1. Evidence Participation Change Learning from the Scottish Network
Overview of EPIC project
Focus on one particular aspect of EPIC to draw out key learning
Challenges
Overall outcomes of the EPIC project
Sarah Welford
Policy and Parliamentary Officer

2. Evidence Participation Change
Training
Participatory Research
Forums:
- Scottish Assembly for Poverty and
- Tackling Poverty Stakeholder Forum
Funded independently from Scottish Government, work with SG reps to ensure good engagement with SG
Training – to support and encourage groups to take action on poverty and to get their voice heard more effectively
Research – Work with community groups affected by poverty who are supported to identify, design and carry out research in their local area.
SATP – 400 people, 2 days. Bottom up process – work with community groups – identify issues, invite others on basis of this. Community groups put issues on the agenda. Yearly feedback on key messages and outcomes. MSPs invited to take active role, commit to taking issues back and feeding back to groups. Strong emphasis on groups to come up with key policy messages.

3. Tackling Poverty Stakeholder Forum
Meaningful participation:
Regular – every 6 months
Space for regular feedback
Ratios – 1/3 of each group of people
Preparation
Concrete outcomes through short life working groups
Focus on TPSF to draw out some of the lessons learnt that are key to meaningful participation.
Not one off meetings here and there, regular, every 6 months
Membership based – same people coming each time – continuity and ability to feedback.
Membership carefully chosen to ensure non-tokenistic involvement. Out of the 30 members, 10 people have experience of poverty, 10 Scottish Government and Local Government representatives and 10 NGOs.
4) Preparation takes place before each meeting on issues that we are focusing on to ensure that people are up to speed on the policy developments in this area in order to make the best possible use of time – no point people going and asking questions that are not relevant or questions that I could have answered before. Can address issues of jargon and empower people with information and knowledge – unfair to put people in with a group of people who do this as their jobs – it is not meaningful otherwise. Trying to enable as equal a relation as possible. Also chance to engage more people in the discussion so that members of the forum can talk about other people’s experience also, not just their own.
5) Main success of the Forum is the working groups.

4. Short life working groups
6 month duration
Focused and time limit ensures outcomes
Feeds into relevant policy development to ensure impact.
Beyond consultation.
- Happens between the meetings of the Stakeholder Forum; 6 months long. Focus of working group determined by members of the forum.
- Working group made up of members of forum who have expertise in this area and others invited in if necessary.
- Short timing of group ensures there are concrete outcomes. This is fed back to the rest of the Forum and recommendations made to the rest of the forum.
- Health Inequalities, Stigma, Parents and Child Poverty and Poverty Premiums
- Three out of four have fed directly into policy development – important to have impact – Review of Health Inequalities strategy at national level, input into Child Poverty Strategy, input into devolution of aspects of the social fund.
- Has developed process that goes beyond consultation. Policy makers commit to feeding back to the group that takes part.

5. Process of preparation
1) Broad discussion of issues with wide engagement of people.
2) Representatives volunteer to take part in the final meeting with policy makers.
3) Representatives work to narrow down priorities and key messages from the wider group.
4) Representatives meet with policy makers and present messages and discuss.
Initial meeting aims to engage with a wide range of people to get a good over view of the issues. E.g. Parents and Child Poverty working group – took place in a women’s drop in where women who were at the drop in encouraged to participate in the discussion – succeeded in gathering views of more difficult to reach.
Important that people meeting with policy makers don’t just draw on own experience but represent what they see in the community. Volunteers invited to take on this role.
Representatives then work on preparing inputs that reflect the whole discussion which are then presented at the meeting with policy makers.

6. Fundamental to success
Clarity of purpose and realistic expectations.
Representation of wider views
Informed opinions and inputs
A two way dialogue
Commitment and understanding of policy makers.
Important to ensure that expectations are realistic. Much of policy influencing is about words in documents that guide practice. Often quite intangible and change not immediately visible to participants. This is what policy influencing is all about and we must be clear on this to avoid disappointment.
Important that participants draw from their community and not just personal experience – personal leaves participant vulnerable and encouraged solutions to be found for one person. This is not sufficient – need to talk about the situation as a whole and how it affects others. Avoid policy makers trying to help individual circumstances but not the bigger picture. Also avoids policy makers thinking this is a one off and not representative of a lot of experiences.
Participants must be well informed on policy that they are inputting into. Helps build capacity for people to present their case in the most effective way and to avoid misunderstanding and feeling inadequate in their knowledge. Some might say this is patronising but not at all – it would be like putting a doctor into a meeting about the fire service – there is a lack of technical and working knowledge. People need support with this if they have never experienced such meetings.
The process we are trying to establish is very much a two way dialogue rather than a one sided extraction of information – policy makers have to commit to feeding back to participants.
Policy makers need to be fully committed to the process and understand how participation works – this two way dialogue – if not, this can be damaging. Recently had an experience where policy makers didn’t fulfil their side of the arrangement – very disappointing, people felt like they weren’t taken seriously. We are now carefully considering any future engagement with these particular policy makers and looking to change strategy.

7. Challenges Challenging context
Finding participants patient and committed enough to take part.
Follow up
Finding time and resources
Working in a challenging context; trying to create a meaningful process with a Government that has little process in place itself – can throw up many challenges. You have to constantly reassess where to carry out participation and with whom, to ensure that it results in some outcome – no matter how small. Economic climate doing nothing for the fight against poverty – constantly up against the argument that there is no more money.
With such intangible outcomes it is a big ask of anyone taking part – often people feel as though their participation is not making a difference – something we all can feel at cdertain times. Important to feedback any small outcomes and constantly remind people that change takes a long time but it does happen – looking back through history.
Short life working groups have a time limit and not everything can be taken forward. Capacity of one organisation is limited. We must be clear on what we can and can not do.
All of this requires time and resources. Even with a substantial budget, we struggle to take forward all that is being developed through the project.4 years funding does not allow for development and expansion.

8. Outcomes of participatory process overall
Voices reflected in Health Inequalities Strategy and Child Poverty Strategy
“… I got the report and [it] was really good. It feels like change is really happening. I’ve been going to meetings for years and this is the first one I’ve felt like I’ve really been listened to. Getting the chance to meet with the Minister, and [her] responding as she did has been such a good experience’
‘Stick your Labels!’ stigma campaign
Groups empowered to carry out research; define and own issues on the agenda
Groups identify and shape issues on agenda of large scale high profile anti-poverty event
EPIC has thus resulted in the voice of experience to be heard in two large and important strategies that tackles poverty and has resulted in good experiences on both side of policy maker and participant and thus created good practice to encourage and reflect upon.
Launch of the ‘Stick Your Labels’, a campaign to tackle the stigma of living in poverty. This came directly out of the experiences of many many people we have engaged with over EPIC and beyond on the stigma that is attached to living in poverty in the UK – through this we are supporting people to take action against negative news reporting and to be pro active at getting real voices and experience into traditional as well as new social networking media.
Two very successful pieces of participatory research which increased the confidence of participants, has led to some youth policy changes at a local level and succeeded in getting experiences of a group of people not traditionally heard in the poverty debate –those of ex-offenders out and discussed.
And progressing towards more bottom up approaches to large high profile events.

9. Conclusion
When all the conditions are in place can lead to very successful outcomes.
However – difficult to ensure that all of these conditions are in place all of the time.
Learning in process.
Questions?