Tackling stigma
We are proud to be one of 12 ‘pioneering travellers’ to support Stop Social Housing Stigma on its journey towards tackling negative stereotypes of social housing tenants.
The tenant-led group is working with Durham and Sheffield Hallam Universities, the Chartered Institute of Housing, TPAS and YD Consultants to develop a Tackling Stigma ‘Journey Planner.’
This Journey Planner is aimed at helping tenants and landlords work together to tackle stigma in housing and includes 12 clear commitments (‘tickets’).
These are:
(a) Progress moves at the speed of trust – doing what is necessary to build trust between tenants and the landlord
(b) Tenants Leading Change - enabling tenants to play leading roles in decision-making
(c) Fairness and hearing every voice – how do we ensure a diversity of opinions and inclusion of wide-ranging views?
(d) A culture of respect, listening, explanation, dialogue and partnership with tenants
(e) Tackling social housing stigma in communications
(f) Tackling social housing stigma in service delivery
(g) Tackling social housing stigma in repairs
(h) First-class staff that demonstrate values and respects and address conscious and unconscious stigmatising attitudes and behaviours
(i) Stigma and governance – ensuring the governing body considers how stigma impacts tenants and can be tackled
(j) Celebrating social housing, volunteers and community work done by tenants
(k) Enabling tenants as ambassadors to tackle social housing stigma
(l) Unite with tenants - work with the tenant movement to tackle societal social housing stigma
We invited colleagues, tenants and our contractors, Nurture, Ezee, R&J and Howards Decorators, to attend a pilot session with Stop Social Housing Stigma to help create action points around two of the ‘tickets’: Tackling social housing stigma in service delivery; and Tackling social housing stigma in repairs.
We will use this information to support the work we are already doing to make sure our tenants are listened to and not stigmatised.
This work will also support Stop Social Housing Stigma to test out their journey planner before it is shared across the wider sector.
Tammy Bradley, Executive Director (Operations and Support), said: “We are proud to be supporting Stop Social Housing Stigma as a pioneer traveller.
“It was a great event today discussing with tenants, contractors and colleagues the various ways in which our actions, assumptions and behaviours can positively affect change.
“It gave us the time and space to stop and think about the way in which we deliver services to tenants and how we might do things differently in the future. We are really looking forward to continuing our journey together with tenants.”
Here is what our tenants and contractors thought:
John said: “As a tenant, I have been brought up in council housing and so I know what it’s like.
“I am quite confident that with Progress Housing Group, things will change. I believe Progress gets it and this is part of the ongoing programme to improve tenant reputation. Their values are about wanting to do more and if you are part of that organisation, as a tenant, you feel better about yourself.”
Neil Askwith, the Managing Director of Ezee Environmental Services, said: “There has been lots of interesting things discussed in the areas we are involved in, so I will take all this to my colleagues to help them gain a better understanding.”
Lynne Brosnan, Chair, Stop Social Housing Stigma, said: “Many thanks to Progress Housing Group for working with us on the Pioneer Traveller programme. We could tell from the excellent discussions at Progress between tenants, staff and contractors that there is already great interaction between everyone at Progress and an already existing commitment to tackling stigma. A lot of great ideas came up at the session, and hopefully these will help Progress move even further forward in tackling stigma. We look forward to seeing how things develop in the future.”