What is it?

Resulting from service user consultation and feedback from the service user forum, the Supporting People teams from the West London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, and Hammersmith and Fulham commissioned a local homeless user group to develop and run a pilot training and consultation programme for service users.

This programme enables service users to participate in a number of activities, such as the assessment and development of the Supporting People strategy, and become involved in the delivery of its services.

16 users started the initial pilot scheme, with 10 staying on to complete the course.

What’s involved?

The aim of the course was to increase participants’ understanding of Supporting People services and to equip them with community research skills that would allow them to become the assessors of quality in Supporting People services.

It was also hoped to develop a service user involvement ethos amongst the participants, as well as providing them with transferable skills such as communication, teamwork, social skills, increased confidence, and interviewing and presentation techniques.

The training programme included modules developed by the Open College Network, a nationally recognised awarding body, and covered 4 individual units that allowed participants to gain credits that contributed towards a certificate at the end of the course.

The 10 participants who completed the programme were presented with a Supporting People certificate, outlining the elements covered in the training course, and all received OCN accreditation.

What has it led to?

The pilot programme was considered to be a definite success, with many participants feeling that they had learned valuable new skills that would prove useful in helping to gain employment.

By offering service users practical qualifications as an incentive to become involved in the Supporting People programme it meant that members of the community who may otherwise have not been interested had the chance to
participate and offer their valuable opinions.

Feedback from the pilot scheme has been gathered and will be used to make amendments to future courses.