hill, and we secured Mercer’s funding to continue our Advisory Board. Emily took up the helm and made an impact that will live long beyond this funding — lack of funding has closed the Advisory Board as of October 2023, but due to Emily’s efforts, its legacy lives on. Thank you George, Mercer’s and Emily.

During Covid we secured more Children in Need funding to work in two Norwich schools. We also embarked on an exciting joint commission from five housing associations (known as Independent East) to work with tenants of all ages. We learnt a lot through the year, and also started to streamline our offer thanks to the embedded capacity of the management team. We put in place an infrastructure to support the team, alongside releasing me to develop business capacity. This is still a work in progress. For a business of our size, we are now well supported and structured. Whilst I once felt like I was holding it up, I no longer do. Thanks Children in Need for several years of support as well as Surya for your supreme partnership building powers. Our hard work paid off: we won the PwC Building Public Trust award for our impact reporting.

And here we are, ten years on and in the Cost of Living crisis. Clearer than ever on what we do, what we do well and what difference we make. Shortlisted for multiple awards that I gratefully accept on behalf of the team. Whilst the climate in which we operate has never been harder, equally we have never been stronger in the face of it. Who can say what the next ten years hold, but in true asset-based fashion, we’ve plenty of successes to draw on!

I should thank so many others, including our current team, all our customers and partners, our directors and members of our Advisory Board. We ask people every day to put their trust in us and endeavour to earn it now and in the future. Happy tenth birthday Your Own Place. 

Welcome to our new Non-Executive Director

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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 the Board, often asking questions the company’s performance whilst offering strategic input. 

We’re delighted to welcome Hannah Harvey onto our Board. She brings her 19 years of experience across the public sector: she’s held positions in the police, social services, and housing, undertaking roles nationally and locally at housing associations.

Hannah is a Governing Board member to the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) who provide those who work in housing with the tools to enhance themselves professionally.

Hannah is passionate about providing people with a safe warm home and all the skills needed to sustain tenancies.

You can read more abut our Non-Executive Directors on our Team Page.

Skills for life, not life-skills

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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 budget (i.e. no matter what they do, it doesn’t add up). 85% of social landlords are seeing an increase in rent arrears.

For those of us working with tenants and in communities this takes its toll and I keep saying to the team that we can’t expect to have all the answers.  Should we be taking a preventative or reactive approach?  Should we be signposting or hand holding?  Should landlords be alleviating the worst of rent increases or supporting tenants into work with additional schemes such as apprenticeships?

At Your Own Place it can look like we simply run more of the same financial inclusion interventions that many landlords also provide under the banner of ‘tenancy sustainment teams’, ‘money advice’ or ‘tenancy support’.   We don’t. We do indeed run workshops and 1-2-1 support sessions covering everything from budgeting, debt and benefits, but we also include housing options, roles and responsibilities as well as managing wellbeing and isolation as vital to the bigger picture.  It’s also bespoke, face to face and fun!

Our offer, ten years in the iteration, is proudly not advice or reactive, whilst responding empathically to people in crisis.  We have learnt, working with tenants with ages ranging from 18-92, that people, especially when brought together, have a wealth of knowledge already that benefits from being heard.  We don’t deny that when in crisis people need a crisis service and a particular expert at getting a problem fixed.  

This is not what we do at Your Own Place.  At Your Own Place we stick with targeted prevention and complement the other services.  This means we work with those facing the most risk of losing their tenancy and facilitate groups for the benefit of all (to learn from each other) and ask lots of open questions.  Using a coaching, asset-based, restorative and fun (yes, fun) range of techniques, we find out what has worked for people before, as a means of THEM finding the right solution for THEM.  None of this stops us covering core debt, budgeting, savings or any other content or signposting to another service when advice is needed.  Rather than delivering life skills, for the purposes of solely tenancy sustainment, our approach sees us deliver skills for life that can be utilised across and throughout life’s challenges.

These approaches and their impact on tenant’s lives and livelihoods are what I’ll be talking about at CIH Southwest on 27th September.

Cost of Living Support Event 

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10am – 4:30pm on
Thursday 19th October 2023
1st 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 reducing hunger, energy poverty and homelessness. Your Own Place and our Advisory Board of people with lived experience, known as YOPAB, designed the event from start to finish. 

The support on offer ranged from money, debt, bills, council tax, wellbeing, gambling, health, housing, food, free services, legal matters and maths skills. 

Our team and volunteers were on hand to help people identify the best organisations to speak to.

Here is what the Advisory Board said to encourage people to attend…

Here’s Gary:

‘We’re putting this event on to help others find the right kind of support.
We’ve spoken to almost a hundred organisations to invite them to this event – it’s so clear that people need the support, so we’re so happy that so many helpful organisations have signed up!’ 

Here’s Lauren:

‘The cost of living support day means so much to me, to all of us. It’s a day where people who are struggling can come, not worry, and talk to companies about their bills and other stuff before the winter months come again.

I’ve been there when you are worried and don’t really know who to turn to. Coming to the day will be great because you can get advice.’

Why Move-On Support

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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 achievable seems clearer.

People find themselves homeless for as many reasons as there are homeless people – a unique set of circumstances led to that moment. What we do know about rough sleeping (the tip of the homelessness iceberg) is that the chances of being homeless are massively increased for those that have been in the care system, in prison, in the military, suffering with mental health needs and/or previously homeless. Poverty, a lack of employment that pays a decent wage combined with unaffordable housing are driving the current wave where over 300,000 by some estimates, are believed to be homeless.

In temporary, supported and transitional accommodation, and ultimately faced with crisis, people can become dependent on other people and services. When something as fundamental as a roof over your head is provided it is easy to see how this happens. In this context it feels natural for the drive to be towards ‘independence’ as a counter to their previous situation and a marker of ‘success’.

During our restorative, asset-based and coaching Move-On 1-2-1 support sessions, ideally following Pre-tenancy group workshops, people have the opportunity to explore the lived realities of living away from their previous supported setting and to put theory into practise. People who have previously lived in supported accommodation, prison, social care settings etc face huge challenges in moving on, navigating services, fighting stigma and prejudice and overcoming whatever barriers led them there in the first place. 25,000 of those leaving supported accommodation will have been previously homeless.

As a group both shut out of affordable housing and more likely to be homeless in the future, it is vital that this Move-On Support is delivered in a way that develops inter-dependence rather than independence. In so doing we reduce reliance on other services, build self-esteem as a means of accessing help, knowledge about the support available and the confidence to Manage Money, a Tenancy and the Cost of Living crisis – to avoid repeat homelessness.