Working alongside people in poverty in response to COVID-19
I remember leaving the office, taking equipment home and saying goodbye to colleagues, not knowing when I would see them again. The next few days were a whirlwind of emotions, figuring out how to work remotely and what we should do to respond to this crisis that none of us had ever seen the likes of before.
Our first instinct, like many others, was to immediately touch base with our existing partners.
Phone calls were made in the first few days to:
1) See how they were doing; we work very closely with our lived experience partners so there was checking in to be done on a personal level, making sure people were OK and sharing some of our experiences together.
2) Put minds at rest about funding issues; that they could pivot, extend, change as needed.
3) Listen, listen, hear and act; none of us had been in this situation before, we needed to figure out together what our best course of action should be.
We thought we would need to put a core piece of our work — amplifying voices — on the back burner until groups figured out what they needed to do to respond to the crisis and the people they were supporting. We were ready to extend funding to them for things we wouldn’t usually fund, like practical service delivery support.
But we were wrong.
The resounding message from all our partners? The best value that JRF could offer right now was the work we supported on voice. We heard that this is needed now more than ever. And of course, they were right.
The APLE collective, made up of locally embedded groups led by, or fore-fronted by, people with experience worked tirelessly; listening to the issues in their communities and the needs that were arising. They worked furiously and at speed to collate, distil and decide on the key thing — out of the multitude of issues arising — that needed amplifying.
All the leading charities communicated on issues such as food, housing, Universal Credit, and more. APLE highlighted something that was important to people experiencing poverty but wasn’t getting any airtime — the digital divide.
And it turns out this resonated across other groups fore-fronted by people with experience across the country who were not connected APLE. This was a really important issue that was not being heard.
Listening
We took this as a key principle of our COVID-19 response work — that we would look to fund things that responded to the issues raised by our partners on the ground. Digital inclusion and food insecurity are both key areas where we have funded work.
Listening
Our research and analysis teams are being guided by the issues that we are hearing about. We are investigating how we might look in more detail at these areas and gather further evidence, feeding into what the organisation then prioritises.
Amplifying
At the same time, working closely with our partners, our policy team were urgently putting together position papers. Although the time and the urgency did not allow for a full participatory process, what we were able to do was support partners to submit their own responses; to be heard on their own terms.
Nudging open spaces to be heard
Where alliances of leading charities were coming together to ask for dialogue with government bodies, we asked for space to be created for our partners with direct experience to be included in that collective. Where we were invited in to give evidence to Government, we asked if partners could also contribute.
All the while, we heard claims that the voices of people with experience were not there; that it was all numbers and statistics. But the challenge back is this— they were there and they still are — we just need to look for them and to hear them. And to hear them, means to act on their input.
COVID-19 has unexpectedly opened opportunities for voices to be amplified on their own terms. Groups on the ground have stated more loudly than ever, that this is a priority for them. While at the same time, we are exploring what truly ‘hearing people’ means, and holding ourselves to account on what groups are telling us.
We would love to hear from, and exchange learning with, any other organisations doing the same.
