For agencies, workers and clients, this important new book builds on existing guidance - especially Supporting People's "A Guide for Client Involvement", to which it is an invaluable companion. It offers theoretical insight and practical help with developing client involvement in running and advising on existing provision of supported housing, campaigning for change, and creating new services. It emphasises: the importance of champions, commitment from senior management, independent advocacy, and the need for agencies to be open to ideas about changing their structures. The first section, for anyone looking at client involvement strategically, considers rationales, policy, and lessons from other sectors. The second and third sections - photocopiable when undertaking specified work - look at barriers faced when structuring involvement and managing power relations between clients and workers; and offer detailed suggestions for developing non-prescriptive practice.Addressing what has been an area of weakness in supported housing for historical, cultural and practical reasons, the suggested approaches can significantly improve: clients' quality of life; organisations' effectiveness; funding of projects linked to Quality Assessment Framework for Supporting People, Housing Corporation's charter mark, tenant participation compacts for registered social landlords, and Best Value for local authorities.
Bridging the gap between practice guides and academic works - and directly focussed on work in supported housing - this book can help in work with: people who have been homeless; rough sleepers; ex-offenders; people at risk of offending and imprisonment; people with a physical or sensory disability; people at risk of domestic violence; people with alcohol and drug problems; teenage parents; elderly people; young people at risk; people with HIV or AIDS; people with learning difficulties; travellers; and, homeless families with support needs.More than having token clients on management committees, a more radical vision of client involvement is given from a client perspective: 'We should fight it, fix it, escape it and replace it'. Clients need to be involved in campaigning for changes in services (fighting it); advising them on remedying what they are doing wrong (fixing it); creating alternative spaces for clients to recover and discuss ideas (escaping it); and, setting up their own initiatives (replacing it).
Against these aims Seal discusses: ingrained cynicism resulting from a bad history of client involvement; the chance that client involvement will develop unpredictably, and even negatively initially; the presence of different, and sometimes conflicting, motivations from different stakeholders; and, the sometimes unacknowledged ideologies that underpin how agencies often negatively view their clients.But, powerfully in support of client involvement, and helpfully about how to make progress, this book shows: how agencies can work towards redressing the balance of power in favour of the clients; how workers and clients can to see each other as allies; that effective client involvement takes time, commitment and resources...and acceptance that fundamental changes will ensue in how agencies function and relate to clients.