Sarah Thompson

Lead officer for housing
Selby District Council

Reaching the final of the 2015 Rising Stars competition has been a truly amazing experience - I’ve taken part in a live Twitter debate; calibrated my moral compass by testing my ethics and met lots of new people with different ideas and different thoughts.

I have met and collaborated with two girls who are equally as passionate about housing as I am. So when I look back over the competition I can’t help but think: what is most important for housing, competition or collaboration?

I like competition. Competition is known for bringing out the best in people and in a competition we challenge ourselves to do the best we can. In our competitive world as a sector we strive for our voice to be heard above others, for our good work to be understood and as we move into more commercial ventures, competition seems more important than ever. But what about collaboration, could that be the new competition?

Working as a team on our final task we shared experiences and ideas and together we created a marketing campaign to recruit new talent into the housing sector. 

Through collaboration we succeeded in creating something that was greater than the sum of our parts. Our partnership ethos at Selby has led to some great success working across North Yorkshire and the Leeds City Region and we are starting to build really positive relationships with our health partners.

As a sector the need to work collaboratively is essential to ensure these colleagues understand the positive and proactive impact housing can have on health.  When budgets are split thinly our natural reaction is to compete but we will all win if we collaborate. 

And for this reason I won’t say why you should vote for me, of course I would love to win and I would work really hard as the Rising Star, promoting what we all believe in. 

But today it doesn’t really matter who you vote for, just vote, vote for Housing, vote for collaboration; and lets commit to working together to raise our profile, to recruiting new talent and to doing what we do best – together let’s make a difference.  

Caitlin Farrow

Strategy policy manager
Peabody

Working in housing it’s easy to get caught up in the busyness of your job. The Rising Stars competition – through activities like the heated Twitter debate - has challenged me to think beyond the day-to-day: what is the role of housing professionals in shaping the future of housing in our country?

There are lots of things we can improve in our organisations. I’ve learnt that this is an ambitious sector: from the push to build more homes, to the focus on improving residents’ lives I’ve seen in the two other finalists Julie and Sarah. In Shipley we saw a vision of future ambition in the shape of GEM graduates at InCommunities.

But housing professionals also need to be more engaged in the political sphere: show government the value of what we do; and speak up when policies will prevent us from fulfilling our aims or will be damaging to our residents (both current and future).

Extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants is a perfect example.

I’m proud to work at Peabody with a history going back 153 years to George Peabody’s incredible founding bequest. Our homes play an important role in keeping London mixed and providing good quality homes for future generations – a legacy George Peabody would be proud of.

Right to Buy will not help solve the housing crisis and will likely lead to fewer affordable homes and fewer mixed communities in London. Now’s the time for housing professionals to speak up for their sector. We are not the enemies of aspiration. A) Peabody builds hundreds of homes for sale and shared ownership every year. B) Social housing gives people the stability they need to achieve their ambitions; and associations like Peabody help them there too – through employment, training and advice.

Rising Stars has helped me to find a voice in housing and made me realise that together housing professionals have the experience, knowledge and ideas to stand up and solve the housing crisis.

Julie Wass

Customer service senior
North Lincolnshire Homes

Nearly two months after hearing the news that my Rising Stars entry had secured me a place as finalist in the most prestigious award for ‘up and coming’ professionals in social housing, whether I win the competition or not, I am a better professional and person.

During this competition I have taken every possible opportunity to broaden my knowledge and skills, seeking out opportunities to develop myself, my networks and ideas knowing that this is a once in a lifetime chance. I am an ambitious professional, but my reason for doing this, was with the intention of developing my ability to make a positive difference for my customers and beyond.

When faced with the tasks I kept this in mind, and it reduced my fears about opening up and putting myself out there, telling people what I am all about and why.

I can tell you at first I was nervous, in fact this was probably the hardest part of the competition for me!

As the tasks continued, although I experienced a healthy bit of nerves at times, it was mixed in with excitement and I completed all the tasks being true to myself.

This meant bunting displays and running an election style campaign with rosettes, balloons and glitter along the way! When I do something there is usually a bit of bunting and glitter involved!

The Twitter debate was fantastic and I am proud the way my Twitter network has developed over the last couple of months. Starting out I had 30 followers and used Twitter to choose a new menu for dinner every night and share a few gym tips.

Now I have over 400 followers and use the platform to keep myself up to date with everything social housing! The knowledge and ideas base is immense and I am now part of it!

The ethical interviews were a great experience, totally out of my comfort zone having to explain my answers to scenarios that I couldn’t have predicted. As I had no direction on what they were looking for, all I could do was try to make sure I shared what I wanted them to know about me!

I tried hard to display my beliefs. A great example of how this journey has changed me for the better is the events of last Saturday morning where I went to visit a Conservative MP asking for his vote.

When asked about my opinions on social housing I confidently and clearly gave them from the heart. I explained that I know from personal experience the most important thing in a person’s life is the home.

That a decent home forms the safe and stable environment that is needed to develop healthy aspirations and be successful in life. That I work in housing to provide that to others and that I intend to work towards gaining the industry the recognition from government it deserves and seek its support to allow social housing to continue to provide this.

Not bad for someone who just under two months ago felt nervous about sharing her story! I got his vote and he has event put me and a voting link on his website! (In case you’re wondering so did the Labour MP!)

My journey has been great and it won’t stop here regardless of if I am crowned Rising Star, but if I am lucky enough to be successful in my efforts to become this year’s star, the winning prizes of a mentor for a year, time spent with CIH’s leaders and the chance to visit 10 Downing Street will be invaluable to developing and applying my ability to make a bigger difference. So I kindly ask you, if you like what you see #voteforjulie!