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Engaging ‘people with experience of poverty’ in policy and influencing work

We want people’s lived experience to be taken seriously and inform decisions that have an impact on low-income communities. These are the people who have the skills and experience to influence change in a positive way. But it’s not easy work for organisations to do well — working alongside people with lived experience of poverty takes time, skill and empathy.

Here are six key things to consider when looking to involve people traditionally left out of policy design work:

Mistrust

• There is often a deep mistrust of political institutions and systems because people don’t feel they represent their concerns. This is sometimes interpreted as apathy but apathy is created because of the poor standards of engagement that regularly occur.
• Poor processes of engagement that are tokenistic, box ticking exercises further entrench mistrust. Engagement can be dressed up as opportunity to be heard but often the decision has already been made so people (understandably) don’t feel it’s worth their time.
• Consultation fatigue is real and detrimental because of the above.
• The onus is on those who are part of these institutions to do the long term work of building trust.
• Often people in other job roles are asked to do this on top of their day job. However, it is a specialist area and engagement should be treated with care and excellence. Much is at stake.

The seven Standards for Community Engagement from What Works Scotland

This requires a high standard design of engagement processes. This is specialist work. There are many agencies and consultancies that can be brought in to help advise, guide and deliver on approaches and methodologies.

Poverty is not an identity

• It’s rare to find people who define themselves as living in poverty. People see poverty as something that exists in other countries or of a bygone era.
• There is a deep resistance to being defined as being in poverty because of stigma and shame.
• Terminology — ‘people with experience of poverty’, ‘lived experience’ etc are all problematic and can be a barrier to engagement.

The problem is not ‘poor’ people, the problem is that of poor structures failing people. Engage on the issue of these failing structural issues rather than the catch-all term of ‘poverty’ which at best mean very little to people, at worst creates an active barrier.

The impact of disempowering services and treatment

• For many people in poverty their experience is wrapped up in (sometimes) a lifetime of not being listened to or heard. Services and politics are done to people. Having limited agency in your daily life due to being at the mercy of dysfunctional systems means it can feel a stretch to feel like you could be part of influencing something bigger. If you are in crisis, living day to day, it is hard to think to the future.

Respect the work that is done by grassroots voice work (see below)

Engagement is hard work

• Grassroot groups working on voice do the hard graft of reaching out to people in the community, building their trust, and supporting people to believe that they have something valuable to say and that it will make a difference.
• A lot of work goes into destigmatising the situation people find themselves in. Undoing harm that comes from the toxic culture of blaming individuals for the issues that face them.
• They also provide pastoral care to the individuals who take part in initiatives. They are often providing support for life issues as well as trying to do the work of supporting voices to be heard. This is hard, emotional toil.

Respect the tireless work that these groups do and resource them for it. They’ve done the hard outreach work that most institutions or distant organisations don’t have the skill or resource to do themselves and they do the ongoing emotional support work that these organisations can’t. Enter into it with a spirit of respect, partnership and resource as you would any other.

Start with listening

• There are plenty of groups speaking out. The question is, are we listening and engaging on their interests and priorities or have we already set the agenda according to our own analysis of the problem.
• Spend time really listening, as in active listening, letting people direct the topic and the conversation and see what emerges. Limiting questions related to only the area you are interested in isn’t amplifying people’s voices or being interested in what is important to people — it is simply seeking out information to support your own analysis or amplify your own cause.

Building networks

• All of this takes time and for institutions disconnected from the people they are representing it is hard to know where to start. There are no quick engagement strategies. Time must be created to find groups on the ground, to build relationships of trust.
• Large well heeled organisations benefit from the work of poorly resourced groups on the ground. We profit from the passion and commitment of people in the community who are often willing to give time up to work with us.

If there is no capacity or resource to invest in this then consider working with a market research company to help you source people and do a more traditional research approach to feed in to strategies you are looking to be informed.

For more reading on this topic see the links below:

Improving civic participation of people in poverty — reflections from commissioners with experience from Leeds Poverty Truth Commission

JRF funded Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power evaluation (very dated but lessons remain the same for today)

How to plan participatory processes and who to involve