It has filled me with hope to reflect on the past year and the opportunity we had to work with a group of experts by experience to develop our new Housing and Domestic Abuse Training Course. This phenomenal group of women have each experienced domestic abuse and homelessness. They inspired, shaped, and steered our project right from its inception. We are so grateful to each of them for their courage, creativity and leadership.
Experts by experience at the heart of our project
Last Spring we began our journey on the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland’s ‘Community Solutions to Housing and Homelessness’ programme. The programme gives organisations the opportunity to develop and pilot a new project to address an issue related to homelessness in Northern Ireland.
Our client experience highlights the wide range of barriers faced by women experiencing domestic abuse when it comes to getting the support they need if they become homeless. We therefore decided to make this the focus of our project. We were delighted to meet North Down and Ards Women's Aid who were developing their own separate project through the programme. They agreed to also collaborate with us on our project. They put us in contact with a group of women they were supporting, who became the experts by experience at the heart of our project.
We began our first focus group with the women with a blank slate. We started by simply asking the women about their experiences of homelessness. We asked them to reflect on their journeys and the barriers they had faced along the way.
What we heard
One of the key issues that came up was how the women had struggled to get the help they needed when presenting as homeless and seeking help with their housing. Some spoke of being disrespected, belittled, and not believed by those they were seeking help from. Others explained how the stigma around domestic abuse had stopped them from feeling able to speak up about what was going on. The women explained the impact these interactions had on their mental health, with some having suicidal thoughts. For others, they described feeling hopeless and deciding to return to their abuser.
On the other hand, we also heard about the difference that empathy and support could make at that first point of seeking housing help. One woman told us about the difference her housing adviser had made when she presented as homeless. She was listened to, shown empathy, given hope, and ultimately supported in securing a safe home for her and her children. She told us she still gets goosebumps when she speaks about her housing adviser and the difference she has made in her life. It was clear that the point for reaching out for help with housing could be a key turning point in either direction in people’s journeys.
What needed to change
As well as asking them to reflect on the barriers they had faced, we also asked the women what needed to change. Their answer was, in some ways, a simple one; they said that the first person they approached for housing help needed to understand what they were experiencing, they needed to be able to identify the signs of domestic abuse, know how to signpost to support and above all, they needed to show empathy. In fact one of the women went even further and said that she would like decision-makers to come and live in the shared refuge she and her daughter had been in for the past year – she wanted them to really understand what it was like.
An immersive training course
These experiences and insights sparked the idea of an immersive training course - to build empathy and awareness among frontline staff working in housing and homelessness across Northern Ireland.
At the heart of the course sits a virtual reality film, which we commissioned ESC Films to produce.
ESC Films worked closely with the women through a series of workshops to develop a script based on their firsthand experiences. They also met with a group of housing advisers from Housing Rights, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and Housing Associations to gather their perspectives.
In Part 1 of the training course, participants watch the film, putting them into the shoes of a woman seeking housing help when fleeing domestic abuse; they hear her thoughts, see things from her perspective and get an insight into her experience. Having watched the film, participants are taken through a facilitated discussion, providing space to reflect on what they have seen and how it might influence their work.
Part 2 of the course is a specialist housing and domestic abuse training module delivered by Housing Rights and Women’s Aid. It equips participants with the skills and knowledge needed to support women in these circumstances.
The key ingredients
What have been the key ingredients to the success of the project so far? Collaboration and Participation.
Collaboration
Working with North Down & Ards Women’s Aid in developing and delivering this course has been the gold standard of collaboration – from hosting our workshops in their office, to being on hand throughout to provide support to the women involved, to co-developing and delivering our specialist housing and domestic abuse training module. What makes them so collaborative is simple but powerful – the women they support are at the heart of all they do. They knew our project would help to support women experiencing domestic abuse in Northern Ireland, so whatever we needed, they were in.
Participation
At Housing Rights, we strongly believe that the expertise of people with firsthand experience of homelessness is key in identifying the issues and solutions that work in practice. This project has once again shown us why that expertise is so vital. Without our experts by experience this new training course simply wouldn’t exist. Not only were they instrumental in coming up with the idea but also in writing the script for the film and developing the course content.
One of the joys of participation is that it always stretches beyond the tangible outputs of a particular project to the personal impact on those involved. When we asked the women to feedback on the project, this is what they said:
“It has given me the confidence to speak out and defend myself now in everyday life. My voice matters.”
“This has been an important part of my healing process, in as much as I have been able to hear that I have not been alone in my experiences and have been given an opportunity to have my own experiences heard, without judgement or prejudice.”
“My favourite part was… being in an environment where you were heard and believed and felt your ideas were genuinely valued and being taken on board.”
Holding on to hope
It can be easy, amid a housing crisis, violence against women crisis, cost of living crisis, and so many other crises, to lose hope. Nevertheless, this project has enabled us to take a step forward. To help to improve one cog in the wheel, i.e. the housing system. While it may just be one cog, we know it is a crucial one. Moreover, it has reminded us that change is possible – what, as a sector we can achieve when we collaborate and when we place experts by experience at the heart of what we do.