Poverty Truth Commissions
Poverty Truth Commissions bring people with direct experience of poverty into the same room as local decision makers. They do so over a sustained period, to build mutual understanding and trust, and find better ways to tackle poverty. In this event we explored what we can learn from this.
Martin Johnstone, co-Director of the Poverty Truth Network, introduced the discussion. He shared a little of his own story - he has spent a great deal of time alongside people experiencing poverty, and feels he has gained much wisdom and knowledge from them. He has also spent time with people in positions of authority, and discovered that they can display compassion. The need, he said, is to bring the two worlds together, and this is what he sought to do, when setting up the first Poverty Truth Commission in Glasgow in 2009.
The way it works is that 12-15 Community Commissioners – all ‘experts by experience’ - spend time together, preparing to tell their stories, and subsequently come together with a group of 12-15 Civic and Business Commissioners, building relationships of trust so that difficult conversations can emerge. They may consider service design, policy changes – any areas where the group has an ability to act and make a difference. It is a model of ‘spectacular simplicity’ said Martin, ‘not them and us - just a bigger us’. To date, 30 different Commissions have been established across the UK.
We also heard from two people who took part in a Poverty Truth Commission in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. Carrie-Anne Mizen (Community Commissioner) explained that while a few Community Commissioners dropped out, others stuck with it, and for them it was a way to build confidence - a chance to be heard and make a difference. Mel Hughes (Civic Commissioner) works at the local University, and was impressed by the method – in this case the initiative was led by those experiencing poverty: ‘we were invited into their world’, she said. The Business and Civic Commissioners needed to learn to hold themselves back – restraining themselves from acting as rescuers, avoiding taking over and problem-solving. They needed to learn to listen. And to discover they could connect as people, not according to title or rank. They only started to discuss what they were going to do together after nine months had passed.
In a Q&A session that followed, we learnt more about the model:
All-in all it’s a three-year programme. The initial stages are critical. Typically, six months to decide to proceed, six months to assemble the community commissioners. The stage of working just with the community commissioners takes around six months and it doesn’t work to short-circuit that.
It needs the equivalent of one full-time facilitator, ideally split between three people, with different tasks including administration of the groups, helping the civic commissioners peel away their ‘protective layers’, encouraging good relationships to flourish.
It’s best to avoid prescriptive definitions of poverty. ‘If you experience it, you don’t need a definition.’
Tangible changes do emerge – it is always best to under-promise and over deliver.
In the breakouts and discussion that followed, we considered: Could this way of working be applied more widely? And if so, what would need to change?
There isn’t a ‘manual’ for how Poverty Truth Commissions should operate. They draw on the shared wisdom of the earlier Commissions, and the relational skills of people like Martin.
This methodology is ‘a beautiful practice’, one person said. It should not get ‘stuck in a poverty silo’, it should become the pattern for how we live and relate to each other in our communities. Estrangement runs so deep in our society – this is deeply problematic, and we need practices like this to become widespread and normalised.
The Poverty Truth Commissions point us in a direction away from professionalised services which seek to deliver short term fixes. ‘Listen, and keep listening.’ Slowing down is the right thing to do. Professionals resist giving time to exercises like this. But there is a transformative experience, when people realise that they don’t need to be endlessly busy.
Building community, across social divides, is more likely to achieve progress than setting out to change the world, which can only lead to frustration and disappointment. Being in company, crying and laughing together, is a worthwhile outcome in itself. But you also need to keep the conversation honest - ‘this is all very well, but there’s still no milk in the fridge’.
We need to hold both sides of the coin: an asset-based community development approach on the one side, and a recognition that injustice is structural, and requires a wider systems change, on the other.
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Niall Cooper, from Church Action on Poverty, responded to the discussion with this poem:
Poverty Truth: A Better Way
Nothing About us Without us is for us
Bringing worlds together
Gaining wisdom, friendship, insight from being alongside
Great compassion, wisdom and intellect amongst civic leaders
Beyond stereotypes of suits and scroungers
If you want to go far, go together
Listening beyond words
Experts through experience
Confident in your own story
Building trust
New perspectives
Owned locally
Stepping into our territory: Owning the space
Looking like our local community
Painting a fuller picture of the struggle against poverty
Bowled over by brilliance, the treasure of people
Not problems to be fixed
Sharing the truth
Carrie and Mel
A chance to be heard, to really make a difference
Building friendships
Sharing stories: My story really matters
Something needs to change: This shouldn’t happen
Humanising the process
Housing and home
Empowered communities
Nothing About us without us is for us
Powerfully facilitated
Planned randomness
How much it takes to make it happen…
Amazing tools and methods. Seamless
Check ins, lifebuoys, talking to the person next to you
Crying and laughing together
Check outs
Happy, motivated, confused, my brain is a mush
Honest
Having people on your side, on the end of a phone
Even more scary for civic leaders
Sitting round with cups of tea, playing games
Peeling down layers of protection
Connecting as people, relationships first
Beyond unequal partnerships
Checking in between meetings,
Sharing coffee, one to one
Stopping problem solving and rescuing….
Slowing down. Just. Listening.
Sometimes things are so urgent… you can’t afford to do them quickly
Nothing About us without us is for us
Being invited into someone else’s space
Putting people first
No short circuiting
No take over
No short term fixes
Under promise and over deliver
Change starts to happen as soon as you ask the first question
Changes for individuals
Changes in minds
Changes in organisations, in policies, in practice
Commissioners getting the credit
Embedding the impact
Deep culture change
Participatory democracy in practice
Building a network
Building a movement
Building a community of people… to change the world
Nothing About us without us is for us