Participation and Empowerment

‘Participation’ is a process of involvement that empowers individuals and creates projects and services based on actual needs and aspirations, rather than assumptions.

The purpose of our Participation Project under Equal was to ensure that homeless individual’s participated and influenced the TMD London programme. The project included the collation of participation best practice from across the partnership, a work placement programme, and the Empowerment and Innovation fund.

“When you are homeless you are invisible and not heard. The Equal project puts you at centre stage and you’re out there getting involved in making decisions” - TMD London participant

The TMD London projects were shaped in response to the needs of the participating homeless individuals using a range of participation mechanisms. As a result of this work we produced the OSW Participation Principle (1.2 Mb), including key principles and practical ‘How To’ guides, tools and templates, for participation activity.

The OSW in-house work placement supported six individuals towards employment and further education. We produced a Good Practice Guide to Work Placement Schemes (924 Kb), to encourage and support other homelessness organisations to develop their own in-house work placement scheme for those with multiple disadvantages.

For more information about OSW work on client participation, including the Equal-funded Empowerment and Innovation fund, visit the Client Participation section of this website.

Customer Care

Our research shows that homeless people rarely have direct impact on the services they themselves use. Can we honestly say that services are currently led by customers’ needs?

To address such issues, we launched our Customer Care project, aimed at providing organisations with an opportunity to drive and implement customer care into their policy and practice. OSW, in partnership with Cardboard Citizens, ran an interactive training programme for leading organisations, using Forum Theatre techniques, to help participants appreciate the experience of being a homeless customer.

We also ran a research programme covering homeless people as customers to inform the training and charter. We piloted a ‘Homeless Customer Charter’, in and outside London, to establish a baseline of customer expectations.

For more information on our Customer Care programme, visit the Customer Care section of this website.

The Right Deal for Homeless People

The Right Deal for Homeless People is intended to be a tailored, personalised programme for people with multiple barriers to employment, combined with holistic wraparound support from front line delivery agencies.

Our aim is to produce and promote a new model of service delivery which will draw on the lessons learnt from our Equal pilots, identifying what services need to be delivered, and how they should be delivered, to address the multiple barriers that homeless people face trying to access sustainable employment, and identifying how much the services cost.

For more information go to the Right Deal section of this site.