What was Get Heard?

The Get Heard project helped hundreds of people with experience of poverty and social exclusion to hold discussions about government policy, and have their voices heard by the UK Government. These views were collected by the project and put together in a report for the 2006 National Action Plan on Social Inclusion.

Click here to find out more about the National Action Plan on Social Inclusion

Get Heard ran between November 2004 and September 2006 and was the largest project undertaken in the UK to involve people with first hand experience of poverty and social exclusion to give their views on government policies on social exclusion.

The Get Heard project was set up by the Social Policy Task Force (SPTF) – a coalition of anti-poverty networks around the UK (see links below) – and received funding from the European Commission, the DWP, Oxfam and the Church of Scotland. The anti-poverty networks who took part all donated time and resources to make the project successful.

The UK anti-poverty networks

European Anti Poverty Network in England (EAPN-E)
114 Mansfield Road, Nottingham NG1 3HL
Tel: 0115 911 0455
Email: eapn@cefet.org.uk

Poverty Alliance (in Scotland)
162 Buchanan Street, Glasgow GI 2LL
Tel: 0141 353 0440
Email: admin@povertyalliance.org

Northern Ireland Anti Poverty Network (NIAPN)
58 Howard Street, Belfast BT1 6PJ
Tel: 0845 120 3771 or 028 9024 4525
Email:info@niapn.org

Anti Poverty Network Cymru (APNC)
Flat 3, Winchfawr House, Landsbury Road, Gellideg, Merthyr Tydfil CF38 1HA
Tel: Mon, Wed, Fri: 01685 383 929
Tues, Thurs: 029 203 34500
Email: apnc@apnc.co.uk

How did it work?

Around the UK, 146 community groups held workshops using the Get Heard toolkit. The toolkit had been developed by a group called the Participation Working Group, which included voluntary sector workers from the SPTF, officials from the Department for Work and Pensions, and people with experience of poverty or social exclusion. When the project began, some of the members of the Participation Working Group stayed on to form the steering group for the Get Heard project.

Workshop groups were held in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, and groups included a very wide variety of participants, including: people with experience of mental ill-health; Asian women; single mothers; parents of young children and parents of teenagers; unemployed men; Travellers’ groups; debt support groups; domestic violence survivors’ groups; asylum seekers and migrants - and many others.

The Get Heard workshop groups talked about government policy and discussed the answers to three questions:
· What’s working?
· What’s not working?
· How could things be done differently?

What did the workshop groups say?

You can find out the full details of what people said in the Get Heard report, but these are some of the headline issues that were raised in Get Heard workshops:

Perceptions about people experiencing poverty must change: this is ambiguous as written!
Poverty is stressful – it undermines health and well-being;
The attitudes of society and Government towards people experiencing poverty must change and be supportive and positive as many feel stigmatised;
The benefits system must be reformed to really help people experiencing poverty:
People on benefits want to work, but are afraid of losing their safety net, even though benefits are low, because employment is often unsustainable;
The benefits system should be both ladder and safety net: it must be more efficient and flexible, and provide more transition support for people in precarious, low-paid work;
The benefits system needs to be more secure, and social attitudes need to become more positive to those who cannot work;
Parents must be appreciated and better understood:
Parents experiencing poverty need more recognition for the hard work that they do, and policies must support parents’ efforts to provide the best for their children - many parents feel under pressure and are afraid that their children will be taken into care if they ask for help because they are poor;
Reform services so that they really work for people experiencing poverty:
Policies and services need to be more effectively joined up;
Involve, listen to and talk with people experiencing poverty:
People experiencing poverty believe they have a right to be involved in the design of policy, and that the Government must listen; there must be greater involvement of service users in policy and service design.

What next?

The National Action Plan on Social Inclusion 2006-08 (NAP) is published in September 2006, and includes a summary of the Get Heard report. The views of people who took part in Get Heard are referred to in a number of places in the NAP, with quotes illustrating the points that workshops raised.

The Get Heard report has been used in a range of ways to try to make sure that the voices of people with first-hand experience of social exclusion are able to inform government policies:

· The Poverty Alliance in Scotland supported people from Get Heard workshops to give evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Communities Committee
· The Migrants Resource Centre in London, which held a number of Get Heard workshops for different groups of migrants, published a separate report of their workshop findings for use in advocacy and campaigning on migrants’ rights.
· The Department for Work and Pensions cited the Get Heard report in their contribution to the Europe-wide Sure Start Peer Review.
· The Social Policy Task Force is using the recommendations of the Get Heard workshops in its ongoing conversations and work with the Department for Work and Pensions.
· Groups in Merseyside, where lots of workshops were held, have together written a report called Merseyside Gets Heard: A profile of social exclusion and poverty on Merseyside that they can use to lobby and work with local and regional government.

Take Action Locally!!

Now it’s up to you! The Get Heard project was all about people with first-hand experience of the effects of government policies speaking out and telling the government what they thought. Although the project is over, the action doesn’t have to stop. You and your community group can raise issues locally – click here to find out how.

Here are a few things that Get Heard workshop groups have done since the project ended:

« Migrants’ groups in London are publishing a report of their workshops to help raise issues important to migrants. They have also set up a media monitoring group.
« A group of older people in Norfolk is making links with developers in their area to ensure that developers planning new sheltered housing get input from older people about the kind of sheltered housing they want.
« A group of families in London meet regularly as “Voices for Action” and are now undertaking a peer research project to find out what people living on local estates think of the services they use.
« Members of a Get Heard workshop in Scotland spoke to a committee at the Scottish Parliament about the important issues in their communities, and how people experiencing poverty must be involved in government decision-making.
« People from Get Heard workshops travelled to Brussels at the invitation of the Presidency to talk about their workshops and the issues that were raised in their discussions.

For more information, contact:

Dan Paskins at UKCAP: 0151 709 3008

dan.paskins@ukcap.org

Or any of the UK anti-poverty networks

With the support of the European Commission, Directorate General Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.