Friday 4th August 2017 - a foot in the door??

Posted 12:50pm

I am sitting at a table in an establishment near to Highbury and Islington roundabout, sunshine streaming in, and reflecting on a good week for HMHB.

We had our meeting with SHP on Wednesday, which went how we hoped, and the feedback was a real boost to all of us. The pilot was great fun to do, and we felt we had done well, but it was all down to outcomes and feedback from SHP. Once again, we were tremendously grateful to just be given the opportunity to work a program after years of development.

I had prepared a PowerPoint presentation, and that was accompanied by a small report.  We wanted to express our feelings on the project, how we felt we should make changes, and also propose how we can do further programs.  All of these were met with positive vibes.

We had seen terrific improvement in confidence and energy from our "core 3" users. We always knew it would be a challenge working with people coming through and out of recovery.  But we promised an interactive and proactive program, and we delivered that in abundance - especially all the extras we managed to include.

We are learning though. There are things we need to improve and things to change. We will be altering the length of the program day from three hours to two hours (although we can always extend that by a few minutes if required). Instead of targeting one subject a week, we will do smaller sessions on out four main topics every week - mindset/routine, health, fitness, nutrition. We will get better communication between users and key workers. Provide better information before and after the courses. But overall, considering it was our first time, it probably could not have gone much better.

We sent through a costing spreadsheet in regards to doing another program with SHP - and they said the costs were reasonable. None of us are getting rich, but it would be nice to be able to not worry about paying bills, and having a bit of a life again - so we can just concentrate on delivering the best possible program we can.

I am delighted that this is possibly the start of a long relationship with SHP. This also now gives us a great base to be talking to lots of other agencies - including DWP, CGL, Housing Associations, BITC, Councils, etc. to produce further programs with them. Hopefully SHP would give us a good reference too.

All we wanted was a chance to get our foot in the door.  We have done that now - and it is up to us to ensure that we push on from here.