Smaller Associations make a big difference | Homeless International Hour's Pay Campaign |
The Association signs up to become Champions of the Wirral Compact | Market Wells Foyer Praised |
Santa Dash Reflects Christmas Spirit | Respect Event | Ash Villas refurbishment |

Smaller Associations make a Big Difference Forum Housing Association took part in the inaugural North-West Association's Pursuit of Excellence in February, showing that small housing associations make a big difference in the North West. The event was attended by 150 staff, from NW Smaller Associations throughout the region of which 40 were from Forum.

A key focus for the conference was to explore how NW Associations can share experiences across their already successful organisations to improve performance and quality.

The Associations were delighted that the Audit Commission showed a great deal of enthusiasm for the conference and Paul Clarke - Lead Inspector North gave the event a great start as the keynote speaker.

Paul was supported by a wide range of notable speakers, Sian Evans (Weightmans), Annie Hopley (TPAS) and Samantha Miller (Housing Diversity Network) each addressing key cross cutting themes.

Chris Allen, Chief Executive of Forum and Chair of the NW Group, commented:

"Our first regional conference has proved a major success for everybody involved, including our event organisers from Just Housing and Just One Training and Recruitment.

Particular positives from the conference are the collaborative working of the Associations in the group and the encouragement the event has provided for increased staff and Board member networking and further collaboration on joint training activities and initiatives across the NW region."

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Homeless International Hour's Pay Campaign The Association was recently thanked by Homeless International for participating in their annual Hour's Pay Campaign. World Habitat Day, the first Monday of October, is recognised around the world for focusing attention on developing human settlements for the 1 billion people who lack adequate shelter.

The Hour's Pay Campaign is held on this day to help highlight the true extent of a problem that is largely overlooked.

The Hour’s Pay supporters raised more than £32,000 last year, providing crucial support to Homeless International projects.

The campaign contributes to life-changing developments throughout the world - and because Homeless International only supports long-term, sustainable initiatives, all money raised will continue to have an impact on many low-income communities.

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The Association signs up to become Champions of the Wirral Compact The Compact is the agreement between local public bodies (such as the Local Authority) and voluntary groups to improve their relationship for mutual advantage. It helps to join everything up and do things together that make a difference.

It makes commitments on both sides, clarifies what partners can expect from each other and how to work together.

The Wirral Compact is based on the following areas :- Trust and confidence, mutual understanding and respect, openness and transparency, accountability and integrity, leadership and common purpose and listening and good communication.

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Market Wells Foyer Praised In auditing the Association's Market Wells Foyer for renewed accreditation to the Foyer Federation's Accreditation Scheme, external assessors have been highly complimentary both of the project and the Association as a whole.

In their summary, the Foyer Federation state that Market Wells provides a high quality Foyer service as part of a range of supported housing services for young people in the Wirral area. In the body of the report they site many specific examples of innovation and strong practice across the service and note that these include areas that Foyers have traditionally found challenging, such as resident participation and service reviews.

In specific key areas the Foyer Federation assessors comment:

Staff and Resident Representatives
Staff are managed and developed as an integrated team to deliver a consistent and responsive service that meets the needs of young people. There is a clear and consistent staffing structure in place across the group's projects, with a strong and professional management team at Head Office to support the operational project managers. Forum provides a strong staff training programme and there is clear evidence of investment in staff development.

That Forum Housing has made a substantial investment in the development of resident involvement and has developed an innovative and effective model for resident participation and consultation. The auditors believe that central to this are Forum's Residents Reps, whose age range and shared backgrounds enable the residents to readily identify with them. The Resident Reps are well supported by Forum, with clearly defined roles and personal development goals. The team provides an extremely valuable resource for both residents and staff and are instrumental in advocating Forum’s approach to external audiences.

Resident Feedback
Residents have an extremely positive attitude to Forum's team of Resident Reps and feel that the system works well. "If you have a problem or issue you can take it to them and something always gets done" being a typical comment.

Finance
That the Foyer is financially stable and benefits from being part of a specialist supported housing provider, which enables much of the management overhead to be shared across the group's projects.

Building
That the building itself is in a good state of repair and provides a welcoming and pleasant environment.

Conclusion
That there is a strong Foyer ethos at Market Wells, which is unambiguously understood by staff, residents and partner agencies.

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Santa Dash Reflects Christmas Spirit For the third successive year residents enjoyed taking part in Liverpool's 5K Santa Dash charity fun run. The day was an enormous success and a lot of fun with around 7,000 Santas completing the course! Whilst the Santa Dash was great fun for those involved, it was also about helping people and healthy living, two themes not to lose sight of over the festive period.

One of our residents was in early pregnancy when she took part last year and back this year with a beautiful baby boy enjoying the course from the comfort of his pram! Including the two little ones accompanied by their resident mums, Forum had twenty two participants, as pictured, all of whom were winners, by completing the course. Next year Liverpool will again challenge Las Vegas for the Guinness book of world records for the most Santas in one place at one time.

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Respect Event On Tuesday 4th December, over thirty young people and several staff came together to explore the implications of gang culture for our communities at an event chaired by Maureen Thompson, Chair of the Wirral Youth Court.

The event was planned in order that we might better educate ourselves about life on the streets, but to also consider how the Association might work differently and innovatively to ensure that residents feel safe and that local issues that concern them are tackled through citizenship and open dialogue. Hoodies and ASBOs, guns and knives, are all words that conjure a rising and threatening underworld culture. The Rhys Jones murder in Liverpool is one of many recent tragedies and all too close to home.

Another issue the group discussed is a tendency for some adults, exacerbated by recent high media coverage, to class young people as a whole as perpetrators of anti-social behaviour; and how such a response might impact community. The Association was given permission to use MacIntyre's Underworld series shown earlier in the year on Channel 5. Leading up to the event, residents with staff watched the television series and on the day viewed extracts of the series before breaking into groups to discuss key areas. In addition, staff acted out other roles representing other groups or services that might have a bearing on local community life or on groups. These roles covered the Youth Justice System, Police, Social Workers, Teachers and the wider community. Proceedings concluded with a question and answer session.

The event produced some useful information and a raft of ideas for future similar events. In the New Year the Association will be expanding delivery of the Behaviour and Lifestyles' policy and the evidence of the Respect event will go someway to influence future policies and practices across the organisation.

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Ash Villas' Refurbishment Ash Villas in Wallasey provides 54 units of high quality accommodation for single, young people aged 16 - 25 in need of housing and support. "The refurbishment of Ash Villas has been greatly anticipated, it is a very exciting time for the Project.

The work will continue on the flats, at the same time the work will begin on the new administration building. The administration block will be separate as we are following the model of the Beacon Project in Birkenhead, having linking corridors from the administration building to the three blocks. This will also create room on the bottom of block two, allow more flats to be included - increasing the provision of supported accommodation to the local area."

Ann Kinsella - Ash Villas Project Manager

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