This post is written by Anisa Begum, marketing & sales assistant at Telescope, and John McGlone, a historian

  • **The problem: **The homeless population is frequently overlooked when it comes to public service design.
  • Why it matters: An inability to engage with public services amplifies their issues.
  • The solution: Improving public services to think about the homeless can help.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, as social issues have multiplied, the design, delivery and maintenance of government services have become significantly more challenging. We hear from policymakers and frontline workers alike that there is a disconnect between policymakers, frontline practitioners and people with lived experience of social issues. This disconnect hinders the potential for policies that could solve these issues by providing services and support that reflect the needs of everyone in society.

We believe that bringing people together through understanding and empathy can help generate innovative solutions. It is exciting to see a growing number of public sector organisations expanding their knowledge and experimenting with new ways of working by incorporating lived experience into their co-production processes. This can be transformative for the way they design their services and how people engage with them. For example, the Centre for Homeless Impact is looking in-depth at how they can better leverage data to inform local authority attempts to tackle homelessness.

First-hand experience

John McGlone, a historian by education and with extensive experience in public-facing roles, has experienced homelessness himself. “I experienced a lot of stigmatisation in hostels”, he explains. “That prompted me to take things further, to show the barriers people face. We have to turn despair into hope”.

He praises Crisis, Power With, and Homeless Link for thinking differently, bringing together people with lived experience and people with educational backgrounds to provide a powerful mix of knowledge. “Lived experience can enliven the conversation”, says John. “As humans we’ve been using stories since prehistoric times. They’re important in convincing people that there is a solution to this crisis”.

In this co-written article, John describes his experience, explores case studies of lived experience feeding into service design, and shares his views on the power of language to bring real change. He identifies the disconnect between policy and those on the front line as a key reason for the lack of trust in public services today, describing how, often, people become apathetic. They think, “I’ve tried all this before and it was unsuccessful, it’ll be the same again”. He emphasises the importance of building a relationship with public services, in order to “turn that despair to hope”.

Advice for government

John shares his experience with the systems put in place for those who are homeless, explaining: “when I was on the road to homelessness my first problem was that I knew I was going to be evicted. When I approached certain organisations, all they could do at that time was tell me to come back when I had actually been evicted - they had no preventative services”.

Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) can help aid people presenting as homeless - as well as the staff working at these organisations. “Sometimes, service provision is quite disparate because they are set up as independent units,” he says. “Someone who is homeless has to go through each of those units within the same organisation and for every department, you have to start at the beginning again”. His advice? “Things could be integrated [so that we’re] communicating better as one entity”.

The power of language in making social change

John feels strongly that the language we use to address social issues has an impact. He draws attention to the “narrative that some people in society have - where the blame is sometimes attributed to the person and their (inferred) poor choices”. John believes we should end the stigma around homelessness by using language effectively so that we can relate homelessness to other aspects, as “people may not relate to homelessness [itself], but may relate to anxiety, mental health, issues of debt et cetera. Linking these together allows people to understand how homelessness can come about”.

Key take-aways

Societal issues, such as homelessness, bring light to the dissociation between policy and those with lived experience. In order to create an inclusive society that works with the people for the people, policymakers should take into consideration the insights of those who have experienced the issues that they want to address. John uses his own lived experience to conclude that “structural and systemic causes within the system are human-made. They don’t just exist, they’ve been created. And because they’re human-made, those systems can be changed”.

We are all individuals. But as a society, we are all interdependent - we rely on and depend on each other - for service provision (e.g, health and transport), for food production, for clothing production and for advice and guidance. When an individual in society is struggling, this can have an impact on many other people, through consequences such as increased drug use and higher rates of crime.

But our interdependence also creates the possibility for true meaningful support between individuals and with the help of government. Government support enables individuals to pursue and achieve their goals and to focus on their own personal growth and development. It is our collective responsibility to work together, to make our society stronger, and to ensure everyone has a place within it. — Anisa Begum and JohnMcGlone

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(Picture credit: Unsplash)