How the Tackling Stigma Journey Planner can help housing associations listen to residents

In this blog, Nic Bliss, Campaign Director for the Stop Social Housing Stigma campaign, explains how their Journey Planner tool can help housing associations tackle stigma and what the impact has been so far.  
 
In the years since the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, tackling stigma has become a key priority for housing associations and residents who want to see real change. But how does change happen? The answer is, it takes time. Cultural, attitudinal and behavioural changes do not happen overnight. And they won’t happen just because of regulations or top-down direction, although this will help. Building the right culture isn’t something we can teach in a classroom, and tackling stigma shouldn’t be just a tick-box exercise.    
 
What we need is a long-term journey of exploration and dialogue between social housing tenants, frontline staff, and the wider community.  

How, and why, did we develop the Tackling Stigma Journey Planner? 

We decided to develop the Tackling Stigma Journey Planner, because we understood that tackling stigma is a journey. Working with the University of Durham, Sheffield Hallam University, Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), TPAS and YD consultants, we wanted to develop a flexible tool that could facilitate dialogue between social landlords and residents.  
 
We knew that for the toolkit to work, it needed to be adaptable. The Journey Planner doesn’t contain answers because the solutions are in the imaginations of tenants, and the staff who work with them. Instead, it contains a lot of questions designed to stimulate debate, and ideas based on what social housing tenants told us about what leads to stigma.   

What has been the impact of the Journey Planner so far? 

We’ve now trialled the Journey Planner tool with five housing association ‘Pioneer Travellers’, who wanted to help tackle stigma for tenants.

As one of our ‘Pioneer Traveller’ pilots, Isobelle Connor, at the time Strategic Research Analyst for London & Quadrant, said:

“[The Journey Planner was] a really useful tool to start the conversation and give clear and meaningful outcomes to work towards, whilst still remaining flexible enough to operate within a large and complex organisation like L&Q.  It prompted a deeper conversation about our culture, what drives us and ultimately, how we can become a resident-centred organisation”. 

Working with the Pioneer Travellers taught us a lot about how to help facilitate change within housing associations. It showed us that although there are difficulties when weaving tackling stigma actions into change programmes, it can be done. Reading through the case study reports and learnings, available on the Stop Social Stigma website, is essential reading for anyone involved in housing association change programmes.   

Piloting the Journey Planner also helped us to refine it down to the issues that really matter to tenants – culture and trust, tenants leading change, stigma in service delivery and repairs, first class staff, stigma and governance, and celebrating social housing. 

Another of our Pioneer Travellers, Adele McClaren, Head of Touchpoints at Thirteen Housing, told us that the Journey Planner aligned to Thirteen’s business strategy, priorities and objectives to restore pride in social housing by working with their residents. Thirteen tenant Jacqui Sunley concluded that:

“Being a part of Thirteen’s journey as a Pioneer Traveller has highlighted even further the value in listening to customers and acting on their concerns. I’m pleased to be supporting a piece of work to help build trust and give people the confidence to speak up”.

What’s next? 

We want social landlords and tenants to use the Journey Planner in whatever way is right for them, but we stand ready to help if our assistance is useful. If you’re a housing association working to tackle social housing stigma, I ask you to please tell us about what you are doing, so that we can all learn together from each other. The best way to tackle stigma is to talk to each other, and to really listen.  
 
Nic Bliss is the Campaign Director for the Stop Social Housing Stigma campaign. The Tackling Stigma Journey Planner is available on the Stop Social Housing Stigma campaign's website.