Gateway Family Services
Changing Lives, Changing Services.
We work to improve health, develop skills and opportunities and fight inequalities. We change the way public services work.
Adult Learner’s Week 14th – 18th May
Gateway To Your Future
Are you looking for work, a course or training?
Would you like advice on housing or benefits?
Do you just want to know what is available in your community?
We will be offering workshops in CV building, employment support, volunteering and benefits advice.
Come join us for FREE advice at the following venues:
Monday 14th May Northfield Library 11am – 1pm
Tuesday 15th May Ward End Library 3pm – 5pm
Thursday 17th May Small Heath Library 12pm – 2pm AND Weoley Castle Library 12pm – 2pm
Friday 18th May Shard End Library 12pm – 2pm
For further information please contact:
Chelsea Gaffey 0121 456 7820
chelsea.gaffey@gatewayfs.org
Pregnant Mothers helped with food poverty crisis in Birmingham
We are really pleased with the press attention being given to the food poverty amongst pregnant women in Birmingham and how we are able to help with food parcels. Unfortunately this probably happens in most cities up and down the country. What we should acknowledge is Birmingham is doing a great thing – over the last 6 years it has investing in helping vulnerable pregnant women be safe, healthy and supported, so that their babies are born healthier.
In 2006 the NHS Public Health in Birmingham acknowledged that something had to be done about the severe inequalities being faced by some people in the city, there is real hardship and Birmingham was experiencing the worst infant mortality rate in Europe.
They knew something needed to be done and they put their trust in us to deliver life-changing services to those that need it most.
We have worked with over 5,000 pregnant women since then and the NHS continue to support the service – this service is not available anywhere else – it is Brummie born and bred and we should be proud.
Many many women we support find themselves in circumstances that we could never imagine, I am proud that our organisation can support them and that this makes Birmingham a better place to live in.
Gateway Family Services is a Community Interest Company based in Birmingham since 2006
The family can be a place of violence and abuse…
Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family — a haven in a heartless world, so to speak — the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
MARILYN POOLE, Family: Changing Families, Changing Times
Farah (not her real name) was physically and emotionally abused by her partner for many years. As Farah was from a Pakistani heritage she was made to believe that this is the norm of every Asian family.
Farah grew up witnessing the same tribulations in her mothers life. Her father used to beat her mother for minor reasons such as; there is mess on the floor which is not cleaned. After questioning her mother Farah’s mother said this is the fate of all women and this is what all men do. Farah grew up witnessing this violence between two people who taught her about life …………….and this is what she was taught, a womans place is in the kitchen, and if she makes a mistake she needs to be punished.
Now Farah is living through the same horror, not realisng this is unacceptable and inhumane. She has a belief ingraved in her from her family that it is normal to live inthis kind of a relationship…….
Saving Money for Local Government and the NHS
A quick and simple public sector reform to save money
The innovation I am proposing is – don’t do anything new - import things from other areas – exhaust all possibilities before starting from scratch – if it is needed it probably exists already.
We have a culture of showcasing our good work and covering up our mistakes – we feel our reputation may be damaged if we share the experiences of getting it wrong, and yet I think if we shared our experiences warts and all, millions of pounds could be saved across the country. Delivering new services in tried and tested ways is the most efficient thing to do. It is about exchanging and unselfishly bringing about social change.
We know that projects are most inefficient at the beginning, cost more and achieve less – it takes at least a year, to test, trial fail and learn how to deliver – then we get really good at it. In other parts of the country people are also testing, trialling failing and learning and getting good.
It’s widely acknowledged that there pockets of good practice – there are lots of them, all over the place. The clever trick is to take the learning and the efficiencies and transplant them into other areas, so that they could benefit.
The constant drive for innovation is tiring and unnecessary – we should prohibit it for a year and see how we get on. The tendency to overcomplicate matters to save money is normal but some solutions are so simple – such as this one from Podnosh - and this is another;
I listened to Sir Michael Marmot describe his findings in the review of Health Inequalities and he correctly identified that people were doing many good things in various places – yet no-one asked how do we replicate. People agree they should ‘share good practice’ – one of the most overused phrases in the Health and Social Care Sector and probably other sectors too – yet no-one really imports good-practice from other areas. I have yet to see anyone else benefit in practical terms from other peoples learning, development, successes and failures and be willing to share their own.
If we want to make cost savings, become efficient and deliver tested effective services then it’s time to stop innovating.
19 and Pregnant with Twins.
I was supporting a 19 year old young woman who was having twins. Her boyfriend had moved on and she was living in a one bedroom house that had no carpet, the walls were just plastered, no wallpaper or anything. Because she was a single parent, having twins and living in that condition she was worried about what the midwife, health visitors and maybe even social services would think of her.
She didn’t even have a cooker although she had lived there for about a year. She told me that she had been told that the connection for the cooker would cost money that she didn’t have so she sold the cooker and bought a microwave. It turned out that she was told wrong.
Because she had no cooker she was eating out of the chippy and she had gone off certain food because she was pregnant. Cooking in the microwave meant that she had a limited choice of food and this resulted in her being referred to a dietitian because she was losing weight. However, because she didn’t have a cooker she couldn’t be supported by the dietitian because they do meal planning and cooking in the home. She was not gaining weight and one of the babies was not growing. Because of this she was induced at about 36 weeks.
City Mission got a cooker for her but she couldn’t afford the £30 so I contacted Buttle UK to get her some financial help to buy the cooker. I asked for a cooker and washing machine but due to financial situation in this country she could only have one or the other and she chose the cooker. When she got the cooker she was really pleased and she said ‘It’s the first time I’ve cooked a proper dinner in this house’.
When she first moved in her and her boyfriend were stripping the walls because they wanted to redecorate. The walls were coming off with the paper. She spoke to her housing officer who told her to carry on stripping to see what the walls looked like. She did this and was then told they would only fix the chimney breast. I took photos of the house and sent those to the housing with a letter. They still said they would only do one wall. I wrote another letter and eventually they did the front room and the bedroom.
Because the walls have been done now, her friends have helped her to decorate, her Uncle gave her money to buy some carpet. So by the time the babies came along she had a comfortable little home around her. I referred her to family support not because she needed help with the babies but just so that someone could speak on her behalf nad to support her with her housing.
Social support in pregnancy
Kalvinder talks about the support she got from Gateway.
Being pregnant is supposed to be a happy time, but it can be very difficult. We help mums deal with practical and emotional problems so they can concentrate on keeping healthy – and having healthy babies. After she found she was pregnant Kalvinder came to Birmingham from Southampton to be near her family, but there were problems. We helped her sort out a complicated benefit situation, helped her find somewhere suitable to live - and every problem solved meant there was something less for Kalvinder to worry about – and that’s what our job is all about.
Our Keyworkers get people into the jobs they want
13 weeks pregnant and under a lot of stress, Diane* was a client of our POW service. She was involved with an abusive partner and had suffered an early miscarriage, as well as experiencing the onset of depression. During that time her benefits had also been cancelled.
Diane was referred to the key worker service where she was offered support and guidance from one of Gateway’s Key-workers, Susan Bernard. When Susan met her she was still struggling financially. Susan supported Diane through frequent one to one visits and phone calls and signposted her to relevant agencies, who helped Diane get motivated and search for courses as she was interested in voluntary/paid employment. Diane’s burning ambition since leaving school has been to work in the Travel and Tourism Industry.
Diane was very resilient despite all that she had been through as a young person and had been doing voluntary work with West Midlands Fire Service for a time. She had also managed to find a voluntary placement with Travel Lodge which she has hoped would lead to a permanent position.
She enrolled for a French language class which she has been attending one evening a week to improve her skills but unfortunately had a setback due to a car accident which meant she wasn`t able to continue her role with Travel Lodge. This was really disappointing for her because she had set her heart on working for them as a Receptionist/Front of House role and had done all the required training for the organisation .This was just another barrier to overcome for Diane.
Susan supported her to complete a quality CV and covering letter so she was prepared for future job vacancies.
With the gained confidence and tools for finding employment Diane applied for a job with Birmingham Airport for a Security post. She was not expecting to receive a positive response due to lack of experience but was keen to apply and hope for the best. Diane was then short listed for the interview which was a full days assessment. Diane was very nervous but Susan supported her with interview preparation and confidence building to help Diane focus on the task ahead.
Diane’s application was successful out of sixty applicants and feels over joyed with what she has managed to achieve after such a difficult start
Diane has now started her new job and is finally getting to where she wants to be in life, all with her new baby!
*Name changed to protect identity
Hitting the targets – missing the point
Once again this week I will be spending my time responding to service specifications through a procurement portal. It’s good that there are still tenders to respond to, but….
What I write in response to their questions doesn’t give me the opportunity to talk about the really important stuff, the life-changing opportunities and the amazing journey that some people will make.
Every day I hear remarkable stories from staff about the achievements of the people they work with, the overwhelming barriers they face and the challenges they have overcome.
And every month I read the reports to the commissioners about the targets they set us and how we have achieved them. As I read these reports I see nothing about individual’s triumphs, –largely because this information is not measured as a target.
Yet when I do tell people about the difficult circumstances that some of our clients are in, and how we have helped them everyone agrees it’s the right thing to do, it’s needed and often changes lives – will these experiences ever change services?
We know loads of stuff
The term commissioning comes from shipbuilding, and it feels to me that often we are treated as an empty vessel. The reality is that we are packed to the rafters with experience, knowledge, skills and understanding from all sorts of perspectives – community based organisations usually are.
Trust is a great thing
The thing that makes us able to help people, is because we can listen to them, often we have been where they are, sometime live in the same places and most importantly we can see many perspectives, we are here because of our life experience. Someone recently said to me “The best guides in life are those that are just a few steps ahead of you” – that is how we see ourselves in relation to our clients. We need to be trusted to work in ways we know best.
We will find the way – see you there.
Where it starts to become uneasy is when the path is set, the route is determined and the road to a target is specified. In our sector, there is a well known route – it’s called the Patient Pathway and many many hours have been spent designing it, mostly by people who are never going to walk down it.
People can do even greater things
About 95% of the time spent by people working in communities is on negotiating the hoops that have been set down, in order to get to a target.
Negotiating services and systems is a job in itself; how to find what you want, where you want it and how you want it would be much easier if the road to the target was simple, the signs were clear and perhaps designed by those who use it.
Community/voluntary organisations, social enterprises, Community Interest Companies know loads of things, we don’t want to be responders, we need to be specifiers – then maybe targets will become more relevant to the point.
Skills in Birmingham
There has been an interesting conversation this week about what it is that employers value when recruiting staff With the Birmingham and Solihull LEP meeting at the end of the month to discuss what skills the people of Birmingham need, Nick Booth from Podnosh, has tried to gather the views of people from across the city to see what they feel is currently missing in his blog piece below;
Views are sought from local organisations from across different sectors, each describing their interactions with the percieved skills (or lack of them) in the local area and also commenting on what they think is needed to make sure that Birmingham, and it’s people, is ready for the future.
Karl Binder, from Adhere left his views on the site, amongst others, while Gateway’s Chief Executive, Vicki Fitzgerald also commented on the debate by saying, “As a training provider and accredited delivery agent for qualifications, people often think we value qualifications above all else. This isn’t true, in fact the opposite is the case. We employ over 60 people that we have recruited for their experience, mostly of life, family, barriers, prejudice and often overcoming the most difficult of circumstances. Their experience is nothing without genuine commitment, passion and enthusiasm for what they are doing and it’s these values that we would recruit for.
Often qualifications mean exclusion for many rather than inclusion.I often see them as a hoop people have to jump through in order to do things that really matter. For me, while others were doing their degrees or their masters, I was learning about real life and real people and it taught me a huge amount.
We work mostly with the NHS and professional qualifications are necessary in most cases (my dentist for example!) Unlike many other sectors the qualifications rarely change and this can mean a job for life, but it also can mean that you never get to employ people who see the world from different perspectives – always valuing skills and qualifications over experience and values makes for a very insular organisation
So what do you think?
Are the skills that people are learning useful in today’s world? What skills, and when, should we be looking for when employing staff and does experience and ‘life-skills’ make you stand out more than qualifications?
Gateway Wins Award for Reducing Barriers to Employment
From left to right: (Gateway Programme Manager, Laura Ward, Sue Gladwish and Kerry Chase from Action for Blind People)
Gateway Family Services were delighted to receive an award this week from Action for Blind People, the charity that represents those who are blind and partially sighted, across the UK.
Gateway, who are a social enterprise that helps overcome barriers to employment and community health services, received the charity’s ‘See the Capability, not the Disability’ award for their work with Sue Gladwish, a registered blind lady from Kitwell in Birmingham who, after a six-month paid placement, has now been offered employment, helping to transform her confidence and self-belief. In the video below, Sue talks to us about how, after 18 years, she is enjoying being back in the ‘working groove’ again.
Sue is the administrator for Gateway’s Lighten Up Service. She said: “Gateway Family Services has recognised my capability, not the disability of sight loss. Their support has boosted my self-esteem, showing that being visually impaired shouldn’t be a barrier to work. I can contribute just as much as my sighted colleagues, thanks to the company’s innovation and support.”