Beyond4Walls, Wheatley Group

The project gave the young people the opportunity to make a real contribution to their communities by reflecting and conveying others’ experiences to shape future policies on housing. They were involved in all stages of the research and the questions they asked were shaped by their experiences and priorities.

The young people carried out traditional surveys and other research methods to speak to staff, customers and other young people. They also incorporated an ethnographic element – experiencing being given keys to a home and recording their thoughts and feelings.  Using this innovative Participatory Peer Research approach meant that the research was carried out with young people rather than on young people. It also gave them the chance to have their opinions heard, affect change in their communities and to challenge the stigma experienced by young people.

Outcomes and impact 

• Personalised advice and information content, approach and formats for young customers by utilising formats like videos and apps to present information in an understandable and accessible way.
• Redevelopment of Wheatley websites to  become mobile friendly and enhance accessibility for users, including young people.
• Websites integrated with social media to embed opportunity to increase online sharing.
• Young people (apprentices) included in user design and testing of new websites.
• Refreshed training package for frontline housing staff including points on competencies and behaviours needed when working with young customers.           
• Further research into how families use their new build properties and the importance of design of new properties for satisfaction and wellbeing, including a review of the recording of satisfaction levels to better understand impact of new homes on people’s lives.          
• Helping ensure younger people are represented for participation in Tenant Inspections.

Winner of 2016 UK Housing Excellence Award for youth engagement.

“Although co-production has challenges it is incredibly rewarding. Be prepared to invest both time and resources into your project and you will get rewards. There were times where we, as a project team thought we’d never get things up and running. However, perseverance paid off and even though we did not recruit exactly the way wanted to or find as many people as we’d like to have, what we did get was real in-depth quality.

“Trust is massively important. We had to put a great deal of trust in the partner organisations (Poverty Alliance and Children in Scotland) to deliver what was a challenging set of requirements, and we had to trust the young people to create a project that was meaningful to them as well as us. We found that by giving them flexible guidelines helped. We worked around key themes and encouraged the young people to interpret those in a meaningful way to them.

“Young people are more honest with their peers and I’m under no illusions that without taking this approach to this project and by trusting the young researchers, we would not have got the depth and quality of responses that we did.

“Along the way there many things which worked and many that didn’t. However, it is important to harness the enthusiasm of the group and try not to rule things out immediately. It might not be possible to do everything, however, often there are comprises that can be met. “Tenancy takeover” came from the idea that young people wanted to stay overnight in one of our properties. Given safety concerns, we couldn’t let that happen. However, we found a good compromise which worked for everyone and proved the most exciting and innovate part of the project for the project team, the organisation, the researchers and the local housing office who helped out.”

Innovative work like this provided many learning opportunities and things to consider for the future:

Key Insights:

Ways of working

• The benefits of involving young people at every stage - from peer-led research to communication, testing and evaluation. This ensured that the project was a true reflection of their thoughts and feelings, making the findings more robust and reliable.
• Bring young people from different worlds together to gain a wide range of views and opinions and build opportunities. Within our team we had young people who had experience of homelessness, being an asylum seeker, and someone who had their own tenancy.
• To work well, participatory research needs to fit into the lives of these involved. This could involve meeting in different locations and at different times, as well as collaborative work being done online.
• Ultimately, trust young people to make decisions.

Lessons learned - engagement

• Engaging with young people for a project like this requires careful consideration. Young people will have differing life circumstances, confidence levels and experiences, which will shape and influence their capacity for involvement in participatory research projects. Understanding their needs is critical to constructing a project that is supportive and will build the capacity of the young people involved.
• Effective recruitment is one of the keys to success. This process takes time and a number of strategies to reach young people from different backgrounds should be considered. Don’t forget about young people who are already engaging with you, e.g. bursary students and apprentices. It is important to acknowledge that external links with organisations and services supporting young people take time to build and projects may be competing with other volunteering opportunities for young people. As a result, it is important to give yourself time for recruitment and ideally pre-empt this by forging links early and even use their experience to help shape your recruitment process 
• Project development must be inclusive and considerate of the barriers and challenges that young people may face when taking part. Building in mechanisms to address issues, such as financial constraints or childcare, will be critical to enabling a cross section of young people to take part. The training and on-going support provided to young people is critical to the success of the project. Training needs to be pitched and delivered at a suitable pace for a range of learning needs and abilities and allow the group to move at a pace in accordance with their abilities. In addition, building trust and a positive group dynamic will take time to establish. This is, again, a critical foundation to the delivery of participatory research projects.
• Flexible models of delivery of peer research projects are required to allow young people to be able to effectively participate. This can be supported in a number of ways but, ideally, must be tailored organically within the project to support young people’s circumstances. One approach utilised within this project was choosing to hold sessions in the evening to fit in within young people’s studying and working situations, as opposed to weekend sessions.
• Meaningful participation work needs to be well-resourced and supported and this project had a core project team, including mentors, to allow young people the opportunity to get support on project work or other life issues. This provided a foundation to enable the project team to adapt to young people’s changing needs and situations.
• A project such as this involves dialogue and change. For organisations commissioning participation work, it is important to work towards a culture of effective participation and to be aware of how this may differ from traditional project delivery.
• Project timescales and outputs will need to be flexible and responsive to the needs and situations of young researchers
• Clear communication and plans are required to ensure that those participating are involved throughout all stages of the project and that participation is meaningful – avoiding tokenism – and creates a basis for dialogue and change.

Lessons learned - safeguarding  

• When working with young people as peer researchers and as research participants, a number of safeguarding issues must be considered and should be a key priority for any project of this type.
• Young people’s physical and emotional wellbeing is paramount and requires on-going and structured mechanisms to be embedded within the project to ensure that issues and/or potential wellbeing concerns can be addressed effectively.
• Staff who are trained in safeguarding must be placed within the project team. All staff and volunteers working with young people in the project should be subject to relevant disclosure checks for their role.
• Projects need to have clear processes and procedures for issues of safeguarding and ensure that they are compliant with the legal requirements surrounding such work. Training sessions and support sessions need to be structured to allow project staff to address concerns that may arise and to be able to act appropriately as required. Clear structures for reporting to a designated child protection officer must be identified prior to beginning any work with young people in this context.
• Clear and effective communication structures are required from all those involved in the work.
• The complex nature of safeguarding means that specialist information should be sought from the appropriate bodies and agencies within the field, such as Disclosure Scotland and Volunteer Scotland to ensure that information is fully up to date if, for example, like this project, you are working with regulated groups.

Young people who are volunteering as researchers should have a clear understanding of the importance of safeguarding and should be closely monitored and supervised during all stages of the project. Debriefing and support should be provided in light of any sensitive issues arising during the project. In addition, duty of care should also be emphasised to those participating in any fieldwork, in terms of procedures following any concerns.

Beyond4Walls was more than just research; it was about appreciating the talents and skills within communities and finding a way to build on these strengths. For everyone involved, it was important that young people should be at the heart of how decisions are made in communities and this project took real steps towards making this a reality.

Want to find out more?

Sharon.muirhead@wheatley-group.com

http://content.yudu.com/web/14los/0A3xuvg/Beyond4Walls/flash/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.yudu.com%2Fweb%2F14los%2F0A3xuvg%2FBeyond4Walls%2Findex.html

https://prezi.com/krm4c49ceq73/we-are-beyond4walls/

http://www.povertyalliance.org/article/b4w_report

https://www.eurochild.org/fileadmin/public/04_News/Members/Beyond4Walls_press_release.pdf

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/lorna-wilson-give-young-a-voice-and-listen-to-it-1-3986367