Our Participation Project: Listening, Learning and Taking Action

At Together Trust, the voices of the people we support should shape everything we do. That's why we launched our Participation Project earlier this year. 

This project is all about better understanding the lives of the people who use our services: the challenges they face, the things that matter most to them, and how we can work together to make a difference. What we learn from the project will help guide our policy work and campaigning, helping us focus on the areas that matter most to the people we support 

We're asking ourselves three big questions: 

• How can we gather meaningful insights from the people that Together Trust supports?  
• How can we capture the voices of people with complex needs?  
• How can we build stronger feedback loops between our services and the work of our policy and campaigns?  

What have we done so far? 

Over the past few months, we've started working with a number of our services, creating tailored plans to find the best way of listening to the people they support. We recognise the diversity across our services, so we're adapting our approach to suit each setting. 

Here's a snapshot of what we've been doing: 

Inscape House School 

Our Policy and Campaigns Manager, Styliana, visited the student council to introduce the project and explain our role. After some fun icebreakers, the students shared their thoughts. The topic they were most passionate about was rail accessibility. We'll return after the summer holidays to run an interactive session and gather their views in more detail, which we'll then use to shape our campaign work. 

Inscape Vocational College 

We met with some of the students and used games and gentle prompts to build trust and open up conversations, particularly around mental health. In September, we'll return to explore the issues they feel we should focus on in our policy and campaigning work. 

One of our Children's Residential Homes 

We've had two visits so far. The first was all about getting to know the young people and building trust through games and crafts. On our second visit, we created collages themed around school. We asked questions like: 

• What makes a good day at school? 
• What do you not enjoy about school? 
• What helps you feel able to go to school? 

We'll focus on school and mental health with this group of young people, linking into our work on Emotionally-Based School Avoidance.