Empowerment is the current buzzword in social and supported housing. This is understandable considering terrible tragedies that have happened in our sector because we have not listened to what people are telling us. But what does empowerment actually mean? According to the Oxford Dictionary, empowerment means ‘the act of giving somebody more control over their own life or the situation they are in’ or ‘the act of giving somebody power or authority to do something’.
What is given can be taken away
Rochdale Boroughwide Council recently made the decision to remove tenants from their board. Although they had their reasons for making this decision, it’s a great example of how the sector still hold the reins of empowerment and can pull it back at any time.
Due to the power imbalance in both housing and support provision, ‘giving’ someone power comes with caveats. What is given can easily be taken away. It’s the same situation when we ‘give’ people a voice.
Furthermore, this is all working on the assumption that people didn’t have a voice or the ability and motivation to make changes before ‘empowerment’. They absolutely did, we just weren’t paying attention.
Empowerment isn’t what we should be aiming for.
Recently, I have read powerful articles from tenants Neil Wylde and Ben Jenkins. It certainly appears that both these men are ‘empowered’. They have all the tools they need – confidence, contacts, IT knowledge and more. Both men still feel sidelined, when speaking about ongoing issues that their landlords are failing to address. Obviously, we only have one side of those stories, and I am not casting judgement, but we see these types of stories over and over again, despite all the lessons we’ve had to learn.
I am seeing a trend of Housing Associations developing panels that ‘feed into boards’ rather than having actual board representation from their tenant base (indeed, this is what Rochdale did). While the feedback from the panels seems to be good, I wonder if this is about tenant expectations. Would the feedback be even better if there were representatives actually on the board?
So, what should we be aiming for?
Empowerment is a great stopgap and is an improvement on recent history. But it isn’t enough.
We know that having a safe, secure home is a basic human right. We also know that housing and support provision come with a power imbalance that is very challenging, if not impossible, to resolve. Finally, we know that choice for people using our services is very limited. In my view, these factors mean that we need to engage with our ‘customers’ in a completely different way.
- Move away from denial. Social housing stigma and ‘othering’ are still here, and we need to stop denying it comes from us. If we all think it comes from someone else, from some other organisation, from some other sector, we will never tackle the problems with the vigour they need.
- Open our ears, our hearts, and our minds. Some of the messages people want us to take on board are hard to hear, and we may not always agree, but we still need to be open to every opinion and give each one genuine consideration. We need to respond honestly and in full, remembering that if someone has taken the time to raise an issue, it is important to them.
- Work in partnership. A true partnership means acknowledging the power and the voice that people already have. It means being open and transparent about everything, including when things are tough, or things have gone wrong. It means always sharing the decision-making process. It also means getting rid of the parental relationship between service providers and service receivers and speaking to one another as adults.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”
In his interview, Neal Wylde said that “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” and made a great case for them being a wonderful free resource.
Neal also argued that there was no need for consultants, and this is one area where I disagree with Neal. Great, innovative, and open engagement is still a rare skill, and the sector still needs help to push itself beyond the basics. I may be biased, but I believe that people with a track record of effective engagement need to be valued and utilised. The Utopia is that engagement becomes part of business as usual, but we have a long way to go.
If you’d like to find out how Tentacles Consultancy can help you go beyond empowerment, check out the website at www.tentaclesconsultancy.co.uk.
