Our Blog

Have I arrived at an answer about what a social enterprise is? Of course not! Again this week my perceptions of what a social enterprise is and who can call themselves this were shaken to the core! Ok, not quite, but I’m loving still learning and questioning what I really know about this sector.

I accepted a long time ago that being a social enterprise is fluid. This is one of the most appealing things about it. It allows us to evolve and develop. This can also be abused by those that want the social kudos.

For me social enterprise has encapsulated charities and very broadly not-for-private-profit social businesses (of which we are one alongside Belu Water or Miss Maccaroon). This is an evolving spectrum.

As part of #SocialSaturday we heard last week from both Adnams and PwC. They are both very committed to having a meaningful impact on society. They are going considerably further than traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Whilst many businesses may do amazing things in their community, be environmentally sustainable and have a social impact as a result, is that enough to call themselves a social enterprise? No!

In my view the difference lies in your core mission (let alone what you do with your profit). Is your core mission a social one? If it’s not then you’re a business with some very good social values etc etc. This isn’t worse or better. It’s different. I think for now that a distinction is valuable, or we will lose what little focus the social enterprise sector has and benefits from.

Our social mission and reason for existence is to prevent homelessness. No matter how many solar panels Shell puts on its oil rigs – it doesn’t have a social mission and I won’t be calling it a social enterprise any time soon.

Except this comes from a number of angles because the impact is so widespread. And because this week it upset me because it upset my team.

Much has been written about the shortage of mental health provision. In truth it has felt this way my entire career. I’ve always felt unable to compare like with like because when I set out on my career I worked in London.

During the pre-austerity years, the need was so great in our criminal youth justice sector that I can’t imagine a scenario where provision would ever have been enough.

After a heart-breaking episode with an incredibly vulnerable young person this week, I realised that of all my management responses, getting her professional mental health support wasn’t really even on the list. And that’s because I knew it wouldn’t really be possible. It’s scarcely there now as an intervention we can call on.

And what does that mean for all those stretched services around the periphery of this young person’s line? It means we pick it up. With our own workloads, our own and different areas of expertise, our own fragilities and anxieties that we’ve probably not done enough.

My team are good enough. They are more than good enough. But an inadequacy of services makes them feel not so. And that’s not good enough. In that scenario it’s a race to the bottom and literally everyone loses – not least the young person who had just one stab at life and for whom right now it’s going horribly wrong.

Having felt pretty overwhelmed, fraudulent, time-wasting and all the other imposter-related feelings following the SEWF last week, I decided that I had to make time to properly digest.

At the time I had nothing to say, such was the scale of ambition, breadth of enterprise represented and scope of what they were doing.

It can be easy to discard and move on. Putting things in the ‘too hard’ box can be an easy way of dismissing them with justification.

My five takeaways definitely belong in the too hard box. They also belong in the strategic planning box – which I find less and less time to delve into. But here they are in no particular order:

1. Data and impact. The importance of recording everything, but more importantly, understanding what it tells you, how this relates to impact and sharing it (see number 5 below).
2. Stick to your guns. I’m passionate about our values. In the quest to get things done, scale, recruit, manage budgets and people it can be easy to lose sight of our values. Never!
3. Trade. Become sustainable through trading. What else can we sell?
4. Innovate. Keep talking to new, interesting and global enterprises and keep learning.
5. Inform policy. Use all that data, impact and learning to inform local and national policy relating both to social enterprise and working with young people.

So that’s the list. I’ll have that done by Christmas…

Well that was a different week. In truth every day and every week is different when you run a small social enterprise.

That variety may not work for everyone, but I discovered very early on in my career that I struggle with repetition and too much structure. I can take no credit for ending up in a role where ever day is so new and so challenging and which suits my lack of concentration very well.

So a week jetting about, literally, to Dublin and Edinburgh, felt not just like an amazing opportunity, but a luxury and enterprise adventure too.

To justify it I did quite a lot of homework. I researched all the people I’d be meeting, made notes on what I wanted to get out of it and further live notes whilst there.

In Dublin at the Carnegie Accelerator Programme I definitely made progress on our Big Idea for digital skills inclusion. It has generated a number of actions and ideas to implement.

And in Edinburgh at the Social Enterprise World Forum, I was inspired and met new interesting people doing new interesting things.

As the ‘lonely at the top’ adage goes, hearing some familiar stories and challenges, but with solutions too, was also some solace. Whilst able to hold my own in workshops, I felt like a minnow in a very large oceon as entrepreneurs from across the planet told of the incredible things they were doing.

You knew there was a ‘but’ coming didn’t you? For all it was a brilliant and anomalous week, I really wanted to get back to the The Training Flat. I miss the ‘real’ work and the inspiration within our own team. I want to put the ideas into practice and I want us to be better!

We’re no longer going to be providing spot purchase places on our Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) training as of the end of the year!

We’ve propped it up and tested the model endlessly. The truth is that it’s not valued. Referrals are made and it’s left to us to get an anxious young person, with whom we have no relationship, in the room. Unsurprisingly attendance is usually about 30% lower than anticipated and we lose money.

It would work if we doubled the price. However, the time has come. What we do is of value. And if commissioners don’t value it enough to buy it on some kind of medium-term basis that allows us to plan and recruit staff, then they don’t want it.

Of course it’s a risk. A risk to the entire organisation. But the risk of continuing the current model is greater – a risk to our quality, a risk to our bank balance, not fair on young people when courses get cancelled and not fair on staff who plan them.

This will hit individual social workers the most. Those that do individually hugely value it, but have little influence to ensure it is commissioned across the board.

Over the coming months we’ll be promoting the options to commission TILS+ for your service. We’ll be launching it on 29th November.

With prisons in the news so much, and let’s face, not with happy stories, I’m left still pondering on whether our resources as an organisation are best spent there.

The common threads of poor emotion health, poor educational attainment, being in care, housing difficulties and more make this a tough nut to crack.

Can our courses really affect any change and how can we ensure a ‘through the gate’ offer when finances are so tight?

As our TILS offer evolves, it’s good timing to have these reflections and discussions with the team. Our conversation more and more often turns to how the content of what we do is secondary to the way we make people feel. This must come first and foremost and therefore we must learn to replicate it and grow it.

Our offer will include more of the fluffy stuff, that is so much more important than the time it’s given. We will develop more workshops around goal-setting, identifying resilience, personal relationships, true independence and finding strengths.

This is an exciting development for us and our learning curve.

The best thing about the residential we went on with six young people in August? Recognising my irrelevance!

Not only was it a gargantuan achievement to pull the whole thing off, but it was in totally safe hands.

Just before we were all due to leave, I learnt that my stepbrother was in the UK for one night only! I really wanted to see him so gently asked if I could settle them in on the Friday evening and then leave them to it for the night. I didn’t expect the team to bite my hand off quite so readily.

The following day I turned up and it was like being late to – well, to a residential. Everyone had forged friendships without me and I was irrelevant.

It took me a little while to go from feeling slightly put out to sanguine, proud and relaxed that my team ‘got this’.

Whatever achievements I may or may not have had, this felt like a big one.

So in July we were commissioned by People Plus within HMP Norwich to deliver our signature three-day Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) training.

It’s been a few years since I worked in the secure estate and to be honest I’d not worked with adults and not at HMP Norwich.

My rational brain told me everything I know from my career. That people in prison are just people and that I can problem-solve my way out of most situations.

With a colleague a bit more nervous than me, having never worked in a prison, my own confidence was momentarily brought into question. I told him that it was normal to be anxious and that we needed to be more prepared than ever, because once we’re in, we’re in!

One of things I’d forgotten about the secure estate is that it’s – well, secure. The endless locking and unlocking of doors and prohibitions on what we could take in, meant we had to adapt the course.

Additionally, timings are at the mercy of the prison – and their security regime. An already oddly shaped day (8.30am – 11.50am with a toilet break only and then 2pm – 4pm with no break) was further interrupted if the roll was down i.e. one prisoner was unaccounted for. This meant that most days we lost at least another half an hour. More adapting!

We trained four young men over the three days. One of the biggest challenges working with slightly older people in this setting can be a fixed mindset and an outlook that the world doesn’t work for them. And it doesn’t! That is absolutely their reality and it’s not our place to tell them that if they behave a certain way everything will be fine. This would almost certainly be a lie.

As ever, what we had was a fantastic mixed group with mixed views. So whilst there were some challenging conversations and behaviours, at no time was the course de-railed. We enjoyed talking about their barriers, what behaviours they felt were unhelpful and how they could set themselves small actionable goals that they alone identified.

We finished on a positive with everyone getting their certificate and showing genuine pride at their achievement.

But I remain torn. The course was of value, but having built those relationships of trust, I want to do more. They need more! Of which more in another blog!

The #NotWithoutMe Accelerator is an innovative development programme which provides organisations the time, resources and support from peers and experts to develop their approaches to delivering digital inclusion projects with ‘vulnerable’ young people. During the six-month process the six successful organisations will be supported to develop, critique, challenge and refine their project ideas with the input of valued sector experts. Throughout the programme each organisation will provide their own reflection and insight into the process and deep-dive into key themes that arise.

In our first #NotWithoutMe Accelerator blog, Rebecca White from Your Own Place, reflects on the launch of the programme and first workshop – ‘Defining Digital Skills’.  

Getting to know each other 

The first day of our digital skills #NotWithoutMe Accelerator was, well, accelerating.  There are six organisations involved in all (two from Norfolk!). We are all working with young people, from refugees, to gypsy and traveller projects and the library service too.  Having been chosen to be a part of the programme we were whisked up to Manchester by the Carnegie UK Trust to start our journey of learning, peer support and idea-pitching. By the end of the year we will have a fully formed idea to improve digital skills/access for young people and will pitch for £40k.

For Carnegie this is a departure in how they work.  And for me, a particularly welcome one. I vowed (a vow I quickly broke) not to apply for lots of short-term funding.  Whilst cash is always welcome, I increasingly value learning, skills development and the support required to keep Your Own Place relevant, innovative and unique.  With this in mind, the six ‘acceleratees’ will come together six times between now and Christmas in each other’s locations and get expert insights as well as peer support to develop our idea.

We kicked off with a ‘welcome dinner with a purpose’ and got to know more about each other, the programme and the legacy of Andrew Carnegie himself.  They feel like big shoes to fill as a man responsible for extraordinary vision and social impact. It felt like a successful way of coming together not just to celebrate, but share the incredible passion and empathy in the room for working with young people.  Even the group size was just right, enabling everyone to have a voice and contribute.

What are digital literacies?
We spent the following day in Manchester hosted by Reason Digital, a social enterprise specialising in digital projects that do social good, moving between post-it notes, the roof terrace and beanbags! Guided by the expert Dr Doug Belshaw, we explored what digital literacy really means for the young people we work with and how to create a framework against which to develop our idea and measure its success.  Not an easy ask for anyone, particularly when the perception is that all young people are digitally literate. Of course, the whole programme is about dispelling the myth that young people are ‘digital natives’ when we know from research, including work by  the Carnegie UK Trust, that young people are often digitally excluded and disadvantaged by their digital skills and access.

What we learned
So, whilst this day in Manchester was very much the end of the beginning, it crystallised one aspect of our ‘Big Idea’.  That we’re not going to create anything new. There will be no new app, website or game. We want to keep pace with the digital revolution and what it means for the young people we work with. This means strategically integrating digital skills into all aspects of our delivery.  We’ll be seeking ways of road-testing and cataloguing the tools that young people want to use, are safe to use and support them in moving to independence. Young people will tell other young people what works best for shopping around for their utilities or which app is great for budgeting.  There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, rather find ways of making it work for everyone.

Our next workshop in August will focus on Measurement and Evaluation. To keep up to date with the developments of the #NotWithoutMe Accelerator follow #NotWithoutMe on Twitter and you can also access our Padlet to see any resources recommended through the programme.

People are so kind and interested in how a languages graduate ended doing what I’m doing.

No amount of reflection can really pin it down for me. I generally make a flippant remark about making it up as I go along and quickly change the subject.

I don’t know how I got here any more than I know what comes next. But when people ask for top tips or advice on getting started, my answer has certainly crystallised. Just say ‘yes’.

Say yes to everything. For as long as you can juggle multiple projects, ideas and be remotely sustainable, just do it.

Saying yes has lead me to meet so many people. At the time many felt random and not ‘on mission’. However, I’ve learnt that there is no such thing.

By being someone who is responsive, positive, solution-focussed and says yes, you get offered new opportunities, introductions and keep learning.

I shall keep saying yes for as long as I possibly can.

In the case of mentoring, this is definitely the case.

Our commitment to someone who is generous and empathic enough to volunteer mentor, is to make it a great experience if we possibly can.

This means not just ensuring that mentors are trained, vetted and supported properly, but that we wait for the right match too.

Volunteers often sign up to new opportunities in a pique of enthusiasm and this is a wave we want to ride. However, it wouldn’t be fair on our young people to cut corners or have anyone not feel 100% safe and supported.

This means there can be some waiting around for paperwork etc and we recognise that some volunteers will want a quicker fix. For others, the empathy we ask you to have for the young people we work with goes the same for the proper process. This was always designed to be the Rolls Royce of mentoring projects.

Taking our time will be worth it in be end!

I like this picture (couldn’t find one with women though, sorry!).

The deeper into understanding mentoring I get, the more I realise how fluid and evolving it is. Aside from communicating this to our customers, this has caused me to pause and reflect on mentors in my life too.

Some have been leaders, people who have inspired my, albeit briefly.

Others have had a sage piece of advice at a particularly pertinent moment.

One even gave me a kick up the backside when I probably deserved it.

In many ways they have all been a mentor – someone who has taken the time and trouble to help me come to my own conclusions and bring about change.

Am I getting this right or do I just need a holiday?

I’m asking about the requests of me that verge on the consultancy. It’s probably flattering if I had the time to think about it, but in the last week I’ve been asked to mentor someone (for free), to write a funding bid (for free) and to advise someone on setting up a social enterprise (for free).

Now I’m grateful for all the help I get and especially in the early days. But I’ve scarcely time to run my own social enterprise, let alone anyone else’s.

Am I being grumpy or just really shattered and in need of a break so I can see the wood for the trees?

There, I used my least favourite ‘j’ word!

That said, it is a journey and one I’ve just started enjoying. The principle recognition is not so much about marketing, but about how uncomfortable I feel when I’m feeling consciously incompetent.

And that’s how I felt about marketing. It was not even a conversation I wanted to have for fear of not knowing the jargon or revealing myself as a total idiot.

And now I’m starting to really enjoy not just my development, but marketing as an academic exercise and mostly, becoming (slowly) consciously competent.

So whilst the marketing knowledge is valuable and vital, most valuable is knowing that it is the fear of my own idiocy that is most uncomfortable. Being ok with that and knowing how to tackle it has huge application.

And because we work with young people, let’s not forget what a barrier to learning and engaging that exact same feeling is for them too!

As you know, what social enterprise is and isn’t is something I conjure with daily.  I’ve been asked about three times in the last week.

One of the skills I most admire is being succinct.  So I was wondering how to explain what a social enterprise is in a way that is a bit simpler.

Sometimes giving an example is best. It then struck me that the approaches the voluntary/third sector take in communication with a range of partners might be one of the things that distinguishes social enterprise from others in the voluntary sector.

There are lots of posts from charities asking for free help, services and expertise.  As a social enterprise, my thoughts turn to how we can help you.

If we’re to generate sustainable and (not for private) profit and income, we need to provide goods or services that people don’t just want to buy, but that compete with the best in the private/commercial sector.

I don’t want to buy second-rate cake from a cafe that is a social enterprise, just because they have a social mission.  I want to buy that cake because it’s the best cake on the market.  I don’t buy the Big Issue because homeless people sell it – I buy it because it’s a darn good read.  The fact that the money goes to the homeless is a bonus.

So this is the case with our mentoring training and my thinking.  We’re not asking people to do us a favour.  We’re selling mentoring training because we’re darn good at training mentors!

it’s definitely the way that we do it.

I’ve always said that it’s social inequality that drives me and not youth homelessness per se. However awful this is for individuals and a community, it is but one awful manifestation of inequality.

And so I observe an evolution in Your Own Place’s position in the market. What we do remains utterly committed to supporting those most at risk of youth homelessness. But because young people don’t fit into funder’s neat outcome labels, this is just one outcome that impacts on many others that we can also achieve through what we do.

Increasingly it is dawning on me that it’s not just about budgeting, savings, tenancies and home options. These outcomes are a given.

No, the real success is in how we deliver the intervention, how we make young people feel and therefore how they want to work with us. Once engaged, we could in truth be delivering any intervention with any outcomes. And what an opportunity that is for anyone wanting to work with young people!

The engagement comes first and this is our strength and unique selling point.

We have 99% retention on our TILS courses and are proud of this.

Now we want to understand, consolidate and replicate it to the best possible end – which may or may not be just preventing homelessness.

As a small enterprise that has worked hard on its public profile, we get lots of lovely attention. People are so positive about what we do and if I could I’d have a coffee with absolutely everyone who takes any interest at all. That would be a lot of coffee!

But I can’t. I’m busy painting the toilet floor, updating GDPR policies and ensuring we all get paid.

To be honest, some people just want some free consultancy, others want me to help with their PhD. I get about one request a week to be a part of some social enterprise research. All this is incredible when I reflect on where I was four years ago. And it’s often interesting too. So how do I say no to the right ones?

I truly believe in the power of saying ‘yes’ to opportunities. But if I met everyone I’d be bankrupt, my staff team would leave and we’d have nothing that anyone would want to talk to us about!

So please don’t think me rude, but I might just have to say ‘no’ from time to time. And if it’s a really vague ‘shall we meet for a coffee?’, I’ll be asking ‘why’ too!

Anyone who works with me knows that I’m mildly obsessed with the asset-based approach. That’s because it works and because I see the impact it has in our work with young people.

My team are absolutely brilliant at revealing a young person’s asset-base as a starting point for any intervention. It means we get to see for real how incredible our young people are. This isn’t putting a positive spin on things. They really are.

But here’s the rub. The wider conversation is not in the same vein. Funders require us to tell them just terribly deprived and vulnerable the young people we work with are.

Tender processes require us to quote just how marginalised they and their communities are.

And partners, volunteers and local businesses want us to tell stories that reveal positive change so that we all feel great about the difference we’ve made.

Case-studies are most powerful when authentic, but this isn’t Love Actually or a rags to riches tale.

To treat young people as our equals means telling the truth. The truth is that they are strong, capable, human and with their whole lives ahead of them. We are all mere catalysts.

It’s not such a great narrative, but patronising them with stories of them and us is not asset-based or equal.

So I’ve ended up doing exactly what I set out not to do. Spending my Sunday evenings writing funding bids or funder reports.

It was always my aim for Your Own Place to be 75% traded. We’re currently around 20%. The truth is when you’re starting up that getting funding is relatively easy, especially with my background. Taking something new to market when you don’t consider yourself a salesperson, is not.

Having said that, I’m proud of this year’s profit and true to our constitution, it is going back into our mission to prevent youth homelessness. We’re self-financing the Your Own Place Advisory Board (YOPAB) as well as supporting individual young people.

Moving away from funding is going to be hard, but I believe that to be sustainable it is vital. And in a world of receding horizons, it’ll feel like a significant achievement.

I’d love to know if other small, service providing businesses and enterprises experience this too.

I am simply staggered by the number of people that call or email to find out the basics of our offer. 99% of the questions I am asked are to be found one click away from our homepage on our website.

As we grow this is becoming quite a resource issue as we take increasing numbers of enquiries.

What are we doing wrong? Is it the website? Is it our marketing (monthly e-newsletter, loads of social media and direct marketing etc) or is it something else?

For background, these enquiries are coming largely from social workers and providers in the third sector and I accept that many of our customers are not on Twitter and Facebook etc.

I’d love your thoughts.

We’ve been running for four years now. And whilst our traded income has increased year on year, it’s still not where I want it to be.

Partly because of the financial constraints many of our customers find themselves in and partly a failure on my part, we’re just not getting the block commissions we need to be truly sustainable.

This approach works for no-one. For our customers they pay an over-the-odds spot purchase price, we struggle to recruit to full-time posts and therefore pay high sub-contracting prices and worst of all, we have to change our delivery plans which affects the service young people get.

It’s a total lose lose and yet (as an ex-commissioner), getting commissioners to plan and commission long-term is almost impossible.

I’ll let you know when I achieve it (you’ll hear me singing!).

Sticking at it pays off it seems. I’ve always been certain that creating Your Own Place wasn’t a flash in the pan and I’m cautiously hopeful that we will continue.

Someone said to me the other day that business must be good as there’s so much homelessness. I’m pleased to say that we don’t make more money when there’s lots of homelessness and arguably the same lack of investment that has resulted in that homelessness is not investing in us either. We want to prevent it ever happening. This is a better investment for the tax payer, the community as well the person involved.

But I didn’t mean to get political. The point I want to make today is the power of sticking with it. Not only can you test, test and test your model again, but people start to have heard of you banging on about it.

I totally understand why some businesses fail. There are times when I earned next to nothing and quite possibly will be again. I’ve been outside my comfort zone from the start.

But today is a positive note. Customers of all kinds are contacting us for our services. People who we’ve never met, never directly marketed and didn’t know would be interested.

It feels like a critical mass and if you can weather years of pushing and making next to nothing, it seems a tipping point must come.

Your Own Place was incorporated as a Community Interest Company in 2013.

Are we still a start-up? Not a hugely important question you might think, but one that I ponder most weeks.

All sorts of support is available for start-ups and their founders. Much of this has now drifted away.

Exciting seed funding for exciting new ideas exists for start-ups. We’re no longer shiny and new. Should we keep innovating just for the sake of it?

Start-ups are trendy and notable. How do we keep note-worthy for all the right reasons?

If we’re no longer a start-up are we meant to be totally self-sufficient by now?

And finally, most significantly for me personally, do I have the skills to take a start-up to a scale-up? Arguably I didn’t have the skills for a start-up, so I guess we’ll have to see!

It’s all got a bit more complicated hasn’t it? When I normally think of the spectrum – traditional charities involved in CSR at one end and FTSE 100s at the other, I think of values-based charities like Oxfam (!) and perhaps ruthless giants like the banks.

Of course in the modern era, neither is quite what we imagined them to be.

Reflecting on sustainable models of income for our sector, in a world where capitalism is being questioned daily, I can’t help but be drawn to added social value.

Large corporates can and increasingly should, be looking at their supply chains and who they do business with.

New recruits of all ages (not just millennials!), want their employer to do more than tick a socially responsible box.

These slides describing how PwC overhauled their supply chain to bring in social enterprise make it seem like a no-brainer!

If your business is buying goods and services anyway, why not buy them from an enterprise that does the social good for you?

It’s probably a difficult decision.  Is it on the whim of the boss, historic ties or issues that matter locally?

Perhaps it’s more strategic than that.  Or a cause that matches the values and aspirations of the business as well as makes the business look good?

It is after all vital that it makes the business look good.

They say that your supply chain is essential to your business and you take up references for your staff.

Why would it be any different for those organisations that your business supports as a good cause?

Because business says it is!

Volunteering is good for business, good for equality and the community and likely good for your staff too.

Many businesses genuinely want to do ‘the right thing’. Equally, many want to benefit their business first and foremost.

Which is right? I ponder this as people and businesses increasingly approach us. I desperately want them to understand how important their contribution is. But the truth is that not everybody cares as much as I do.

And should that matter? Should I take the contribution anyway? Does the end already justify the means.

This is a verbatim account from Sally, a previous mentor with Your Own Place.

I did my mentoring training early in 2015 and was matched with a mentee in the June. I was surprisingly very nervous. Would this young person like me? Would she want to continue with the scheme or run a mile from this strange middle aged woman?!

Turns out I was really blessed. My mentee was super friendly, willing to take opportunities and chatty. It made the experience both pleasurable and positive. I am quite sure not every relationship would be like this but I quickly realised that I could in some small way help this young person.

From the little practical things – explaining why some plugs were not working in her flat. (a light had blown, tripped the circuit, and simply needed flicking back on) Simple IF you have someone to ask. My mentee had not had lights in the main living area for three days. I drove home feeling like I’d really helped and made a simple but practical difference.

It is obvious that my role wasn’t to tackle everything that was going on in this persons life but a theme developed throughout the year that I found us talking about a lot. It mainly came down to being better at time keeping and dealing with things quickly before they created other issues that were bigger.

In response to telling me she needed to visit the Job Centre due to missing a previous appointment, and on a separate occasion, looking for a work experience placement, I would look at my watch and just say ‘Well lets go and sort that now, I’ll come with you’.

Sometimes the thought of doing something, especially when it feels like it is to do with authority, seems very daunting to a young person. My mentee became anxious at the thought of going in, yet when we went together she was fabulous at communicating and getting the information she needed. I was just in the background leaving her to it. She needed a gentle push.

I would like to think my mentee looks back now and knows that by facing something quickly, however seemingly difficult it is at the time, dealing with it there and then reduces stress and helps her to move forward, and life run smoother.

I think one of the biggest achievements for both of us, (well from my perspective), was persuading my mentee to make a phone call having missed an important work opportunity.

She had been volunteering at this place for some time and was being given a chance of some paid work. It was a chance to prove herself. However she had not turned up late, but had not turned up at all.

There was a need to call the employer and apologise, own the mistake, and hopefully continue with the opportunity. If that call wasn’t made there was a high chance she wouldn’t return.

It would have been a very difficult call for anyone to make. We have all been in situations like it and I really felt her panic. Of course it took some persuading and I think had I left her to make the call later it would not have happened.

I helped her write down the opening sentences. She finally made the call while I was with her. 10 minutes and she had resolved the problem herself. Her employee was very understanding. My mentee felt immediately relieved and went back to work the following day.

The mentoring programme is only 12 months. I didn’t really understand this initially but having got to 12 months I felt it was time to wrap it up.

There is only so much talking about the importance of being on time, how to put in place strategies to make sure that happens, how to deal with things and not them off etc. We didn’t crack it during the 12 months and I am a bit disappointed about that, but I hope when the time is right my mentee will hear my voice ‘lets just get that done now’ and ‘what is the worse thing that can happen?’

It has been very rewarding for me. I have learnt things about myself during the process and understand better how difficult life can be for some people.

We don’t all start off from the same place, not everyone has family support, and although the support is there for those who need it, the process of getting that support is often complicated and very daunting.

The pleasure and privilege was all mine and I hope if the scheme keeps running I will be found another match soon.

What makes mentoring effective?

I’ve had great mentors, average mentors and … mentors.

What they had in common is that they were unique!

What they also had in common was a drive and passion to be a mentor, to help someone else, to listen (even when they didn’t do it very well) and to find solutions (especially when they didn’t do it very well).

So having had a few, these would be my top tips:

1. Listen truly without prejudice or expectation.

2. Explain what you have heard and that this is only your interpretation.

3. Use open questions with no other motivation than to elicit better understanding and explore the issue in more detail.

4. Don’t expect to solve everything.

5. Check in and enjoy your successes.

Written by Rebecca, CEO of Your Own Place CIC

It’s hard and we’ve struggled. I’ve generally put our challenges down to the much aired ‘skills gap’ in Norfolk as well as our rather niche area of business.

Most valuable to reflect on is that the first two members of our team are not from a youth work background or any related field. And they’re awesome!

So, in fact, this time around I’m encouraging people to apply who are not trainers or youth workers of any kind! Youth workers are marvellous for youth work, but what we’re doing is something rather different and innovative.

So once again we find ourselves recruiting for values, energy, a shared mission and being excited to be part of our team.

Now to get people to show that enthusiasm when they apply!

Come on Norfolk, prove me wrong!

My colleague Jarrod moved house a few weeks ago. Typically he had loads on at work and was moving in with a friend.

Just as with my own move three months ago, Jarrod found it pretty stressful. Fitting the packing around his working schedule left him exhausted.

He then had to take time off to go and buy expensive appliances as well as to pick up the keys, sort out utilities, sign paperwork etc etc.

And finally, he had a bit of a nightmare with a utility company that turned out not to be their supplier. Two weeks on and things are not resolved yet, and he still doesn’t have a vacuum cleaner!

So, yet again both Jarrod and I found ourselves reflecting on this experience in light of what we do here at Your Own Place.

With support, family. funds and an understanding employer (?) it was still a pretty stressful experience.

For many of our young people they are doing all of this aged 18. They may have very little family support or knowledge of how things work, as well as high levels of anxiety and no history of house moves to build on.

In short, it can absolutely break them. Mentors, role-models, some financial support, someone asking how it’s going can all make a massive difference at this critical time.

It should be exciting and full of fresh beginnings.

Hooking up with a local social enterprise is good for the individual, good for your business and good for the local community. It helps us to achieve our mission of preventing youth homelessness.

But why should you care?

• You want a business that is successful too.
• You want to be fulfilled.
• You might want to do the right thing.
• You want to recruit the best staff, retain staff that are motivated and build your brand.

Hooking up with us can help you to achieve all this.

And whether you want to give back to the local community because you think you ought or because people sleeping in shop doorways is actually keeping your awake at night is up to you.

Social action through people power is all we have. There’s just you and me, no-one’s going to do it for us.

So whatever your motivation, you’ll be doing something life changing for someone else by inviting us to train your staff Volunteer Tenancy Mentors

I signed up as a volunteer mentor for Your Own Place in 2015 because I wanted a new challenge and to expand my skills in working with people. I was nervous about volunteering with young people as my experience has always been in working with older people but I needn’t have worried as it has been a really good experience.

My Your Own Place experience began with a two-day training with a friendly bunch of new volunteers of all different ages and backgrounds. It was a very interactive few days. We covered budgeting (more interesting than you’d think!), shared experiences, and tried to pin down exactly what the mentor role was and importantly what it is not.

The work I do as a volunteer mentor has been great. I have been lucky enough to meet and work with two great mentees.

Although there have been difficulties and challenges, Your Own Place has always been on hand to talk me through them. Seeing the people I have been matched with make positive life decisions and grow in confidence has been the best bit.

Being alongside when a mentee takes control of their life and starts making their own important phone calls, making positive life decisions, showing their ability to manage their finances independently and getting their new home looking like a home makes it more than worthwhile.

Through it I have learnt a lot about the complexities of the benefit system – argh!

But on a serious note I have begun to be able to structure meetings with mentees with a clearer sense of what they want to achieve and what is needed.

It’s a continual learning process but at the end of the day it is about getting to know someone, and matching them with appropriate support.

My experience shows that mentee and mentor both benefit and learn from taking part.

I trained to be a mentor in March 2015. I missed working with people and was looking for my first voluntary role when came across the opportunity at Your Own Place. The two-day training gave a great overview of what we were to expect during the mentoring process. We all left feeling excited for what was to come.

I was matched with my first young person within a month. This young person was living in a Bed & Breakfast – temporary accommodation, having been homeless. They were in a period of massive change in their life. We tried to engage with them but they had too much on and too many disruptions.

They simply were not ready. I was a little disappointed at first, questioning whether it was something I had done or I could have done more of. I quickly learned not to take it personally, timing is very important when building a good mentor relationship.

I have gone on to have two successful mentoring relationships, both totally unique experiences. The first was with a young person living independently, struggling with their mental health and in particular the isolation they were feeling. We would often just meet for a coffee and a chat.

They needed someone to talk to, and I was there – not to advise, but to listen. We also had a few practical sessions around things like budgeting and debt and I would be there to encourage them to tackle things head on and not hide away. This relationship ended when the young person moved away.

The second mentoring relationship was completely different.  The young person was a single parent and needed support around the practicalities of moving into their first home.

Where would they get furniture from? How would they move their belongings? How could they afford all of these things? We did a lot of work around budgeting, sourcing affordable items and saving for them. As well as accessing support and applying for funding.

This relationship ended over a cup of tea in their new place, when they said “I think I’m okay now, I think you’ve done your job”.

It’s fantastic having a positive impact on young people, especially at a daunting and confusing period of transition. I’ve enjoyed my time as a mentor, it has increased my confidence and adaptability. I would definitely recommend it to others!

I learnt this half way through our last volunteering project.

Volunteers voluntarily giving up their time is one of their biggest USPs.

It’s not that they might have had similar life experiences or even an apparently relevant skill set from their working life.

The message that they’re not getting paid is a powerful one.

It can be a lightbulb moment for a young person who has had lots of professionals in their life

– that someone doesn’t need to be paid to care!

Our mission has always been to prevent youth homelessness.  What’s commonly misunderstood, is that we don’t (tend) to work with existing street homeless people.  Instead, we work with those that evidence tells us are most likely to become homeless (which includes the currently homeless).

This means we work with young people who have grown up in care, had a period of homelessness already, been in the criminal justice system and/or are on very low incomes.  This is where we can have most impact.

So whilst our mission it to prevent youth homelessness, we’re not seeking for example to change the care system.  For as long as Children’s Social Services inadequately prepares young people for adult life, there will be work for us to do.  Our impact will be on the services further down the chain than us – such as local authority homelessness services, supported accommodation, health services and welfare departments.

These are services that impact on all of us either from taxes we pay, communities we live in or perhaps even a loved one or personal experience.

Having just come through Christmas and these images of rough sleeping that I loath, I pause to think of the massive and in many ways, welcome, focus that Christmas brings to homelessness.

There are so many amazing people doing things that genuinely ameliorate the plight of people who are homeless or otherwise struggling.  We see soup kitchens spring into action, increases in donations to food banks and incredible fundraising for sleeping bags and clothes.  In Brussels there was even the invention of cardboard tents for rough sleepers.

With all this good will, fundraising leverage and time and effort, I can’t help but think we could make a more lasting impact than the annual ‘feel-good’ sticking plaster.

We passed our fourth birthday last month.

We got over the CIC bump (many fail around 33 months) and have cruised into our fifth year.

We’re growing at a sustainable rate, but true to my naturally impatient self, I want more and faster.

Start-ups were something I hadn’t heard of five years ago and now they’re not just everywhere, but there’s almost something desirable about being one.

I’m not sure we got a huge amount as a start-up, other than being shiny and new.

Well, we’re no longer shiny and new and maybe no longer a start-up. On balance I’d rather be on a slightly more secure footing and looking to the next five years.

Maybe you’d like to be a part of it too?  If so, take a look at this Business Development Consultant role:

Our Team

Because our values are central to everything we do.  It can be tough as a growing enterprise to keep hold of your values.

I still know why Your Own Place was created and what it set out to achieve.  We’re still achieving it – the route has detoured however. It’s detoured because amazing opportunities arise as well as amazing people come along.

Do the ends always justify the means?  If an investor came along tomorrow offering capacity and resource, it would be easy to go with it because it would enable us to reach more young people and achieve our mission of preventing youth homelessness.

In truth I’ve seen organisations sell out as well as grow too fast.

So we always look for people that share our values, because of the contribution they may to our mission.

Get in touch if our latest opportunity is of interest; rebecca@yourownplace.org.uk

It seems that every day there is a ‘… day’ to mark either incredible people (teachers, health professionals, space explorers etc) or a specifically dysfunctional aspect of modern (and not so modern) life.

Do they make any difference?  Don’t misunderstand me.  Homelessness matters.  And so does mental health, whose ‘day’ also happens to fall on 10th October.  To us at Your Own Place, homelessness is our bread and butter.  We live and breathe its spectre every day.

Except that we sit firmly in the prevention agenda.  Our aim, my aim, is that the young people we all support in our various ways should never have to be homeless.  It must never be a right of passage for a care-leaver to have their possessions bundled up in a plastic bin liner just before their 18th birthday because their isn’t a coherent plan for what happens when the state exits.

People of all ages get in a muddle with their bills and their rent.  It’s a normal part of the ebb and flow of life.  I believe there should be a genuine, appropriate and accessible safety net that means it never gets so bad that a person is homeless.

And of course the young people we work with rarely sleep rough – the most visible form of homelessness.  This is one of the many reasons we don’t use that negative, stereotyping and damaging imagery.  I have of course known young people to live rough in tents, caravans, in woods and more commonly between friends’ sofas and squats.  Thankfully there is a marginally more effective safety net if you are young.  So, that’s why we work with young people.  Because their resilience, astonishing determination and belief in a future makes our job easy.

Together we can prevent homelessness.  So, if one day helps us all to focus just for a minute, to share how amazing young people are at avoiding homelessness through their strengths and that of their community, then it’s a day well-spent.

I’ve can’t quite believe I’ve been working with young people for over 20 years! I know, I don’t look old enough!

On the one hand I’ve learnt a lot and on the other, I know nothing.  My confidence in working with them has grown immeasurably.  Particularly in the last four years.  Because of course they’re just human beings like you and me.

I’ve worked as a secondary school teacher, a homelessness support worker, a prison resettlement worker, guns, gangs and knife crime commissioner, a school governor, a leaving care commissioner and a youth worker.  So it’s fair to say I’ve had a range of experiences.

Twenty years feels like a long enough time-frame to be able to look back and see trends, commonalities and shifts.

One of those is that young people have never seemed worse off financially.  I’m always conscious that I’m not comparing like with like and that this is in no way linear.  But I started my career in London for heaven sake.  And with careful budgeting young people could just about make ends meet.  Today even in Norfolk this is no longer the case.

It took me a while to understand the difference in my work with young people in London and young people here in Norfolk.  For me both present a specific challenge.  In London it was violence and risk.  This was the overriding aspect to my work and like those working in the secure estate, the backdrop against which everything else was delivered.

I’m pleased that when I arrived in Norfolk I had some excellent practice to fall back on and am often surprised at the cursory approach many organisations in Norfolk have to managing risk.  And this against a clearly escalating and very worrying knife crime problem in our county.

The biggest difference I see between the loud and often violent young people I worked with in London and those in Norfolk is what looks like apathy.  They’re not apathetic and it’s not to be confused with a lack of aspiration.  It’s poor emotional health and probably partly a consequence of having some of the lowest social mobility in the country.

It’s an absence of seeing people who are like you achieve their dreams.  And it breaks my heart.  Because it’s based on the luck of where you were born.

So this is what gets me up in the morning – removing the barriers that I was mostly lucky enough not to have.

What gets you up in the morning?

No, of course I haven’t, but thank you for reading!  In fact on the curve of learning, I’m not even off the bottom of the curve yet.  What I am, is starting to think about it  – a lot.  This is partly because I’m moving closer to work (much closer) and am worried that I will miss the clear divide 12 miles puts between my office and my home.

I’m also planning what my workspace at home will look like in my new house and how not to resent working in my home.  Let’s face it, we all do it.  Now that emails need responses as quick as texts and can be completed from our gardens, we’re all letting work encroach on our home lives.

To most outsiders my output levels are pretty high.  I get through a lot.  Partly because I have to, but mostly because that’s innately who I am.  Of course I make a rod for my own back.  As things get even busier, my current CEO role as ‘jack of all trades’ is not going to disappear overnight.

Through some careful naval gazing, I’ve realised one thing I do to prevent myself from resenting working from home and it’s happened automatically.  I save the ‘fun’ work-related activities to the weekend (this is being written on a Sunday afternoon).  That way I can’t resent it.  The pension stuff I’ve got to sort out can be done on Tuesday afternoon at the office – much less fun.

What’s your trick for not resenting it?

Am I just putting the pension stuff off?

I sometimes get a bit befuddled by these new terms and I assume that I’m just a bit slow on the uptake.  And then the penny drops.  That’s how my brain works – I mull things for a while and then I suddenly get it.  It was the same I remember when learning German.  I just couldn’t get by head around the ‘accusative’ case and what ‘direct object’ meant.  It all seemed a bit abstract.  And then one morning I literally woke up and suddenly got it.

And so it’s been with ‘Digital Social Action’.  Not only did I suddenly get it, but I also saw a way of doing something by bringing together one of my long-held dreams along with tackling Norfolk’s social mobility doldrums.

So, here it is – ‘Your Own Network.  It’s a great partnership.  Thanks to funding from Santander, support from Norfolk Pro Help and Naked Marketing and the web build from SoftApps, we’re now creating a website to bring young people together with all sorts of help from you!  That’s their local community, be it individuals, businesses or providers of services.

It will be managed safely to allow young people to share a profile that includes their dreams and aspirations.  And you can then help them to be fulfilled.  You may be able to offer words of encouragement, point them towards a job advert you saw, buy them something for their new flat or even get involved as a Volunteer Tenancy Mentor and provide some non-virtual support.

That folks, is digital social action.  You will be the ‘pointy elbows’ that many young people lack!

And we’re launching it very soon, so get in touch if you’d like to be part of something pretty groundbreaking.

rebecca@yourownplace.org.uk

What is your business offering that makes its recruitment package stand out?  What do keen young things look for in an employer?  This is something that has been preoccupying me of late.  Partly because I find recruitment in Norfolk difficult and partly because we want to start working with businesses to help them be awesome employers.

It’s a while since I was a young thing (cue violins) and almost as long since I went to a traditional job interview.

Generally my job search was as sophisticated as the following.

• How much will it pay?
• How many days holiday will I get?
• Where is it based?
• Do I have the skills and if not can I blag it?

I’m thinking things have changed.  Has it become more competitive with more graduates than ever?  And does this mean that businesses as well as prospective candidates are looking for different things now?

Much is made of the ‘millennial’ debate (don’t personally like the word).  Millennials are supposed to be more discerning in seeking ethical, environmental employers as well as a better work–life balance.

So, as employers, what’s your experience of hiring?

And as applicants, what are you looking for (and do tell me your age if you dare!).

Therein lies the reason I’m so committed to social enterprise.  I can’t help but feel in this age of squeezed local authority belts, that old-fashioned funding is just plain wrong.  A couple of years ago, when we were in our infancy (and not choosy), we received £11k through a European funding route.  Don’t get me wrong, we did some good work.  But there were two things that felt totally misguided in the way we were funded.  The first are the strictures put round the funding bid.

Between the submission of a funding bid and starting the project, the world has moved on in a small organisation.  You might have said you’ll spend £5k on staffing, but in fact it’ll need to be more like £6.5k (or even £4k!) due to unforeseen development.  It’s ok thought isn’t it, because you can move 1.5k over from another part of the funding bid?  Except, you often can’t  So you’re forced to fudge it.  This incentivises ‘creative accounting’ and often a project that is not as cost-effective as tax-payers deserve.  And they’re all doing it!

There was a second seemingly farcical aspect too.  We were told we had to spend at least £1k on capital assets.  We didn’t need any, but to get the £11k we had to.  How is that meeting local operational and strategic needs?  We got a lovely printer and projector and some other goodies that have turned out to be useful.  However, I remember a time working for a large national charity, where I came across our loft space one day and found literally 1000s of hoodies and water bottles – a consequence of the same contrived wasteful spending that the voluntary sector is often forced to undertake.

So, that’s why we want to be a sustainable social enterprise.  That way things cost what they cost and we invest when our mission requires us to invest with our modest profit.  What do you think?  Do things need to change?

If the answer is yes, then Your Own Place can help.  How? We’re going to be training ten of Norwich City Council’s staff in October to become Volunteer Tenancy Mentors.  You can find out why they think it’s a great idea here.

With the average cost of an eviction hovering around £8000 (not including related costs of temporary accommodation, benefits etc) and youth being the biggest determinant of failed tenancies, then what better way to get involved and prevent the problem and the spiralling cost?

We can offer housing associations and housing authorities an amazing staff development opportunity that not only sees huge rewards in staff skills, but also in the new young tenants they go on to support.  And we can offer 50% off if you buy more than ten spaces!

We provide two-day Volunteer Tenancy Mentoring training to groups of ten staff.  We’ll cover Child and Vulnerable Adult Protection, how to work restoratively and take an asset-based approach as well as all the dos and dont’s of being a Volunteer Tenancy Mentor.  You’ll also get some great money skills ideas and how to approach them with young people. This is an amazing opportunity to provide your staff with new skills ranging from social skills, leadership and time management skills, empathy and learning about working restoratively and effectively with young tenants.

Once trained they will go on to meet a mentee just once a week or fortnight and support this young person in transition in their first tenancy.  No-one should underestimate just what they have to offer a young person starting our in life.

Through the development of their own skills a new tenant will benefit too.  And in turn social landlords will see fewer failed tenancies, evictions and spiralling costs.

This is what we call a win-win-win!

So get in touch to book your training dates and start preventing youth homelessness with us now!

Like many of the young people we work with, Tiff came through one door to Your Own Place CIC and then accessed another service whilst she was here. She was struggling. On the face of it she was quite settled in supported accommodation and pretty mature.

After spending some time with her Volunteer Tenancy Mentor we learned just how complex her previous life had been and how desperate she was to start a new life.

I recall first meeting her. She wouldn’t make eye contact and no matter my most expert open questioning (!), I couldn’t elicit more than one syllable. It was ok because she started to open up to her Volunteer Tenancy Mentor. Most importantly they built trust which built trust in our organisation too.

In time the Volunteer Tenancy Mentoring came to a successful close. In truth the mentor worried about a dependence, but Tiff showed she was made of stronger stuff. Tiff currently receives support from Alex. Through step by step Employment Support Tiff had made extraordinary progress.

She attended our Joy of Food course and Alex and I both remember the moment she made full eye contact, laughed with her peers and left with a spring in her step. We were delighted to reward her progress with a generously donated Next voucher for some interview clothes.

Tiff is now in part time bar work. She still seeks lots of reassurance and needs ongoing help navigating the impact of work on her benefits – which poses a really threat to work sustainability for her.

But she also has a dream beyond bar work. She’s playing the long game as we all do/did in our first job. She aims to get as much out of this employment as she can and build her CV. The difficulty is that everything to do with her current and future employment is online. She has no computer and no Wifi. This puts her job at risk and her chances of finding a better one. Her rotas, training, payslips, message boards – are all online. And she isn’t.

Never one to give up, having devised a savings plan with Alex, she has incredibly managed already to save some money already. So I’m asking the LinkedIn community if anyone is able to help her out with the remaining amount needed to buy a laptop? We’re looking for around £150.

We thought of asking for a laptop, but we’d rather teach the life skill of saving than providing a hand out. Your Own Place will match any contribution made and Tiff will continue her journey to confidence and independence.

If you don’t measure it, then how do you know if it makes a difference?  Of course, your bottom line isn’t the only reason for getting involved in Corporate Social Responsibility, but let’s not pretend that in this era of social media, you don’t want some visibility.  We all do. I do! But we want more too.  With our new offer to businesses, my organisation wants to work with yours to understand the impact that ‘buying social’ has.  That’s because it’s not traditional Corporate Social Responsibility and just ticking a box.  I feel passionately that by investing in your business and staff (something you do anyway I’m sure) that we can invest in young people and communities at the same time.

Doing business with social enterprises is increasing – something we look forward to discussing on Social Saturday this year.  Social Saturday is an annual event led by Social Enterprise UK.  In October every year we celebrate the £26bn that is spent across the social economy.  From businesses buying their fancy branded macaroons from Miss Macaroon to buying water from Belu and knowing how their profit is invested overseas in water aid projects.  Often the ‘buying social’ relates to goods.  We’re offering you the opportunity to ‘buy social’ when purchasing your staff training.

By ‘buying social’ for staff development and training, your business will be joining the likes of PwC, Santander, Wates, Robertson Group, Amey, Johnson & Johnson and many more who don’t just tick a box – but get a service that makes a difference too.

On October 2nd we’re launching a project in Norfolk and Suffolk that will not only tick your CSR box effortlessly if that’s what you want, but will see tangible financial returns in your business too.

Following our two-day Volunteer Tenancy Mentoring training and becoming a Mentor:

• Your staff will discover the leadership that is hidden in all of us
• The huge potential of your staff will be unlocked resulting in increased motivation
• A sense of team through social purpose and new-found social skills will appear
• Money will be saved on staff retention and recruitment
• With an amazing recruitment package you will be able to recruit the best in their field
• Your staff will have a reason to go to work that money can’t buy!

We know that this training and development opportunity will make a difference and save you money because ACAS, the leading employer expert since 1896,  tells us that:

• 68% of workers say training and development is the most important workplace policy.
• 40% of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year.

   

   

BiTC (Business in The Community) tells us that 82% of employees that volunteer feel more committed to their employer.  And if they don’t leave, your business saves money in recruiting new people – and  we all hate endless costs relating to lost productivity, recruitment fees, job adverts, new training and induction, reading CVs, interviewing etc etc.  In fact, can you believe that the true cost of replacing an employee can be as much as £30,000?

So by providing staff training to become Volunteer Tenancy Mentors, you will see your staff flourish and bounce into work like Tigger, as they know that they’re making a difference to people’s lives at the same time.  And we know it mentors make a difference.

Your investment in them will be a win-win-win.

That’s a win for your staff, a win for your business and a win for the young people in our community.

You can download a short PDF here about why you’d want to get involved as well as take a look at our webpage just for you.

As a social enterprise in the current climate, I can’t decide if I’m more excited by developing a new potential revenue model or all the amazing people I’m going to meet as part of this initiative.

I’ve worked with young people for nearly 20 years and they never fail to surprise me and keep me on my toes.  And it’s the same with adults.  It’s so easy to ‘put people in a box’ and think they are part of your tribe or not part of your tribe depending on which newspaper they read or what school they went to.

If I’ve learnt anything, it’s that this is perfectly not the case.  When recruiting Volunteer Tenancy Mentors we’ve never had to turn anyone away.  Once we’re clear about the opportunity for them as well as the commitment expected, people tend to self-select.

What you’re left with are people that always humble me in their openness to learn, contribute to their communities, but also be honest about what they are going to get out of it.  It’s a total win-win.

Many reading this will empathise with the dilemma of a founder CEO going on holiday for the first time since being a fully up and running social enterprise.  People have been saying for ages that I need to take a holiday.  I know this, so why is it so hard?  It’s not that I don’t trust people to run things whilst I’m away.  It’s not that I think there will be a disaster that only I can deal with.  And it’s not that I think without me opportunities will be missed and things will grind to a halt.  Being honest, part of me will really miss it.  I no longer know who I am in the absence of my business.  It’s who I am and defines me, provides my sense of self and self-esteem.  I remember when I was a teacher I used to worry that after the six weeks summer holiday I may have forgotten how to teach.  I think it’s a bit like that.  I feel I’ll lose the ability to do things at pace, make decisions and achieve all that output.  In reality of course, I’ll be so refreshed that I’ll come back able to do all those things and more.  As well as come back with a whole host of crazy new schemes that I’ve had the headspace to dream up…

With little attention in the current political climate, the Bill became an Act this week.  Extending the period by which a local housing authority will intervene to prevent homelessness from 28 to 56 days is welcomed by most.  It’s an amazing opportunity not just to put crisis-measures in post, but to undertake service-related to work to put right what has gone wrong, before the consequences result in homelessness, misery, expense and a crisis.  We worked with a young man who was summoned by his local housing authority with the threat of eviction from an Introductory Tenancy.  In the few weeks we had he was able to sort out his Universal Credit claim, attend our Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) course, communicate with his social landlord about what he was doing and regain control and confidence about putting it right.  His arrears are now cleared, his risk of eviction put to one side and his home as secure as it can be.  It can be done, but it takes time and resource to do it.

John Bird joined us last week to tell us his story of setting up The Big Issue. Thanks to a relationship with one of our non-executive directors, he had agreed to travel to Norwich and share his passion.  And share it he did!  I’ve seen him talk once before, but I don’t think there were many in the room quite ready for the energy, passion and spittle that landed on the front row! Like so much of what happens when establishing yourself in any enterprise, to outsiders it can look like chance, fate or serendipity. Personally I don’t believe in these things and broadly believe that ‘the harder I work the luckier I get’.  You can train yourself to see the opportunity in every meeting (without becoming an opportunist).  Saying ‘yes’ to the world is a great start.  It’s exhausting too, which means you can also be strategic about it, without being ruthless.  It’s a fine balance and one I’m loving learning as a social entrepreneur that is lucky enough to be able to hear from people like John Bird to challenge everything I thought I knew!

Last week we trained six young women in Great Yarmouth.  Kindly hosted by The Benjamin Foundation, we delivered a bespoke two-day course to six care-leavers at Aspire.  They are facing a multitude of complexities as they navigate the often unsupported world of managing your first home on a tight budget.  We were able to answer many of their questions and offer them tools to approach managing their finances as well as how to be a great tenant.  67% of the small group said that they had improved their knowledge of the skills required to keep their tenancy.  You can read a one-page impact report of the course here.

This vexes me almost daily.  Mostly because I meet so many amazing people and businesses wanting to ‘help’.  We’re not a charity and therefore this notion of ‘helping’ needs to be re-branded. That’s why I prefer the term ‘social investment’.  It aligns with our values of supporting each other (including our young people) as equals and in an ongoing capacity that allows a relationship to develop.  Take our Volunteer Tenancy Mentors for example.  I am perpetually bowled over that hard-working people are prepared to give up their free time to be trained to provide voluntary support to a young person in their own tenancy.  When trust in charities is at an all-time low and millenials want to work for ethical employers, it’s right for businesses to build an ongoing relationship with a local social enterprise.  That way the business gets to see the results of their investment over the long term with real people. They get to hold onto motivated staff and invest in a ‘social business’ as equals.  This kind of social action is so much more profitable for society than a CSR tick in the one-off paternalistic box.

‘What’s that?” we hear you cry.  It’s a way of getting people involved in good deeds, including volunteering, via a digital platform.  And we’re quite excited about it.  Thanks to funding from Santander and N4NE via Norfolk Community Foundation, we’re developing our very own digital social action platform.  This web app will leverage support from the local community, individuals as well as businesses to help young people move forward with their dreams.

How will it work?  Young people will upload their aspirations, including what’s needed to achieve them.  The community will respond online with encouragement, advice, contacts, opportunities, donations and even by becoming Volunteer Tenancy Mentors.  We will be asking for voluntary subscriptions to use the site and to become involved in this practical way to support young people.  Subscribers will get the satisfaction of seeing them achieve their aspirations and making a local social impact.  We’ll be launching it in October.  Get in touch if you’re a business who would like to support young people in this way, have local social impact and improve social mobility.

In the last week we’ve had some very positive conversations with businesses who want to get involved with Volunteer Tenancy Mentoring. We’ve got a track record of delivering mentors for young people who need this support most.  And now we’re looking to local businesses to get involved as those mentors.  Nothing matches people power!

I read with excitement last week about a long-lived campaign to make PSHE in schools compulsory, finally coming to fruition.  Excited because it reminded me of when I used to teach it in South London and excited because since then, having set up a social enterprise, I’m excited about getting involved again.  Just about every young person we train on our Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) course tells us that everyone should do our course and what their education lacked was a ‘curriculum for life’.  Our young people tell us that they come out of school with lots of ‘stuff’ they never use. On the other hand no-one has told them how debt and APR works or how to understand a tenancy agreement.  I’m not suggesting that the other ‘stuff’ they learn isn’t useful, but can’t claim not to be excited at the prospect of taking our unique delivery into schools.  We want all young people in schools to benefit from our delivery in budgeting, bills, shopping around for utilities, understanding housing options, running a home and loads more so they feel prepared for adult life.

.

You never know it all when you work with young people.  I’ve been working in this field for around 20 years and because nothing stands still,  (not least me or the young people), my perceptions of what I thought I knew are always changing.  I can’t categorically state that things have got harder for young people, but it certainly feels like it.  That’s why we’re asking local retailers to offer small discounts to young people setting up home for the first time.  Picture the scene:  You’ve been living in supported accommodation (‘hostel’ – don’t use that word) since you fell out with your parents two years ago.  You’ve got little savings and the clock ticks inexorably towards the day when you have to move out into your own place.  You’re both excited and anxious about it – that’s natural.  It feels like the opportunity for a new start and you want to make your own place a home.  A little money can a lot further with some help.  There’s all that furniture, flooring, kitchen utensils, paint etc to buy.  If you know a local retailer that could offer our young person a small discount, please share this post with them.  Having a safe and secure place to call home should be minimum expectation for everyone.

We don’t often post other’s articles here, but it’s worthy of note that Norfolk, and more specifically, Norwich, features in this piece. The impossible decisions that the local authority is making are something of a given. We can’t turn back the clock. Many, many people will suffer as a result of these plans. The real concerns are twofold. One lies in the timing. With so much daily hyperbole about cuts and the strains the NHS is under, many people are desensitised to terms like ‘a perfect storm’. There are services being drastically cut alongside wholesale welfare benefit changes and cuts, a housing system that simply doesn’t work for many and hitherto unseen pressure on statutory services. These combined factors are going to have an impact beyond policy-makers’ comprehension and not just on people with ‘protected characteristics’. The other point of note, which probably isn’t unique to Norfolk, but sometimes feels so, is the absence of truly groundbreaking and innovative solutions. Saying that services will still be delivered to the vulnerable no longer stacks up against cuts of this magnitude. It requires root and branch re-thinking and where is this going to come from?  I’m not going to sit here and say that social enterprise has all the answers, but if you look at just some of the drive, leverage and social impact they have, are they not worth bit of investment locally?  What have we got to lose?

I feel compelled to share my observations about my guilty pleasure, as I’ve only just identified it.  I’ve had no time off for 18 months and people who know me will know that ‘downtime’ is not my forte.  One profound enjoyment I have is my 12 mile bicycle commute, of which more in the spring (there’s more to see in the daylight!).  However, at this time of year I find myself curiously able to relax at the weekend thanks to a surfeit of second-rate Christmas films.  I’m not talking about the good ones starring people you’ve heard of like Richard Attenborough in Miracle on 34th Street or James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life.  I’m talking about the ones with actors you can’t name and never saw again after their one 80 minute outing on Channel 4 or 5.  Sitting down on a Saturday afternoon in front of the fire and a crappy Christmas film with a hot chocolate (and a splash of Disaronno – try it!) is my guilty pleasure at this time of year.  I have been struck by the four genres they fit into, so here goes.  1) Films set in cutesy upstate New York towns, permanently covered in cotton wool snow 2) films starring (usually an older person) playing the role of a relative of Santa Claus sent to be a moral arbiter 3) films where the hero/heroine is secretly royalty from a fictional country normally in eastern Europe and 4) films where the hero/heroine gets stranded in a remote cut-off village where they go on a ‘journey’ to discover their better self.  Naturally, they can be a combination of all of these and have in common terrible dialogue, cardboard good looks and more cliches that you can shake a santa at.  However unemotionally involved one feels about them, they are an utterly compelling and relaxing way to re-charge the all important batteries at this time of year.  Treat yourself, try it and have a great break one and all!

With this blog we want to show a bit about what we do and you can draw your own conclusions about the arena we work in.  A young care-leaver, James,  that we’ve just started working with has found himself in a council flat, lonely, waiting for his benefits and immediately facing eviction due to non-payment of rent.  He reached out to us for help and has openly admitted that he hasn’t been as pro-active as he could have been in getting things sorted out.  He has received confusing communications from his landlord and due to a lack of support, his own anxieties and complex system has struggled to know what to do first and to represent himself appropriately.  He was asked to attend a meeting with his landlord on 25th November and asked my colleague Alex to go with him.  She nearly didn’t go, as her diary was already full.  Thank goodness she did.  It turned out that this meeting was in fact an ‘eviction hearing’.  James froze as accusations of his inaction and reluctance to put things right were thrown at him.  It is not our style to do things ‘for’ young people.  We prefer to work ‘with’ young people to equip them with the tools for next time.  However, on this occasion Alex had to step in or he would have lost his home and been street homeless that afternoon. Alex convinced the landlord that James was engaging with us, was putting things right and wanted to keep his home.  He has been given one week to put things right pending a full decision.  Colleagues at MAP are supporting him with his benefits, budgeting and managing correspondence and he will now attend our Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) training next week.  This is the right support at the wrong time.  James, and others, shouldn’t be abandoned without sufficient support to help maintain a tenancy in a complex system of housing, benefits and moving in and out of low-paid work.  Support for a group of people five times more likely to be homeless needs to be more responsive, empathic and ‘care-leaver-proofed’ to support a group of people that any society should be doing the utmost to help.

It’s not long now to go until Christmas.  Having spend most of my adult life working with young people in and leaving the care system, I find this time a difficult one to discuss.  I am acutely, and probably overly conscious of what a fraught and frightening time it can be for many young people.  Having grown up away from parents, many adolescents decide with trepidation to spend a few days with family over the Christmas period.  Like many of us, they are pray to the media’s portrayal of an idealised image of families eating and laughing together.  When the reality is quite different, it can be a painful reminder of everything that defines you and your current situation.  I can’t help but think of our young people over this period and want to make our bit of it as festive and warm as possible.  I’m not pretending we’re compensation for families, but some moments of Christmas warmth and cheer don’t go amiss.  We’ll be decorating a tree with young people on 1st December showing as much empathy, sensativety and warmth as we possibly can.

People who know Your Own Place know that we’ve years of experience of working with fantastic young people facing all sorts of challenges as they transition to adult life.  We believe wholeheartedly that with the right support at the right time, this often difficult time can be be made smoother, happier and less difficult.  I have to admit that even I have felt challenged on this belief this week.  In the last week two young people that we have just started working with, both leaving care and both living independently at age 18, have found themselves in total crisis.  Just as winter arrives.  Both have received benefit sanctions for one reason or another, one has had their Housing Benefit stopped and both are hungry, cold and totally alone.  Apportioning blame to local agencies isn’t especially helpful here.  It’s systems that we’ve created that are impossible to navigate if you’re young, alone, unsupported and have emotional barriers to resolving difficulties.  Both young people take responsibility for their actions but don’t know where or how to start to unravel the mess they’re in.  The traipsing around, with no bus fare, inadequate clothing and an empty stomach to try and put it all right would test anyone, let alone someone who neither values themselves nor the cold empty home they are returning to at the end of it.  I’m not saying we have all the answers.  I am glad that we were there at the right time to at least alleviate the worst excesses of hunger and cold and can now start the slow process of recovery for a young person who deserves a better start to adult life.

Social investment appears to be a term that means different things to different people.  It started with old-school philanthropy when some well-meaning (usually) men wanted to alleviate suffering of people begging on the streets in the late eighteenth century.  I’ve no doubt that at an individual level early philanthropy eased individual suffering on a particular day and the philanthropist went away feeling a bit better about themselves.  It’s no different when I give a few pennies to a homeless person by Norwich station today.  Fundamentally though, it doesn’t change anything for the long term.  Social entrepreneurs want to solve big problems like inequality and poverty, not provide handouts.  Then Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) comes along and lots of big businesses and shareholders again get to do some good by making substantial contributions to third sector organisations who hopefully use them wisely.  The issue with both of these is that they are top-down and short-lived.  For more impact I like an approach that sees an ongoing partnership and shared outcomes. Let’s have business involvement in achieving those outcomes with a view to bringing about systemic changes in attitudes and ways of working.  At Your Own Place we are now actively seeking social investors who get something back. They do this not just by being active agents in our social impact, but by bringing new skills and empathy to their own workforce through volunteering, broadening the skill sets of future employees  – and we’ll allow them some good brand awareness too!  Click here for more detail.

Being new to this sector I’ve had an awful lot to learn. I previously had some volunteering experience with young people. Coming into this role I wasn’t sure about the ways to communicate as a professional working directly with young people. In my first few months with Your Own Place I’ve learnt an awful lot on this.

During my first few weeks, on a handful of occasions, I was mistaken for a young service user. I took this as a compliment, naturally. But I was so disheartened by the way I was treated – little to no eye contact and little interest in listening to what I had to say. In these moments of confusion I felt like a burden, I felt judged and I felt uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong, 99% of the experiences I’ve had throughout my journey so far have been positive and there are some amazing organisations working with Norfolk’s young people. But these handful of experiences still resonate with me.

For me this was the best learning experience I could have. While professional boundaries are fundamental to the work I do, I place mutual respect at the same level of importance. We cannot build up the aspirations of young people whilst rolling our eyes at them and muttering under our breath.

There are oodles of articles in the related press about the purpose of social enterprise.  Each one confuses me afresh and I’ve decided that my conclusion is to sit on the fence.  There’s no doubt that we’ve got to be at least solvent to exist.  And we’ve got to exist if we’re going to have social impact.  It’s making social impact pay that’s the hard bit.  I increasingly wonder if the broad spectrum of social enterprises is being reflected in these articles.  I have maintained for a while that like every sector, social enterprises are a broad church.  Some, like ours, sell services mostly to local government (cash-strapped) customers.  Others, like Innocent Smoothies, sell healthy drinks to the general public.  Which of us most depends on profit?  Personally I struggle with the concept of ‘social enterprise’ and having shareholders.  Is it ever transparent to have a proportion of your profit going to private individuals?  Here at Your Own Place 100% of our profit goes back into adding value and opportunities to our interventions.  Will that be the case when we grow?  You’ll have to wait and see.

As a social enterprise we’re always looking for ways to generate income that is not funding-based.  When I started the enterprise three years ago I was determined that I wouldn’t be a slave to pursuing endless pots of funding.  Today I remain just as determined (having been that slave for three years!).   It’s about more than just not wanting to spend my evenings meeting someone else’s random deadline.  I genuinely don’t believe it results in good outcomes.  How can jumping through the hoops of a national funder create a project that meets local needs?  We have our mission and whilst keen to avoid mission-creep, in a world of lessening funds, we are required to twist our objectives to fit the requirements of a funder, some of which are sometimes frankly ludicrous in their demands.  That’s why I prefer to talk about ‘customers’.  Our commissioners are customers.  They know best what they want.  If they are buying, then they are in charge and should be getting the outcomes they want.  In times of austerity we accept that their purchasing power may not be high.  That’s why we’re looking at models of joint funding.  We can secure a proportion of the project costs through traditional funding routes and a proportion from a our ‘customer’.  That way we get their literal buy-in, they get a project better matched to their needs and it stays local and outcomes-focussed.

This week has genuinely been one of the most amazing of my career.  We’re all very good at telling everyone how amazing everything is on social media, but this week it’s really true.  Those who know me know I’m capable of cynicism with the rest of them.  However, with the development of our Tenancy Training Flat I have genuinely had my eyes opened to corporate goodwill and the scope of social enterprise to do differently against a backdrop of local authority cuts.  We have been overwhelmed by personal and corporate donations.  Individuals have recognised immediately the value of our work and reached deep into their pockets to help us.  As a fledgling social enterprise we are able to act quickly and efficiently and take advantage of these amazing opportunities.  We are leveraging support we never knew was possible.  Partners such as B&Q and Ikea, whilst wanting to help us furnish and equip our venue, now want to offer our young people work experience and develop a long partnership with us.  Is this the future?  Is social capital and social investment how we are going to make up for the shortfall of the state?  If it is, then it’s great fun, full of possibility and has the potential to reap rewards we didn’t know existed.

The Answers

1.  What is the average amount of debt (excluding student debt) that a 16-25 year old is in? £3000
2.  What is the average age young people start shopping online? Ten
3.  What is the average house price in Norfolk? £280,ooo
We’re getting tricky now…
4.  What is the shared accommodation Local Housing Allowance rate for Norwich £61.45
5.  What’s the new name of the social enterprise for young people’s supported housing services that was part of Flagship? Empanda
6.  Which ward is our Tenancy Training Flat in? Town Close Ward
7.  To the nearest 20 how many young people has Your Own Place worked with in the past year? 134
8.  What is the APR at Norwich Credit Union?  19.6%
9.  Which type of rented accommodation is responsible for most evictions?  Social or private? Private
10.  Most young people lose their tenancy by being evicted because they don’t pay their rent.  True or False? False.  Young people tend to abandon their tenancies because they get in a muddle and don’t know when, how or where to get help.

This is why Your Own Place exists.  We aim to prevent failed tenancies from ever happening to ensure all young people have a safe and secure home.

Most of the time I’m not even sure we’re talking about the same thing.  When speaking with colleagues across sectors and across the county we seem to be variously using words such as ‘philanthropy, social investment, investment, social impact bonds and corporate social responsibility’.  Like any good conspiracy theorist I’m in no doubt that there are people making this field overly complicated so that laypeople like me need their help to unravel it.  However, here in Norfolk we’re not even off the starting block.  I frequently have to telephone funders to ask whether they fund social enterprises and they don’t know themselves.  When putting together a business plan, how can it be robust if we don’t even understand the different methods of raising finance ourselves?  We’re in a vicious cycle of needing to scale-up and not having the funds to get the funds.  Many of my colleagues across the social enterprise sector are pretty sceptical about social investment and the barriers and demands that a group of people that don’t understand their socially minded world don’t understand.  Personally, I’m a magpie.  I like new shiny things and I want to explore it.  But I’m also an experiential learner and until we’ve actually tried it ourselves, I’ll reserve judgement.  But will anyone give us a chance?

Another step forward for Your Own Place.  Last year our supporters generously raised money through our crowdfunding campaign.  Combined with The Tudor Trust funding we employed Alex to support young people into work.  And now Children in Need funding means that Alex goes full time and we’re on the way!  There are loads of good providers across Norfolk supporting young people furthest from work.  And we want to work with them so that our young people have equality of access to all these great services.  However, our ambitions go further than that.  You’ll know that social impact is everything and we need to maximise it.  So whilst we want to support young people into work, we want some of those young people to have very real work experiences as our Peer Trainers.  With all this lovely funding we will be developing the Peer Youth Worker Training Academy.  An aspirational eight-week programme covering the practicalities of youth work as well as cutting edge engagement techniques will be available to young people working with Alex.  They will have opportunities to volunteer and even work on our Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) delivery and gain fantastic job skills in the process.  Young people learning from other young people is how we maximise our social impact.

https://www.yourownplace.org.uk/216-2/

Since announcing The Training Flat I’ve been stunned and delighted by the offers of help and donations. If you’re not up to speed, we’re renting a flat from Norwich City Council.  In it we will be delivering our fantastic Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) courses.  Just like our young people when they get their first home, it will be totally empty.  So we’re working with all our stunning friends and partners to kit it out.  After the initial offers of hoovers and crockery, we then had financial donations too.  Last week Alex convinced a local tattoo parlour to do some artwork in the flat and Nelson’s Journey rewarded us with a TV.  On Monday Rachel Blackburn from Us2U Consulting called me with the strangest offer yet!  After a party at the weekend, she had some leftover sweets.  She dropped off a massive bag at No8 Thorpe Road (I’ll come to them!).  Sweets feature in all our courses with young people and adults alike – so we’re hugely grateful.  The amazing Sarah at No8 Thorpe Road is looking after all these things until we move into the flat in August.  Our friends at Heath Lodge have offered stationary, which is hugely valuable as The Training Flat becomes our first office.  We’ve just been offered a TV stand as well as some money for curtain poles etc by Reality Estate Agency.  And as I write this we have a tentative commitment from a flooring firm to provide laminate AND KFC have offered us all the furniture from their old restaurant on Prince of Wales Road.  Wow – what a list of good will, generosity and commitment to what we do.   Still lots more to collect and based on our experience so far, we’re pretty optimistic.

Are you tired of it?  Are you drained by it? Are you bored of the politicians forgetting that life goes on for all of us that are trying to make a difference?  Then I’m sorry to add to your fatigue.  However, I can remain silent no longer.  I’d like to make a number of points, as briefly as I can.  The first is that as a third sector organisation run by human beings I don’t think I should feel afraid to express political views.  All too often the sector is afraid of losing funding and remains quiet.  However, we work with many that are voiceless.  If we don’t raise our voices, then we do our beneficiaries a dis-service.  Secondly, perhaps in the same vein, is the paucity of the debate locally and nationally in the VCSE sector.    We are told to be ‘entrepreneurial, to be tolerant, to be loving’.  This is business as usually as far as I’m concerned and not active enough.  Complaining, being unhappy and being angry are part of the grieving process and legitimate responses that then lead to real action.  And finally, and this is a more political point about the lack of social cohesion, xenophobia and other distasteful characteristics that have been highlighted this week.  Are we really surprised by this behaviour?  It seems to me that democracy and politics in this country, on its five year cycles and constant vying for position, is based on pitching people and communities against each other.  After any period of time when some people feel let down and encouraged to turn on those around them (for example to tell on neighbours committing benefit fraud), is it really any wonder that under pressure we continue in the same vein and turn on the underdog as we perceive them?  I do believe in opportunities on the horizon.  However, I also believe that some responsibility has to be taken by politicians when they get round to being on control again for the behaviour and social inequalities that have lead to the result as well as its aftermath.  Are they role-models for behaviour?

This week I caught up with one of our mentors, (Sally) and her mentee (Christina).  They’ve been meeting every fortnight for a year and meeting them both is like intruding on old friends.  The picture is of a card that Christina bought for Sally to say thank you.  What’s so special about the volunteer mentoring relationship is how much they both get out of it.  Sally is cautious of not using cliches, but talks of how amazingly rewarding it is to unlock potential and nudge Christina to do things she wouldn’t otherwise get round to.  And these aren’t small little things.  These are things that if Christina hadn’t been nudged to do them, could have eventually led to homelessness.  It’s clear they’re going to miss each other, but Christina also recognises the progress she’s made.  I have such respect for Christina because she gave it a go and was open to the possibility of change and challenge.  She’s such a convert to mentoring that she’s even agreed to help us gently persuade other young people to get involved.  If you’d like to be a volunteer mentor, please get in touch.

On Sunday 5th June we joined colleagues, partners and amazing volunteers at The Norwich Cathedral Volunteers Celebration Picnic.  The impact is often calculated in long reports, but anyone who has worked closely with volunteers doesn’t need a report to know the difference they make.  And it’s great timing for us, as we are currently evaluating the impact of our volunteer mentors in Norwich.  We’re sad that the funding for this project has ended in Norwich and working hard to secure more.  It’s very inefficient to recruit and train mentors for a short-term project, only to let them go and start again when a new round of funding appears.  For the moment though, let’s dwell on their successes and the difference they make.  A young person describing her mentor as ‘crucial’ to her current success and ‘not knowing where I’d be without her’ says it all.  We’re training more volunteer mentors for our North Norfolk and Broadland project on 7th and 8th July. If you interested in making a difference click on the link to find out more.

We’ve seen a big increase recently in Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) courses being delivered 1-2-1 to young people.  This is often because the young people are in college or working and can’t attend a group course.  We usually travel to wherever they’re living, but are as content delivering in a coffee shop if the young person feels like getting out.  What has been interesting this week is to observe three different young people.  They are all roughly the same age, all leaving care locally and all moving to independence very soon.  And yet their knowledge is a gulf apart.  The youngest and least experienced knew most about renting privately and the oldest and most ‘worldly wise’ could barely name a welfare benefit or the circumstances in which she might claim them.  Notwithstanding the extraordinary change they are about to experience by moving from their supported environment to living independently, it naturally poses challenges for us, the trainers.  We have a set of tools, games and interactive techniques that must adapt to each situation, each learner and each learning style.  What isn’t in doubt is just how much they get from these sessions with us.  Noticeable of late isn’t that they necessarily come out as perfect budgeters or experts on Universal Credit, but that they are starting to do the thinking that’s required.  They’re starting to plan.  And with that they’re less anxious and dare to plan more.  It’s a virtuous circle.

I’ve been working with young people for nearly twenty years. It’s easier in lots of ways.  I’ve got loads of tools and tricks that mean I respond to the situation, come up with new methods of engagement and make the training fun.  But I’m not desensitised to their stories, which although this can mean heartache, it also means I’m human and able to react as human and not a robot. But it’s still hard too.  Why?  No matter how great our courses are, no matter how hard we try, no matter my unshakeable belief in people’s resilience and capacity to change, we are just one piece of their puzzle.  Our young people’s lives are so complicated and full of challenges that I still want to do more and ‘solve’ everything.  I have neither the skills nor time to do this and nobody needs ‘solving’.  Of course it’s a positive because it drives me on to do more and to work more collaboratively with others who share some of the answers.  All the young people working with us this week want to stay working with us, and that engagement must be the first step.  So let’s keep up the good work.  Read a one-page impact report of this week here.

There are times when I’m so exhausted by thinking about what we do that I don’t know what I think any more.  These times are helped by coming across someone else having the same thought and being braver than me, by saying it.  Approbation of our thought process is sometimes needed to move forward and this has happened twice this week in different ways.  My peers at the School for Social Entrepreneurs on Wednesday helped me to see the challenges of scaling up and personnel in a new way.  It had been lurking in my thoughts, but when five people are saying the same thing, it gives your thoughts a new validity and unlocks action.  I also struggle massively with the negative connotations that surround us about people on benefits, low incomes and the material choices people make.  When you’ve been championing a cause for so long and witness so much obstruction, it is natural to question your own belief system and start to wonder if the media, who have a vested interested in getting viewers, are right after all.   Lisa Mckenzie wrote a book about life on the Nottingham estate where she grew up entitled ‘Getting By’.  In it she brings honesty to the Jeremy Kyle conundrum of why when we’re struggling for money we go and buy something we can’t afford.  The first point is that most of us buy things we can’t really afford a lot of the time.  This is not a symptom of one group of people.  Secondly, if life is really, really tough and you’re living day-to-day financially, is it that wrong to buy a pair of nice shoes?  If that’s the first thing that has made you feel good about yourself in months, then isn’t it the purchase of a kind of therapy akin to yoga, a gym membership or a good meal?  Of course we can get into the consequences of not paying the rent or the electricity bill, but who am I to stand in judgement of someone who wants a bit of ‘feel good’ when so little does? I’m off for a run in my expensive running shoes…

This week saw three days of Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) Training in King’s Lynn.  Commissioned by Children’s Services, we delivered three packed and innovative days to seven young people leaving local authority care.  We were generously hosted by Broadland Housing Association and Alex Hand from Breckland Council also briefly joined us on the second day to share her housing expertise.  Three days of content takes careful planning.  With two staff we had enough content for five days, allowing us to respond to the mood, energy levels and learning styles of those in the room.  Some activities evolved into longer ones, whilst others were cut short when the young people visibly flagged.  Seven was a good number for the size of the venue and their learning needs.  When undertaking individual work, most required 1-2-1 learning support and blossomed with this additional help and encouragement.  Our group started the week apprehensively, anxious of meeting new people and as very reluctant learners.  To watch them request games, interact with each other, find new girlfriends (!) and offer to present to each other but the end of the week is the most rewarding and hard-earned part of what Your Own Place does.  Well worth an exhausting three days.  Read our one-page impact report here.

This week we’re delivering one of our hugely engaging Tenancy & Independent Living Skills (TILS) courses on behalf of Children’s Services in King’s Lynn.  For all the amazingness of meeting Lemn Sissay for our research launch last week, nothing really beats what we’re really about – supporting young people in transition.  These seven young people, all on the cusp of moving to independence for the first time, are absorbing so much during this course.  Again and again we hear the refrain ‘Why am I only learning this now?  Why didn’t we do this in school?’.  Why indeed.