A Step-By-Step Facilitator Guide
The below notes will help the facilitator take the group through the case study 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.
Positive pathway model
Prevent
- Universal prevention
- Targeted prevention
Help
- crisis prevention and relief
- recovery
Create pathways
- move on support
- settled home
The model, adapted for use by the WMCA Homelessness Taskforce and the C2C toolkit, helps to identify what is already being done to prevent homelessness, determine where the gaps are, and what might be done to address those gaps. Thus, underpinning a better understanding, to enhance the protective factors within the universal prevention space and target homeless prevention at the earliest possible opportunity.
While it may appear linear, it is recognised that experience of life, especially in the occurrence of something like homelessness, is rarely straightforward. The model could in fact be conveyed as circular, reflecting that it is universal prevention that enables and maintains the status of a settled home.
Take the group through what each of the stages of the Positive Pathways Model mean.
When we’re discussing what we already do, what are the gaps and what more we can do, we’ll be working to these stages.
How can we move activity away from crisis and towards universal and targeted prevention?
Take the group through what each of the stages of the Positive Pathways Model mean.
Use this slide to focus on crisis and how easy it is to arrive there. How can we move away from crisis and into the universal prevention space? This is a major aspect of today’s session.
Take the group through what each of the stages of the Positive Pathways Model mean.
Even after crisis has been alleviated, without the support to move-on and create a settled home, people can easily slip back into crisis.
Go through the areas of risk and the protective factors in the image. Pick out where your organisation falls and the need for collaboration. Introduce the cyclical nature of homelessness.
When discussing the case study, consider how the cycles can be broken – as seen in the lower-right image.
Run through the case study that you are using for the discussion Consider breaking the group into pairs to work through the case study