A fortnight ago we heard that Bristol City Council, working with our partners, has won £3.3 million funding for our ‘Changing Futures’ bid. We were one of only 15 successful bids out of a field of 97.
This is fantastic news. We can further develop the work we have been doing with some of our city’s most vulnerable residents. In particular, this will build on what we have learned from the ‘Everyone In’ project, which focused on supporting homeless people during the pandemic.
Like many cities, we have a high and growing number of people who are affected by a multiplicity of problems; mental ill-health, substance misuse, domestic abuse and family breakdown. We also know that often these people are not well served by the agencies charged with supporting them. So, this extra funding is really welcome in knitting those services together.
Two things really struck me as we worked through our bid. The first is that one of the greatest barriers for people seeking help is constantly having to tell their story. This sometimes increases their trauma as they have to relive difficult periods of their lives. Really listening to people with lived experience allows us to really hear how difficult they have found it accessing the support they need. It’s made the principle of ‘telling it once’ and agencies (appropriately) sharing that information, an important keystone in this work. So has having trusted individuals as named contacts and keyworkers (‘my team around me’) giving a much more holistic and multi-disciplinary approach.
The second was a comment from one of our partners when we sent round the final draft of the bid. They said “this is brilliant, and how we need to work, whether we get the money or not.” That was a great endorsement of the work that had gone in to the bid, co-ordinated by Golden Key Bristol. It also shows that often in public services, we know what needs to happen, but sometimes our staff don’t have the time to lift their heads and make those changes.
I really hope that having this extra funding will drive these changes. This will keep the people we want to serve at the heart of things. I am sure that many of you will have been moved by some of the stories that we have seen on local and national media. Lives have been turned around during the pandemic through this approach, like that of Steve, who recently featured on Channel 4 News.
Re-focussing our services with this extra funding over the next few years must lead to those changes becoming how we do things all the time, across all of our partnerships.
Only this way will we be able to say that things have improved for hundreds of individuals, and will we be able to show our real commitment to – as it says on the tin – Changing Futures.