The roundtable approach
This section of the toolkit can be used by you to start conversations within your organisation and with potential and existing partners. It is a starting place for organisations to work closely together and practically collaborate to start the process of designing out homelessness.
It contains a number of example questions and topics to start discussions, examples of how to record responses, a method of evidencing the commitments made by making a pledge and an action plan matrix to turn those commitments into viable actions.
The toolkit can be used to prompt participants involved in the process to look into all aspects of homelessness and how it can be tackled. This can include the universal prevention space - preventing homelessness without having any directly perceived relationship to homelessness prevention - all the way through to the support required for individuals to move on from a history of homelessness and remain safely housed and included.
In this toolkit, you will find
- Guidelines on running a roundtable
- A step-by-step facilitator guide to take you through your roundtable (also available in PowerPoint)
- An example of a completed discussion log
- An example of a set of completed pledges
- An example of a completed action plan
- The suggested question lists should lead participants to identify what they are already doing, who they are already collaborating with, what gaps exist and what further action they could take.
- The pledge will act as a commitment by the participants to take action and give an overall direction of travel for the organisation or partnership.
- The action plan will allow those ideas, discussions and pledges to become practical actions that can be tracked, assessed and evaluated at regular intervals.
- Instructions on how to submit your pledges and action plan and access the WMCA C2C logo
- An appendix of example questions and blank templates for you to print out and use at your roundtable
- Background to the positive pathways model
- The positive pathways model graphic
- A definition of the positive pathway model’s stages
The roundtable approach will allow all of the participants to input their own experiences and hear contributions from across an organisation (or multiple organisations).
A roundtable discussion will give participants the opportunity to play an active role in the event, contributing their viewpoint from whatever background they come from. For this reason, it is important to keep delegates to manageable numbers (we recommend a maximum of 15 participants).
This has been an extremely successful approach already used by multiple organisations on their journey to collaborate to prevent and relieve homelessness. Below, you will find example discussions, actions and pledges from a roundtable that previously took place involving organisations within the health sector.
You can use these examples as a starting point for your own roundtable, and then use the blank templates of the discussion log, pledges and action plan to record your own activity.
The example includes:
- A completed discussion log
- A set of completed pledges
- A completed action plan
An online version of this toolkit can be accessed via www.wmca.org.uk
From this website, you can also download versions of the:
- Blank discussion log template
- Blank pledge template
- Blank action plan template
- Checklist of the example questions, pledges and actions Facilitator guide