Bringing community voices to local and national projects
There’s been a positive momentum to our work so far this year, as we’ve taken on new projects that came to us through the relationships we’ve built. At the halfway mark of the year, we wanted to take time to pause, reflect on the progress we’re making and share it with you. Here are our reflections on the work we’ve been doing, highlighting what we’re learning, and recognising with gratitude the contributions of everyone involved.Right from the very beginning of Just Ideas, it was our intention to work towards social environmental justice. During the 18 years we’ve been working together, as a company and a collaborative, in partnership with other organisations, our purpose has been consistent: to create a more equitable, just and inclusive world.
We’re really proud of the specialist teams we’re able to assemble at Just Ideas, bringing valuable lived experience, skills and expertise to the work we’re doing. Through these teams, we’re able to deliver a really high standard of work in facilitation and training, learning and evaluation and community engagement.
Our community engagement work
Addiction Healthcare Goals
We’ve now wrapped up our work with Ipsos on Addiction Healthcare Goals, in partnership with WSA Community. This programme, run by the Office for Life Sciences, aims to use addiction healthcare data more effectively to design research, treatment and technology that helps save and improve people’s lives, and reduces harm to people and communities. Our role was to make sure the voices of addiction treatment service users were represented in the research and recommendations, as well as the voices of people working with them at a grassroots, frontline level.
We ran our final peer advisory group (PAG), inviting a representative from the Office for Life Sciences, and received great feedback from everyone involved. The group members felt their experience was helping to shape how data is used in drug and alcohol research. The Senior Policy Advisor at the Office for Life Sciences expressed gratitude to them directly for providing insightful, thoughtful design support and serving as a valuable sounding board throughout the process.
“I’ve been so impressed with the process and outcomes of the lived experience and workforce engagement work you have collectively led. It was a privilege to join the PAG and it was clear to see that the members of that group were providing thoughtful input and a well-reasoned response to the direction of the work… I also really valued the inclusion of the process of engagement, as this can serve as an ‘instruction manual’ for gold-standard LE engagement for policy and researchers going forward in this healthcare space and others.”
Senior Policy Advisor, Office for Life Sciences
Digital ID
Just Ideas was invited by Ipsos to work in partnership with WSA Community to provide focused community engagement for the Cabinet Office’s public consultation on a proposed national digital ID system.
We reached out to selected groups of people and interviewed them about the potential impact of the Digital ID. Together with WSA Community, we interviewed 180 individuals from groups including people with learning disabilities, older people, younger people, people who have come out of prison, people who have experienced domestic violence, people from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, people from the Windrush generation, people experiencing homelessness, and people who are legally migrated but without passports.
The aim was to talk with people who have difficulty proving their ID, who face barriers accessing digital services or who are either positively or negatively impacted by the Digital ID scheme, or less likely to engage through the online public consultation. Using our trauma-informed training, we talked each group through the proposed approach to digital ID, and listened so their views could be taken into account in the process of designing the scheme.
Using our creative communication skills, we made sure the people we talked with understood the details around confidentiality and data protection.
Some conversations were difficult because views around Digital ID have become so politicised. The really positive thing we noticed was that most people, whether digitally excluded or not, were thinking about others in society for whom this scheme might be a challenge, including the potential impact for disabled people and for carers. Across the board, people had that consideration and awareness.
We participated in analysis sessions with Ipsos, exploring themes in what we’d heard and highlighting what stood out. Ipsos used the findings to inform a deliberative dialogue process, asking a representative group of people from around the UK for their thoughts on potential challenges and how they might be overcome.
We’re proud that we managed to reach so many people, and have so many conversations, within a very tight timeframe, bringing community voices to this scheme at a national level.
“Thanks again for all the excellent work so far. I can tell from the field notes and transcripts that the conversations are being led with great sensitivity, curiosity and respect.”
Assistant Director, Health and Social Care at Ipsos
Innovative Facilities Fund
Just Ideas is excited to be a part of this project evaluating a pilot investment in community sports facilities across England. The project focuses on areas of the country experiencing deprivation and where people may not engage in sport. This is the kind of work we love doing – bringing the voices of people in communities to help shape projects that could make a really positive impact on their lives.
When we got the go-ahead in March, we started bringing together a community advisory group for this project, including people who are underrepresented in community sport. The particular focus is on cricket, tennis, football and basketball, and building new grassroots sports facilities in different places across England.
Our advisory group includes people from groups currently underrepresented in community sport, such as disabled people, people from ethnic minority communities, particularly black and Asian communities, older people over 75 and, broadly, women. We created a graphic to help recruit group members, and got an amazing 66 applications, from which we selected 18 people. We’ve managed to get a representative from every region of the country, and the group meets for the first time in June.
Because most of these facilities are not yet built, our work can be really formative. We’ll be able to ask people what they want to see, what will motivate them to participate in sport. We’ll also invite them to help us design how we go and talk to people in communities in the fieldwork stage.
Across August, September, we’ll make case study visits to the places where facilities will be built, working in partnership with Ipsos. The advisory group will meet once during that fieldwork period, so we can let them know what’s emerging and invite their views. They’ll meet again in October, to shape recommendations that come out of what we’ve heard.
The team is Richard, Helen and Aideen, who is also going to be part of the community advisory group because of her lived experience as someone with cerebral palsy and her experience chairing Cerebral Palsy Sport. Our associate Eddy created the recruitment graphic and will contribute live visual reporting at the advisory group meetings.
Our evaluation work
The Phoenix Project
We’re in the first year of our work as evaluation and learning partners for The Phoenix Project, which is being delivered by Servol Community Services with funding from Commonweal Housing. This pilot project provides a temporary home for ex-offenders, and support when it is needed with mental and physical health, life skills and future employment and accommodation.
Just Ideas’ team of Richard, Monica, Shae and Jamie are doing a longitudinal evaluation over three years and work is going well. Our approach involves going to the accommodation where Servol staff have been building relationships with organisations like NACRO and the contact points for people leaving prison, particularly men with serious mental health issues. We visited the accommodation in February and May, focusing on building relationships with the staff and individuals living there.
Having a residential setting like this, with flexible support available, is unusual. The funders, Commonweal Housing, are interested in finding out what kind of difference it makes having this accommodation as a place to live with support provided by specialist staff, when so often ex-offenders experience homelessness or insecure accommodation. We’ve talked with service users and staff about their experience, the difference it makes having this accommodation, and how this approach to supporting people is helpful.
Eddy joined the team to do some graphic reporting, and their graphic, ‘Phoenix Flow’, talks about the expected experience of individuals in this accommodation, what’s helping them and the difference it’s making.
In July we facilitated a learning workshop together with Commonweal and Servol, in our role as evaluators and learning partners.
Our facilitation and training work
One of our contacts got in touch earlier this year, to ask us to run some participatory development training with a group of students on a short course at Harper Adams University. Helen and Richard designed the training and asked our associate Esther to join us in delivering it, as Esther’s from Kenya and has a PhD in communication around agriculture.
Helen and Esther ran two full days of residential training with a group of students from different countries in Africa, and one from India. The students were practitioners working in agriculture, each sponsored to attend a university course in sustainable agriculture by their organisation, whether it was a charity, an NGO, a part of government, or an education institution, and funded by the Marshal Papworth Fund.
Our training was facilitative and participatory, filled with role play (one involving a goat who broke through a fence!) and lots of experience brought by the students themselves. We explored why and how they should increase engagement and participation of people in communities where they work, as some of them were extension workers with villages. The students loved the training and kept saying the rest of the course needs to be more like this. It’ll be really interesting to see how our training impacts the rest of their learning.
“Truly appreciate the two day session. It has brought so much awareness about the small things that we do in our work that can have a huge impact. It is important to be a good facilitator – consider and respect everyone. Thank you so much Helen and Esther.”
Course participant
“A very wonderful experience – the presenters were very accommodating and made learning easier. Happy faces!” Course participant
Big Local and Local Trust
The Big Local program has now drawn to a close, but Just Ideas was invited to support The Hub @ Toothill, a legacy organisation of Toothill Big Local, to help with their thinking about future sustainability by developing a theory of change. The theory of change describes how the activities of the hub will make a positive difference in the community – a useful approach to share with people in the community and future funders.
Richard ran two sessions with our associate Simon, both of which went very well. We incorporated the outcomes in a graphic created by Eddy, bringing this theory of change to life. We had some really good feedback on our facilitation and training work from Local Trust, who ran the Big Local programme.
“I wanted to thank you all for your help and support. Your excellent sessions with both staff and Big Local learning sessions have been appreciated. I could always rely on you to deliver what was needed from the brief given. You were always so open to doing whatever was needed and being so friendly to everyone on the day, setting the right tone and providing the expert knowledge we know we always get from you at Just Ideas.”
Pamela Tomsett, Support Manager, Local Trust
Inclusion Scotland
We’ve done two pieces of work this year with Inclusion Scotland. The first was a small piece of work helping the charity to understand and gather views and experiences of disabled people in Scotland on the Access to Work Scheme. Just Ideas ran a survey to gather those perspectives and did some interviews to inform this research.
We’re now working with the charity on their Access to Politics work. We are facilitating a series of workshops with a co-design group of disabled people to develop a new charter.
This is led by Aideen, Eddy and Laura, who are facilitating a number of sessions with the co-design group to develop a charter that commits political parties to taking meaningful action to remove barriers and increase disabled people’s participation in political life. The new charter is due to launch in September.
Just Ideas Collaborative
We had a great, hybrid Just Ideas Collaborative gathering before Christmas, which people joined in person and online. You can find out more about the Just Ideas Collaborative here.
Keep in contact
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We look forward to updating you on our progress again, later in the year.
Richard, Helen and the Just Ideas Collaborative.