#ShiftThePower

Listen Up!

Community stories from people experiencing homlessness

“Here is my voice…Here is a woman telling her story. Of something that happened or is happening. Here as I speak, as I write, I make it valid and real. And you read and listen and I am real. I am a lady, 44, an artist, a poet, a storyteller,  I bore four children, but have been pregnant six times.” – GG, Listen Up! reporter

Project

The Covid-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on existing health inequalities, particularly for people experiencing homelessness who often have the worst health outcomes. To better support this group, it is important that we understand, track and include the voices of people experiencing homelessness in national and local decision-making.

We ran a pilot project with Groundswell UK, where we trained and developed a national network of community reporters experiencing homelessness, who shared their insight into health and housing with NHS England to inform their Covid response. Beyond the pilot, the network continues to grow and now share their lived experience in various formats to tackle health inequality as part of the Listen Up! hub.

Process

At the start of the pandemic, we started working with Groundswell to help them urgently find a better way to remain remotely connected with their communities and capture the unfolding experience of those facing homelessness. 

Like so many UK organisations, Groundswell are supporting a fragmented network of individuals, many of whom face barriers to digital engagement. Yet, for a response to be genuinely informed and inclusive, it needs to be led by the lived experience and ideas of people experiencing homelessness themselves.

To do this, we used our digital platform, Radius, bringing together basic and smartphone messaging streams on desktop dashboards so communities can share insights and ideas via their mobile. This way, people experiencing homelessness can engage in a real-time tracked conversation with project leads, researchers and communication teams, enabling Groundswell, as well as NHS England, to meet them where they are.

As part of this, we recruited and trained up a network of around 20 community reporters with experiences of homelessness to send in reports via their mobile. Shared as 10 core modules, each with an interactive quiz, the training took place remotely across a 3-day period so that individuals could learn at their own pace. Everyone who completed the training received a full certificate and those who partially finished, and chose to stop, were given a partial skills certificate.

Trained in citizen journalism, using audio and video to tell a story, ethics and keeping safe, the community reporter network was then asked to document the impact of Covid-19 on their lives. As stories and insight came in, it was important that they went somewhere and didn’t just sit in a file.

I have heard so many people’s stories about the reality of this experience that have horrified, humbled and driven me to make sure we improve the systems and services that are meant to be there, free at the point of need, for everyone – Olivia Butterworth, NHS England

With Groundswell, we then co-designed a microsite to be home to these stories, where each voice note, video clip and image is posted and shared – with their concerns and ideas for change not only guiding NHS England’s response but also reaching different media outlets and audiences.

Impact

From navigating what ‘normal’ means and the challenges of accessing period products, to feelings of loneliness and the riddles of happiness, the network has shared raw and authentic reports that illustrate the social and economic impacts of Covid-19 on people experiencing homelessness. From this, journalists, researchers and policymakers, as well as the public and the participants themselves, can access this shared insight to inform change.

As part of the project, animations were co-produced to illustrate the thoughts and ideas of people experiencing homelessness. Here, Paul relays his experience of how society portrayed people who were homeless as England entered ‘lockdown 2’ in November 2020.

Listen Up! Hub

Following the success of the pilot, the reporter network has continued to grow and now share their stories as part of the Listen Up! hub, using their voices to challenge harmful stereotypes and tackle health inequality. They have been featured on Sky News and have developed their skills further through Audio-visual Storytelling training; later co-producing an animation reflecting on their experiences with accessing health and housing services, as part of ‘Do you feel heard?’.

Most recently, they developed their own podcast series exploring what it means to recover; this went on to inspire a short film for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day 2023, where community reporters, Miles and Nawshin, met with Prince William to share personal experiences, discuss harmful misconceptions and explore what more needs to be done to tackle homelessness.

Having an important figure [Prince William] feel passionate about our troubles is amazing. I hope it means we can change the narrative for the better. – Nawshin

Partners

Groundswell UK

Links

Read and listen to Listen Up! stories

Is it possible to fully recover? Follow the Listen Up! Podcast

Read the #HealthNow Report