Our Place: Community Matters

Draft Operational Plan

November, 2014

Exploiting the themes of Employment, Community Cohesion and Engagement, Older People, Women in Isolation and Children & Young People; YPM Charity and the Local Tenant and Residents Association of Stockwell Gardens West (SGWRA), will deliver a grassroots project called ‘Community Matters.' This project will focus on reducing most of the seven deprivation indicators experienced by Stockwell residents who face social exclusion based on their background ( By focussing on the key themes; groups will experience a new raft of services, improved access to mainstream provision of services and in-turn, improved outcomes in health and well-being, employment & skills, as well as leisure and intergenerational opportunities.

Table of Contents

  1. Context, background and Vision
  2. Community Involvement
  3. Priority Issues
  4. Our Approach
  5. Business Case
  6. Governance
  7. Implementation Plan

Context

The Community Matters project is situated, with Young People Matter (YPM), in the Old Laundry building on the Stockwell Gardens West estate, which is located in the Stockwell Ward in Lambeth borough. The building has the capacity to facilitate the proposed programmes & services which will develop the skills & knowledge of local members, enabling them to become more active, moving from a cycle of poverty, deprivation, long-term unemployment and isolation.

Lambeth is one of the most densely populated places in the country, with over 100 persons per hectare. It has a complex social and ethnic mix, with large transient African and Portuguese populations. The borough is the 14th most deprived district in England. Eight areas in Lambeth which are among the 10% most deprived in the Country; include Stockwell. Key socio-economic and demographic factors show that for the Stockwell Ward 18% of the population are between 0-15 years; 7% are over 65 years; population density per square kilometre is 16,778; 44% of the population is BAME; employment rate for 16-74 is 69%; 45% live in social housing; dependent children (0-18) in out-of-work households is 32%; lone parents not in employment is 49%; those with no qualifications are 16%; those on job seekers allowance are 9% (Department for Communities and Local Government 2011). Lambeth also has highest proportions of people with HIV in the UK, with 3,000 people diagnosed and living with HIV in Lambeth. In addition to the health consequences, individuals with HIV are at risk of employment, poverty and housing issues. It is also a community health issue as a quarter of people with HIV are not diagnosed and are three times more likely to pass it on.

Background

The building was re-established with the assistance of European Funds through an ERDF programme in partnership with Lambeth council (2003-05). These funds assisted the local tenants, residents and young people in developing a space and opportunity to provide much needed services for the community. YPM were able to develop difficult relationships with young people on the estate at a time when young people, their children and families were in dire need of support. Anti-social behaviour including serious group offending and violence were at their height during this time. Since this period; YPM’s relationship with children and young people has been extended to the adults and older residents living on and near the estate, in Stockwell and beyond to Kennington Park Estate and Clapham’s William Bonney Estate.

Hyde Southbank Homes (HSH) has been an important stakeholder in this project through the provision of staff with the expertise and vision to secure in-kind resources as well as cash funding for a significant number of the fledgling programmes which allowed YPM to find ways of building a successful grassroots service for local people. This assisted in extending the programme and developed the sustainability of early initiatives which YPM have painstakingly refined to provide its present timetable of activities. Therefore the development of the community hub was always an intended and sustainable outcome of the European funding.

HSH currently provides the building rent free and general maintains it as an in-kind contribution. This contribution ensures that the building meets health and safety standards and as a HSH property, the building undertakes an annual health and safety audit. (We are currently trying to work out the annual cost of this contribution). The Community Matters project addresses the potential to maximise and increase services and usage of the building by at least 50%.

Community Matters is being developed within a rapidly changing public sector context marked by a severe reduction in resources. This will impact directly on the local community and through appropriate resource leverage, usage, and community participation, Community Matters will ensure that local people are empowered to cope with this.

Since the general election (up to the end of last September) Lambeth had made 550 redundancies. Up to another 1,000 are being spoken of – from a workforce now below 3,000. Further redundancies were outsourced when the Labour group agreed to transfer the job of answering Lambeth's telephones to Capita in Southampton. This tragic decision, intended to save £1 million, annually has taken far more than that out of the local economy.

Lambeth’s Youth Strategy (2009 - 13) places a strong emphasis on the integration of all youth provision to be delivered through programmes of activities focused on four key themes. These include (i) enterprise and work; (ii) arts, music and technology; (iii) sports and physical activity; and (iv) health and well-being.

Vision

Our Community Matters vision is to further design and develop a cohesive hive of interactive, intergenerational programmes and services to enhance and capacity build the local community and serve as the catalyst for increased community-led engagement. Community Matters works in service of the local community and is determined to ensure that its vision is based on inspiring hope asopposed to fear, especially given the fast changing services’ context the local community faces.

We subscribe to the philosophy that comradery is the heart beat and the people are the pulse of every cohesively functioning community. We aim to achieve this balance through:

  • Ensuring it is a bottom-up, community led project
  • Its partnership working and governance structures and processes are properly synergised and aligned towards this
  • It maximises resource usage and discovery and ensuresit does not become a fall back for resource diminution elsewhere
  • Tis work and impact are a beacon for other local endeavours

Community Involvement

Identified in the earliest stages of Community Matters (CM) were the following needs and wishes to be embed:

  • Consultation with local groups, organisations and clubs
  • Engagement with local tenants and residents
  • Involvement from the existing service users
  • Inclusion of the identified target groups including youth, seniors, lone parents, women insolation

To this extent, CM’s new and improved local relationships, community cohesion initiatives, and partnership networkingdemonstrated their effective resolve as the communitygalvanisedtogether winning the People’s Millions national campaign. The People’s Millions is a partnership between Big lottery Fund and ITV, where the public decide which local community projects receive funding up to £50,000 of National Lottery funding. Young People Matter in partnership with Stockwell Gardens West Residents Ass., Horn of Africa women’s group and the local Stockwell community became successful finalist, and soon afterwards, winners by public vote on Monday, 24 November proving our winning working relationship.

To date, Community Matters has conducted:

  • Three community wide surveys
  • Held 6 monthly meetings with local residents led by the TRA
  • Four community cohesion events with an already planned Christmas Party in December and another inclusive event to be managed by one of the local groups who further empowered by the CM project
  • Supported 5 local East African migrants with social housing and immigration issues
  • 1 meeting and two consultations with HSH regarding developing the building
  • Meeting with local ward councillors and members of the Green Party who have all offered their support for the programmes and projects being run at the Old Laundry.
  • 2 strategy/ fact finding meetings with Pilotlight (pilotlight.org.uk) business coaches from Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and BP

Priority Issues/Services

The following issues emerged as priorities during the initial consultations with residents and therefore became CM’s intended project focus:

  • Social isolation of particular groups within Stockwell
  • Low skills and educational attainment
  • Supportive services, particularly employment services for young people and lone parents;
  • Health and well-being activities for the wider population;
  • Inter-generational activities between the young people and older residents.

The project is built around encouraging and facilitating community involvement and participation in the everyday running and governance processes of the organisation. These transferable skills will also assist members in building their capacity to increase their participation in civic duties and wider involvement in external activities in their locality.

Within this context the project aims to achieve the following:

•Maximise and realise the full occupational potential of the Old Laundry through refurbishing those parts of the building currently with potential but not being used

•Use the increased physical capacity of the building to expand the service base to meet the needs of young people and lone parents who are in need of relevant employability skills and qualifications

•Develop new and relevant services where little or none existed before

•Develop the project into a community led one through ensuring proper participative and ownership capacity in the governance structures and day to day processes

•Develop the Old Laundry into a dynamic community led hub with the potential to network creatively with all relevant stakeholders producing a synergy leading to further service innovation & models of best practice

Our Approach

Woman in Isolation

Women’s Coffee Mornings – The Horn of Africa Community Group have run 8 successful sessions of their Women’s Coffee Group where they met to share language, culture, experiences, food and coffee as part of an informal therapeutic journey in building stable lives within the UK. The Habesha coffee ceremony is a highly elaborate ritual, which at home in Ethiopia and Eritrea, brings women together socially and psychologically. Its use as a therapeutic medium has been a great success and provided women from across the African diaspora with mutual support in their new country. Within this welcoming environment these women work to identify and address practical and emotional issues as well as educate themselves about their rights and day-to-day life in the UK. The Horn of Africa Community Group makes a considerable difference to women’s lives and consequently, the lives of their families. The women who participate, open up and grow in confidence within this safe and welcoming environment.

Older Residents

YPM have carried out a number of group and intergenerational activities on behalf of older people. This has dovetailed with Hyde’s work at Kennington Park where a luncheon club was developed and run by members. This club also grew into a social club as people attended events, residentials, oral history in partnership with the Imperial War Museum and many other activities. Hyde has a sheltered housing scheme that was also active in this area and this will be built upon. Lingham Court also has a supported residential scheme and YPM have partnered with this organisation in the past. The issue of support around Dementia is an area which we hope to access in partnership with the health authority. We would also wish this group to develop its own agenda and strong membership. The intergenerational aspect is something that will evolve as young volunteers work alongside older residents.

Lone Parents

With almost 50% of lone parents unemployed, YPM will seek to attract and work with this group through partnership with Hyde and local children’s centres. Hyde had carried out a programme in partnership with the borough to work with this group and support those with children under five. YPM will devise a needs lead programme of personal development, advice and information and employability.

Health and Well-Being

This will take the form of advice and information through group work, one to one sessions and physical activities. The health authority will be contacted in order to forge a partnership where we may be able to access satellite provision in the building. This could include health MOT’s where residents have a chat with a nurse and get basic health checks and advice. Sexual health is a subject that YPM have also delivered to young people, as a member of the pan-London Come Correct scheme. There may well be the need to develop culturally sensitive provision around FGM and HIV for particular communities and women only provision. On the sports side we intend to develop programmes for those interested in developing coaching qualifications and this can involve local providers. Hyde in the past worked with older residents at Kennington Park and this involved encouraging them to get Gym membership through Brixton Recreation Centre. The Health and Well-being has a lot of development scope, we already have enquiries from fitness instructors, martial arts teachers, and a call from local residents for various other programmes including yoga and young mums yoga.

Satellite Advice and Information, Citizens Advice Centre

The programme will provide a part time provision for residents who require advice and guidance with issues relating to housing, finance of other legal and important matters. We are currently working towards bringing a Citizens Advice Bureau service online at the Old Laundry. We already have resident volunteers who have completed CAB training ready to work. Hyde also provides an element of financial inclusion and this will be an area we can access for Hyde residents. We will also be able to broker relationships between Hyde and residents where people are at risk of losing their homes due to financial distress. Many residents prefer to come to YPM to access support in the first instance rather than go to Hyde as they may feel intimidated by official letters. Translation will also be an important aspect of this work and we will access this service largely through volunteers.

Stages

Stage One – Development and Community Engagement

This will be the initial outreach stage in which Community Matters will provide a series of events and activities that will target the various groups. We will use slightly different methods depending on intended target group. For instance, “NEET,” we do not envisage young people attending a “Coffee Morning” but this may appeal to older residents or another group. But members from various groups will and do share similar personal and community oriented goals which can be accessed and achieved through another service on offer. YPM will use the Our Place pilots, as well as previous experience to develop an appropriate strategy. During this phase the recruitment and engagement of the individual is important, as it is here that Community Matters will get to know the individual and begin to build a relationship of trust.

Stage Two – Engaging with New Service Provision

Two ways forward: individual structured programme, or general referral to service or direct access

Individual tailored programme

At this stage the individual has built up a relationship with the project and we are now in a position to assess their needs to direct them onto a programme. This stage will provide high quality information, advice and guidance to enable young people, as well as their parents and carers, seniors and community members alike, to make thoughtful and well-informed choices about their next steps in education, training or employment, or indeed any of the programmes brought online at the hub. At this stage -the programme becomes trigger to access the kaleidoscope of life enhancement programmes.

This may be an initial personal development programme where we look at issues around building their confidence through individual life plan. This is also a fantastic opportunity for people to meet others and engage in relationship or team building which will be invaluable skills later on. This will also afford YPM the opportunity to see the level of commitment that people have and to assess their suitability to a various programmes. We are mindful that different people will have different experiences and it is important that we are able to assess whether a person is ready for one programme as opposed to another. If the experience received is a negative one then this could be detrimental to a person’s experience on the programme. At the end of this phase the person will be placed onto a short induction programme that will lead onto their full placement. YPM have expertise in a variety of programmes and our experience of training will enable us to ensure that members are elevated to the appropriate levels and sign-posted where need arise. Whilst in this phase and beyond, in order to retain people, there will need to be adequate engagement in order to encourage retention. There is likely to be exit at this stage too and it is important that if someone decides to leave a specific programme they do not fall out of the project completely. For this reason we will ensure there are opportunities for feedback and small and informal group workshops to develop opportunities for feedback throughout the Community Matters project.