Introducing the radical safeguarding toolkit for homelessness

[Introduction]  

This is a Research in Practice podcast, supporting evidence informed practice with children and families, young people, and adults.   

Rachel: Welcome to today's research in practice podcast. My name is Rachel Fitzsimmons and I'm a Research and Development Officer here at Research in Practice. In today's episode we're introducing an exciting new open access resource, the radical safeguarding toolkit on homelessness. We'll hear from the toolkit's lead author, Gill Taylor. Gill is an independent associate working on homelessness, inclusion health and safeguarding. Gill led a really insightful and diverse co-production team in the development of this resource. Gill, it's great to talk to you today. Could you introduce yourself and perhaps the toolkit team for our listeners?

Gill: Sure. Hi Rachel. Hi everyone. My name is Gill. I have been working in the homelessness sector for about twenty years in all kinds of different roles, in frontline practice and more recently in strategic roles for local authorities and also for charities. And although I was the lead author for the toolkit it was definitely a collaborative effort. I worked with a colleague specifically, called CK, who worked with me to have conversations. We've described it as having conversations with friends. So, lots of the toolkit was informed by people with lived experience that we work with and who we know from our lives, as well as lots of different practitioners across the sector who contributed their time and expertise to helping us think about what would the toolkit deliver for people, and importantly what are the values that underpin it. So, hopefully we'll talk more about that as the podcast goes on.

[What is radical safeguarding?] 

Rachel: Thanks Gill. So, before we start, today's podcast contains some potentially difficult content around social injustice and inequality. It's really important that we take care of ourselves, so, if today is a bad time to listen please do be kind to yourself and come back to the conversation when you're ready. To set the scene in today's podcast we'll talk about the toolkit and the values it's built upon including radical safeguarding, social justice, intersectionality and lived experience. We'll discuss some of the principles and tools within the toolkit and how these can be used in practice. So, Gill, the idea of radical safeguarding might be new to some of our listeners. Can you introduce the idea of radical safeguarding and talk about how the toolkit applies this to people experiencing multiple disadvantage and homelessness?

Gill: Thanks Rachel. Probably the first thing to say is that radical safeguarding as a concept is not mine. My use of the phrase was inspired by an amazing organisation called Maslaha who work with young people of colour and particularly of Muslim young people looking at safeguarding practices and outcomes and how they relate to issues of race, religion, gender, etc., and they created an amazing toolkit which was specifically to work with children that looks at the way that safeguarding practices can often affect young people and cause harm even as they're not intended to.

So, building from their ideas we thought about what would radical safeguarding look like for people that are affected by homelessness? So, we thought about how it's concerned with exploring the way that safety and safeguarding practices that we employ as practitioners are ultimately influenced by how society is structured and not just about individual people and the way that we work with each other. So, in this way we can think about radical safeguarding as being concerned with systemic issues, so, acknowledging that inequality and prejudice can be inadvertently reproduced in the work that we do and how can our work as radical practitioners change that and disrupt that.

Radical is sometimes a bit of a dirty word and, so, probably just wanting to, kind of, highlight that, we want to use this term as it relates to social change and transformation. And although that sometimes might be seen by people to be extreme or even potentially exclusionary, the way that we want to use it is to think about how it relates to challenging the status quo, how it helps us to think critically about the things that we do and that are happening around us, but also how we use it to elevate the voices of people who are often excluded.

And we know that that's important as it relates to homelessness because many people affected by homelessness are affected by issues of systemic inequality and injustice, for example, around poverty, criminalisation, social isolation, but also how their voices are often marginalised and ignored and, so, we want to use the word radical and think about how that relates to safeguarding to bring their voices and these principles to the fore of conversations that we're having as practitioners.

[What is the connection between social justice movements and safeguarding in the context of homelessness?] 

Rachel: Thanks Gill. It's really helpful for you to set the scene for the work in that way and also to make such a powerful case for taking a new approach to working in this area. So, the background of the toolkit is really the development of social justice movements throughout history. Can you tell us a bit more about the connection between social justice movements and safeguarding in the context of homelessness and why making this connection is both really necessary and valuable?

Gill: So, maybe it's useful to say that it's a personal project for me in some ways in that I am concerned with social justice and social justice movements, and I have the privilege of being involved in a number of different campaigns for change in our society. And then that has often been separate to the work that I've done in the homelessness sector. So, there's always been this question for me, but on top of that we know that social justice movements are concerned with bringing about transformational change in society, and particularly in terms of looking at how inequality is produced and reproduced by the laws and policies and institutions that we're all a part of and governed by.

So, the connection between social justice movements and homelessness feels clear when we think about the ideas of radical safeguarding we just spoke about because we know that it's about addressing change and bringing about influencing change in policies. So, to give an example of how that has looked in reality, we can think about how disability justice activists in the 1990s adopted the phrase, 'Nothing about us without us.' To demand that disabled people were at the centre of their own care at a time when this wasn't common practice because of stigma and prejudice in society. Their vision and their activism changed the laws in this country and across the world in terms of how we work with people and making sure that people are at the centre of their decisions that are made about them. And we now see that as a normal part of our daily practice but it came directly from activism - from social justice movements.

So, when we think about people affected by homelessness we can think about marginalisation, isolation, how people are often disconnected from decision making both in their own lives but also in wider society if we think about things like voting in elections. So, we know their voices are often ignored or lost in the systems that they rely on. So, when we think about social justice movements and the sorts of changes that they've brought about, it could be a route to uncovering and responding to some of those inequalities that people face, and particularly when we think about protecting people from abuse and neglect where we know that survivors of abuse are often even more silenced. So, hopefully social justice movements give us a platform on which to think about the changes that we want to bring about.

[How does intersectionality apply in the context of this work?] 

Rachel: Thank you, Gill. It feels really useful to connect our work in practice today to those broader movements throughout history. So, thinking about this background of social justice leads us towards taking an intersectional view and approach to safeguarding adults who are experiencing multiple disadvantage and homelessness. Could you share something of your understanding of intersectionality and speak about how it applies in this context of work?

Gill: Intersectionality is a phrase we probably hear quite a lot at the moment, but I don't know if it's always that clear to everybody what it actually means, and certainly, I've been on a big journey to understand what that means for me. So, it was originally coined by a legal scholar and activist called Kimberley Crenshaw in the late '80s and early '90s and she was really thinking about particularly how black women were treated in the criminal justice system. And she was trying to explore the ways that race and gender are not only connected but are always overlapping and intersecting. And that, since then that idea and her ideas have been expanded on by other social justice movements, by people making policies to think about all of the ways that our characters, our characteristics overlap, and the way that those things are themselves systemic.

So, how we are seen in society and how we are treated relates to the ways that race, gender, sexuality, disability and all those other parts of who we are, are also seen and valued in the societies that we are part of. And particularly in the ways that sometimes they are marginalised and experience huge amounts of inequality and injustice.

So, when we think about how having an intersectional lens relates to homelessness, we can think about homelessness itself. So, we know that people who are experiencing homelessness are disproportionately from minoritised communities. So, if we think about young homeless people, for example, we know that at least 26% of young homeless people are from LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer*] community, when only about 8% of the whole of society is considered to be from that community.

Equally, when we think about rough sleeping we know that a significant over-representation of people who are rough sleeping are people who don't have British citizenship. So, we can think about all of the ways that our identities overlap and how that plays out in our risk of falling homeless, and then what happens to us when we are homeless. So, historically, these things have been brought to our attention through social justice movements and, so, having an intersectional lens might be quite new in terms of the word itself, but it's actually something which has existed for a long time in the society that we're part of and social justice movements.

So, for us in this work it helps us to think about how having an intersectional lens might change the practice that we do in our work, but also how we think about the work we do and how we think about our colleagues and our partners as well. How can we understand the ways that race, gender sexuality, for example, play out in the way we work with each other - and in the way that our organisations respond to harm.

[Learning from lived experience] 

Rachel: Thanks Gill, you've really articulated there why it's so important for us to hold in mind the ways that different inequalities can shape individuals' experiences of homelessness and safeguarding and to reflect on how we respond in practice. And following on that leads us into the question of why is learning from lived experience so crucial in this area of work?

Gill: Thank you. So, again, a slightly, sort of, personal element to this. So, I have my own lived experience of homelessness as has everybody who has been directly involved in creating the toolkit. We know that people who are marginalised are the least likely to be heard, not only in their own lives but also in our society. Certainly when I tried to find out if anybody who was in our government at the moment has lived experience of homelessness it was very difficult to find anybody who had ever been even close to that, and with a couple of exceptions who unfortunately have recently stepped down from positions of power. So, we know that often being from a minoritised community or experiencing forms of harm or forms of poverty or inequality often mean that you're the least likely to be heard or to be asked for your opinion. So, it was really, really important to us that we did that in this toolkit, but also acknowledging that although a huge amount of really valuable research and study around homelessness has shaped the practice that we have in our workplaces, most of this has been written by people who themselves haven't had an experience of homelessness. We also know that co-production delivers amazing outcomes, it means that our work can be shaped truly by the insights of people who have accessed the services that we offer or the support available, and their insights helped us shape that practice so that it is better and more responsive to people who are accessing support.

Another reason why it felt really important to us is because we also wanted to create a toolkit that responded to the idea that actually many of us have lived experiences of the things that we're supporting other people around, and that if that is the case then we need to think about how our own lived experience as practitioners influences the work we do and not only the lived experience of the people that we're supporting.

[The principles behind the Radical Safeguarding Toolkit] 

Rachel: Brilliant, thanks Gill. I know that meaningful co-production has been at the heart of this work throughout and we're really grateful to your team who shared their expertise in the project. So, it's really useful to hear about these values which underpin the toolkit. I think it would be great to chat now a little bit about the toolkit itself. So, maybe you could tell us something about the principles it contains, some of the tools and how they might be used?

Gill: Absolutely. So, the toolkit, as I said, came from conversations with friends but also from thinking about the language and the campaigning work of social justice movements. And, so, from it we devised, sort of, four principles that are the overarching way we want people to think about what's happening in the toolkit and in their work, and they are power, autonomy, accountability and solidarity, and I'll say a tiny bit about each one but there's more in the toolkit.

So, when we were thinking about power and how this could be a principle for the toolkit, we were thinking about the ways that people who experience homelessness can often feel powerless, but also the ways that they themselves share power with each other through the knowledge that they have about services they access, and equally how historically people from marginalised communities have come together to build power as collectives, and that helped us to think about, 'Well, how do we bring about change?' And that is by feeling empowered. And, so, hopefully the toolkit helps people that are reading it to feel able to make those changes in their workplace by finding positions and places where they can build power together.

Autonomy is about choice. It's about the ways that people who experience services or who have care and support needs or living as homeless can often feel that they don't have much autonomy, they're not able to make many choices about the care and support or accommodation that they're offered and that historically that marginalisation has left people to campaign as we talked about for social justice and inclusion.

So, many of you will have read, for example, the Making Safeguarding Personal principles, and they are entirely about how do we help people have autonomy in their work. So, we hope that the toolkit helps us to think about how do we give more choice to the people that we're supporting and what are those choices, where are they meaningful and where are they actually lacking in some of the flexibility we might want?

Accountability is about how we as practitioners are accountable to the people that we support. How do we work in ways that are accountable? And sometimes that might mean reflecting on the power that we have and the decisions we're able to make about people. Sometimes it means being able to apologise or to acknowledge when things that we might have done or contributed to might have caused harm. But it's also about how do we hold to account our organisations and ask for changes to happen in our workplaces that can, as we'll see in the toolkit, reckon with some of the issues of inequality that people experience.

And then finally solidarity. Really the whole toolkit is a project of solidarity, and what that means for us is that our lives and the things that we achieve are always connected to each other. Freedom and liberation for one group of people are only possible if they're enjoyed by everybody, and we can think about that intersectionally when thinking about how race, gender and sexuality play together. If we didn't have a racist world but we still had a sexist world then there would still be people who are experiencing racism who would be still experiencing oppression because of their gender. So, really solidarity is about how do we see what connects us and not what separates us, and then how do we make that stronger.

[How the toolkit can be used in practice] 

Rachel: Brilliant. Thank you, Gill, and I think the toolkit really helps to set out and explore those principles, and then goes on to really utilise them within the tools themselves. So, yes, tell us a bit about the toolkit, how it might be used, what practitioners might expect from it?

Gill: Well, obviously in my first thing that I want to say is, read the toolkit and then you'll definitely see those tools for yourself. The tools are mostly opportunities for reflection and discovery, so, there are lots and lots of questions in the tools that ask you to think about the work that you do and the sorts of things that it might achieve and some of the ways that it might also be difficult or challenging. So, there are reflective questions to work through with yourself or with your teams. There are things to think about in terms of how we work with people from different backgrounds or identities than our own. There are ways of thinking about how we care for ourselves as well and how we work together in ways that make us feel empowered and resilient, and ultimately the tools are about learning from each other. So, a lot of the toolkit, kind of, rests on the idea or ideas that came from radical education, or radical pedagogy, which says that we don't only have to learn from teachers or positions in authority, we can learn from each other and that we can learn from lived experience, and that in doing that what we learn is stronger but it's also much more diverse. So, hopefully the tools are opportunities, if you like, or invitations to reflect on your practice and what's happening around you and then make changes to that.

Rachel: Thanks, Gill. It's really inspiring to hear your vision for the work and I'm sure this conversation will encourage listeners to look at the resource and use it within their practice. There's so much more we could discuss. If listeners are interested in learning more, the toolkit is available open access now on the Research in Practice website. Gill, you're also facilitating a series of co-produced workshops in 2024 for Research in Practice partners where we'll explore the learning in much more detail together. So, for anybody interested please do visit the Research in Practice website to find out more.

Research in Practice are also offering a range of events and publications around social care, housing and homelessness as part of this year's delivery programme. Do follow us on social media and check out our website for more resources. Finally, thank you, Gill, and to your colleagues within the toolkit team for all of your work on this resource and for today's podcast as well. We really value your collective efforts and look forward to seeing the toolkit in practice.

[Outro] 

Thanks for listening to this Research in Practice podcast. We hope you've enjoyed it. Why not share with your colleagues and let us know your thoughts on X (formerly Twitter) @researchIP and LinkedIn.

* People use different acronyms and phrases, such as LGBTQIA+ and QTIPOC, which stands for queer, trans, intersex (in the US the ‘I’ means indigenous) people of colour. As a member of the queer community, Gill uses the phrase that’s right for them whilst holding in deep respect the diversity of words people use to describe their sexualities and genders.