Participation Project: Listening, learning, and taking action

Together Trust has launched a new Participation Project, giving service users the opportunity to shape the future.

This initiative is all about better understanding the lives of the people who use the services: the challenges they face, the things that matter most to them, and how they can work with the operator to make a difference.

And the learnings will help guide policy work and campaigning, helping focus on the areas that matter most. 

The project asks three big questions: 

• How can we gather meaningful insights from the people that Together Trust supports?  
• How can we capture the voices of people with complex needs?  
• How can we build stronger feedback loops between our services and the work of our policy and campaigns?  

The journey so far

Over the past few months, participants have started working with a number of services, creating tailored plans to find the best way of listening to service users.

At Inscape House School, policy and campaigns Manager, Styliana, visited the student council to introduce the project and explain her role.

After some fun icebreakers, the students shared their thoughts and the topic they were most passionate about was rail accessibility.

Facilitators will return in the coming weeks to run an interactive session and gather their views in more detail, which they will use to shape future campaign work. 

At Inscape Vocational College the team met with some of the students and used games and gentle prompts to build trust and open up conversations, particularly around mental health.

Later this month they will return to explore the issues they feel should drive policy and campaigning work. 

And, at one of the group’s children’s residential homes, two visits have helped staff get to know young people and build trust through games and crafts as well as creating collages themed around school.

In the future work will focus on school and mental health, linking into the trust’s work on emotionally-based school avoidance.

“It was amazing to meet the young people and staff in person,” said Styliana.

“It gave us the opportunity to start building a relationship with the young people and staff, with the intention of returning to engage the young people through different activities.

“The aim is to understand their needs, wishes, and feelings and ensure these are reflected in the direction of our policy and campaigning work.

“This is just the beginning, and we’re excited to keep strengthening these connections.”

What’s next? 

The team will continue working closely with these three services and start connecting with more people across our wider services.

The goal is to make sure the voices of the service users remain at the heart of policy and campaigning work.