With flying colours
Resident volunteers are ahead of the game when it comes to the big society. Lydia Stockdale finds out how staff from a group of northern housing associations are making sure these active tenants receive formal recognition
Last week prime minister David Cameron relaunched his big society agenda and it got people talking. ‘How’s it going to work in light of public spending cuts?’, ask some. ‘What does it actually mean?’, others wonder. One group of people already know what the big society means to them - they’ve been building it for years. They are the resident volunteers.
Across the north, the Airport Group - 15 housing associations that have got together to engage with more than 400,000 residents - has launched a training programme to get these community-spirited individuals Chartered Institute of Housing accreditation for their work.
Learning opportunity
The active learning for residents training programme, developed by the CIH, was launched in January and involves social landlords including St Helens-based Helena Partnerships, Bradford-based Incommunities Group, Manchester-based Parkway Green Housing Trust and Cheshire Peaks & Plains Housing Trust.
Over a period of between six and 12 months, tenants will work towards a level 2 award in community action in housing. Instead of learning through formal training sessions, they’ll be mentored by 30 resident assessors, known as recognisers, who are employees of the Airport Group member organisations and were officially registered with the CIH last week.
This intermediary group of recognisers, who will often already know the tenants they’re working with, completed a two-day CIH training course at the end of last year. Now they will oversee the learning and development of these tenants as they work their way through the course.
‘In terms of the big society, housing is ahead of the game,’ says Ashraf Ahmed, the CIH resident involvement manager who trained the Airport Group recognisers. ‘There’s more demand on tenants doing things for themselves and this is a chance for those who are already doing this to get recognition.’
Individual organisations, including Hull Council, have also signed up to the CIH active learning programme for residents, which began as a two-year pilot in January 2007. The cost to individual organisations is a £2,250 registration fee for three years then £260 per learner on the level 2 course.
Helena Partnerships is leading this project on behalf of Airport Group. Rachel Molyneux, its learning and development coordinator, explains the group has a series of sub groups, including one focusing on worklessness - its members agreed they wanted to be involved in the programme. The group is paying for the scheme using its central funding pot.
Team work
At the moment, 13 of its 15 member organisations have a minimum of two trained recognisers and each recogniser is working with one tenant. Now it’s up to them to work together to complete the qualification which is made up of three modules: participation in community action; people and diversity in the community; and services for communities.
‘Once Ashraf has been in and trained the recognisers, it’s over to them really,’ Ms Molyneux explains. ‘All 13 organisations have gone away and are doing different things.’
Although they are employees, recognisers will often dedicate their own time to support tenants through the programme. Once completed, they’ll try to help them into further learning opportunities and, ultimately, into jobs. ‘Once they have the qualification they can become recognisers themselves,’ says Ms Molyneux.
Tried and tested
As for the big society, the qualification acts as recognition for tenants and their landlords who have long been working together for the benefit of their wider community.
‘Learners have been selected because they’re already involved in community action with housing associations, attending meetings and running community events, for example,’ sums up Ms Molyneux. ‘This is a reward scheme in a sense.’
In most cases, the tenants will achieve a qualification for recognising the work they’ve already done and explaining the value of the contributions they’ve made. ‘The work they’ll be doing [to achieve the qualification] is only what they’d be doing anyway, she explains. ‘This is nothing additional - they’re already doing it.’
A bit of recognition
As of last week, Jo McMahon, a project officer for community engagement at Helena Partnerships is a Chartered Institute of Housing-registered recogniser. For the next six months at least, she’ll be supporting tenant Stina Foxford while she works her way through the three modules that make up the CIH’s level 2 award in community action in housing.
It’s a recogniser’s job to ‘motivate tenants and coach them to come up with the answers we know they know, but they don’t always know they know’.
Ms McMahon believes the qualification ‘is recognition for work they’ve been doing for years and years’. ‘They’re enjoying volunteering, but they’re not getting any accreditation for it’, she adds. ‘This makes them realise how much they do.’
A lot of the work involved in the project is recognising what they’ve done already. ‘So it’s reflective of the roles they’ve played and the difference they’ve made,’ says Ms McMahon.
While working with tenants on this programme, it’s likely that recognisers will notice if individuals have not been involved in certain activities that they would have wanted to. In one module, for example, tenants have to identify three distinct community activities and the role they’ve played. This will highlight areas in which they lack skills and experience - for example, speaking at a meeting with the housing association.
Recognisers and tenants design a work plan together. ‘We want them to feel supported, so we’re guided by how often they want to meet,’ says Ms McMahon. ‘Initially we’ll meet up weekly, but they may say this is too much and that we only need to meet once every two weeks.’
Ms Foxford and Helen Arends, the two tenants that Helena Partnerships’ recognisers are working with, are both under 40 and unemployed, explains Ms McMahon. ‘They’re hoping to get back into the workplace,’ she says.
There seems to be strong demand for the programme. Ms Foxford and Ms Arends were selected on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, but now they’ve spoken about what they’re doing with other tenant volunteers others have asked to take part.
As for Ms McMahon herself, this was an opportunity not to be missed. ‘For me, this sums up what we’re all about,’ she says.
