Roundtable Guidelines
Before the session
- Think about who you would like to involve in the work – internal departments, frontline staff, management and decision makers, existing partners, potential partners, current end-users and people that have experienced the system in the past (service user groups & people with lived experience of the systems).
- Where possible, ensure the group has a good mix of skills and experience.
- Keep numbers to a manageable level.
During the session
- Make use of the accompanying facilitator guide. It will walk you through the process ensuring you make the most of the time.
- Use the examples of the completed discussion log, pledges and action plan found below as a guide for your session.
- Consider drafting in a note-taker from your organisation/team.
- At the early stage of generating ideas and identifying opportunities, try to allow participants to think creatively without the burden of how those ideas would be put into place.
- At the point of moving from ideas and discussions and onto your pledges and actions, ensure they are realistic and can be evaluated and evidenced in the future.
- When hosting the roundtable, focus on what activity you can take, what difference you can make and how you plan to drive activity forward. Also give consideration to what you are already doing and if you could be doing more to prevent and relieve homelessness.
- Think about what you do now that keeps people included or promotes their protective factors.
- Give thought to how activity can be moved from the crisis prevention & relief space towards the universal prevention space. Are there things that could be put in place to move things upstream, away from crisis, as much as possible?
Make use of the templates
- What protective factors are already in place and could be tapped into, such as:
- Safe, affordable accommodation that is appropriate in size and location, underpinning learning, work and the community.
- Timely access to health services.
- Flexible approaches to school enrolment; support structures in school and pathways to employment.
- Single gateway to tailored holistic family support, income and accommodation.
- Secure accommodation, healthy relationships, specialist domestic violence support for the whole family.
- Give consideration as to how collaboration will be achieved and what, if any, systems and services will need to be aligned.
- Consider what barriers are currently in place and how they could be overcome.
- Review those organisations you are already working with and discuss what further organisations you could collaborate with in the future.
- Use the example discussions, pledges and actions in this document to shape your approach.
- Complete the pledge template to garner commitment from all of those taking part in the process and ensure focus is maintained after the initial discussions have taken place. This is your chance to get all of the participants to Commit to Collaborate.
- The action plan template should be used to take all of the ideas, suggestions and pledges recorded in the initial discussions, and turn them into real actions that will contribute to designing out homelessness.
Following the session
When creating your actions from the discussions you’ve had, you could consider such things as:
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How can we evaluate our future impact to prevent and relieve homelessness and the effects of any further activity by us and our partners?
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What early outcomes do we hope to see? What will the eventual impacts be? How can these be identified and measured?
Ensure the actions are SMART -
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time bound
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They should also be Evaluated and Reviewed (SMARTER).
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Ensure you provide feedback following the roundtable to the participants to ensure continued engagement.
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Make those actions a reality!
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Review the progress of the actions on a regular basis and continue to collaborate.
This presentation pack can be downloaded as a PowerPoint slideshow via www.wmca.org.uk
The below slides and accompanying notes will help the facilitator take the group through the roundtable session.
Introduce the session giving the aims of the day and letting participants know what will happen following the event:
We aim to discuss how we can collaborate to prevent and relieve homelessness, look at what we do now and what further activity can take place.
We’ll be focussing on what WE can do, not just issues in general. We will create a number of pledges that we all agree on.
The discussions will be written up, shared and actions will be created and allocated. Give the context of your own organisation and why the session is taking place.
Set out any ground rules at the start of the session including confidentiality, that all ideas will be considered equally, participation is voluntary and that all viewpoints will be respected.
The session is broken down into four clear stages:
- What is already in place?
- What gaps are there?
- What more could we do and how can we fill those gaps?
- What do we pledge to do following this session?
Incorporate breaks into the session as required.
By working through the practical elements of this toolkit, we will be able to identify what actions can be taken to prevent and relieve homelessness at the earliest opportunity.
There is also an opportunity to consider who else we will need to collaborate with in order to make this happen, taking this as an opportunity to design homelessness prevention into services and systems.
Homelessness can feel like an unsolvable problem, but it isn’t. By working together and focussing on getting help to people before the point of crisis, we can make a real difference. Even small changes can add up, having a substantial and positive impact to prevent and relieve homelessness.
We’ll be basing the session around the positive pathways model.
Prevent
- Universal prevention
- targeted prevention
Help
- crisis prevention and relief
- recovery
Create pathways
- move on support
- settled home
Session 1 – What are we already doing?
Use the discussion checklist and example questions from the toolkit to prompt questions and discussions:
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What do we already know is happening?
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What are we already doing?
- Could we be doing MORE of it?
- Who could we collaborate with to improve what is already there?
What stage does each intervention fall into – Universal Prevention through to Settled Home?
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Ensure all of the points are documented.
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Allow time to feed back the key points.
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Keep to the allocated time.
Session 2 –What are our gaps in provision?
In session 1 we discussed what is already in place, and some gaps probably came up during that discussion. Now is the time to go through them in more detail.
Use the discussion checklist and example questions from the toolkit to prompt questions and discussions:
- What are the gaps within our provision?
- What is missing that could help prevent and relieve homelessness?
- Who could we collaborate with to help close those gaps?
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What stage does each intervention fall into – Universal Prevention through to Settled Home?
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Ensure all of the points are documented.
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Allow time to feed back the key points.
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Keep to the allocated time.
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Ensure all of the points are documented.
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Allow time to feed back the key points.
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Keep to the allocated time.
Session 3 – What are the opportunities for us to do more?
- We’ve now discussed what we already have in place, and the gaps in our provision, so further opportunities for us to do more probably came up during the previous discussion. Now is the time to go through them in more detail.
Use the discussion checklist and example questions from the toolkit to prompt questions and discussions:
- What are our opportunities to improve provision?
- What more could we be doing that would have an effect on homelessness?
- Who could we collaborate with to maximise our opportunities for improvement?
- What stage does each intervention fall into – Universal Prevention through to Settled Home?
- Ensure all of the points are documented.
- Allow time to feed back the key points.
- Keep to the allocated time.
Session 4 – Our pledges
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From the three sessions we’ve gone through, what do we pledge to do from now on?
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What suggestions from Session 1 can we pledge to do more of?
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What gaps from Session 2 can we pledge to fill?
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What opportunities from Session 3 can we pledge to take forward?
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Use the example completed pledges in the toolkit to prompt discussions.
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The next steps are to take the discussions and pledges and make them into actions.
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Use the action plan template to record actions.
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The actions will be fed back to all participants.
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At this point, give timescales and further details on how the actions and pledges will be progressed.
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We will submit our completed pledges and action plan to WMCA to access the C2C logo for our organisation.
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Pledges and action plans from other organisations, as well as our own will be available via the WMCA website.
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Allow time for questions and feedback and thank the group.