Six months prior to the start of the traineeships, Thames Reach established a peer support and consultation group for staff with experience of service use.
This Service Users at Work Group (SU @ WG) was consulted on the format and content of the traineeships, and on organisational policies and practices that affected service user employees. It also provided support to trainees and new members of staff with a history of homelessness.
The group was an indispensable resource in setting up the GROW traineeships. It was also fundamental in bringing about organisational attitude change to the concept of employing people with experience of homelessness and overcoming practical issues that were acting as a barrier to the employment of service users.
The group was extremely useful and hugely successful in both its support and consultation roles for approximately one year.
Breaking the silence
The GROW Manager sent a Thames Reach global email appealing to all employees who may have experienced homelessness. It also asked managers if they knew of any employees who had openly shared their prior homelessness experiences. This could mean anything from street living to simply having used one of the services homeless agencies offer.
There were eight former service users willing to offer their time to help Thames Reach develop routes into employment for service users and remove organisational barriers to employing other service users. All GROW trainees would be expected to attend as part of the terms of their traineeship.
How and when?
The group was advertised through the Thames Reach staff newsletter, the intranet, by email and word of mouth. It met once a month at one of the projects. The GROW manager began the initial arranging and chairing of the meeting, after which a rota was drawn up so all members could have the opportunity to chair and minute a meeting. This gave the trainees good experience in the two fundamental roles of any meeting.
What?
The group consulted on much of the GROW scheme setup, giving advice and suggestions for GROW procedures and support, based on either their own successes and struggles or those of their clients.
They helped with amendments to all the policies which dealt with employment such as the Code of Conduct.
They supported each other and they supported the first two sets of GROW trainees. They began to break organisational taboo and barriers, addressing any prejudices and answering questions about being an ex-service user in work.
