Sharing good practice isn’t always easy. At Outside the Box we often have people tell us something they do well that someone else has been struggling to find information about. Our most important resource is the people we work with and their skills, experience and knowledge.
But sometimes this can be hard. If you don’t know anyone who knows how to solve your problem then it can be tough to keep reaching out to try to get support. This can be especially difficult if you feel you aren’t being listened to.
During our Local People Linking project we worked with different community groups looking at the real issues that affected them, and had open discussions about what could be done to make life easier. Sometimes the group came up with solutions, at other times no one knew what the answer was. Interestingly, at different groups a variety of issues arose. At the Fairweather group we were told about the problems people were experiencing accessing information, ERDA shared how they are campaigning for accessible transport, the Causeway RAMH group chatted with us about the discrimination people with mental and physical problems experience and the Blether and Brew group described how difficult it can be when so many different people are approaching you for help.
New resources
This is why, following the end of the East Renfrewshire part of the project, we were keen to produce some guides to show what we had heard and to share the good practice already happening.
A Guide to Asking Your MSP or Councillor – and Other People – for Support details just that, how to approach the people you need to to find out how to make changes to your home or community. In the guide we share what we heard from people about the issues they face, from transport issues to needing home adaptations, and how to get the support you need.
In Human Rights – How to Run your Own Learning Session we give advice on running your own sessions, from what questions you could ask to thinking about how to structure a session. We hope this resource will help more people have open conversations about what could be done to make their communities work better for them. If you would like copies of either guide please let us know by using the contact information below.
Get in Touch
Our East Renfrewshire phase of Local People Linking has now come to an end but we will be running more free Learning about Rights sessions in West Dunbartonshire. If you go to, or work with, a group for older people in that area and would like to have us along then get in touch by emailing alice@otbds.org or by calling 0141 419 0451.