A major project for our city
The Brighton & Hove Common Ambition
This city-wide, partnership project uses co-production to put people with lived experience of homelessness at the heart of improvements to Brighton’s homeless health system.
Background
The Brighton and Hove Common Ambition project works with people with lived experience of homelessness, frontline providers and commissioners in order to improve health services and outcomes for people experiencing homelessness in Brighton & Hove. We’re doing this through co-production, a new approach within homeless health services that brings people with lived experience of homelessness into the heart of a project.
Our Steering Group of people with lived experience of homelessness has been going for over a year now and is the driving force within the project. It has reviewed the current homeless healthcare system, identified challenges and is now working on designing improvements.
There is another lived experience group, the Media and Comms Group, this works to raise awareness for the project’s work and ensure the voice of people experiencing homelessness, is heard across the city.
Our objectives
- Develop a greater understanding of the needs and experiences of homeless patients.
- To (better) understand how people feel when using health services, ensuring that feedback is invited, welcomed, valued and used in a positive way to improve the whole experience.
- Integrate the expertise and experience of people who use the services into evaluation, improvement and development of homeless healthcare in Brighton & Hove.
- Deliver a strengthened homeless healthcare system which better meet the needs of patients.
- Improve the governance of the overall system, working with patients, providers and commissioners.
The project is run by a partnership of Brighton-based organisations including Arch Healthcare, Justlife, University of Brighton, Brighton & Hove CCG and Public Health Departments, and is funded thanks to a major grant from The Health Foundation. Insights gleaned from the project are likely to inform not just health service improvements, but long-term, sustainable changes to all homelessness services, with Brighton and Hove pipped to become a model for other UK cities to learn from and emulate.
Common Ambition project leader Nicky Pyper said, “In order for B&H Common Ambition to succeed, it is vital that we get buy-in and participation from people who have lived through homelessness and housing insecurity, as well as those who work with them. As project lead, my role is not to run the project but to bring together those who have lived through homelessness. These are the people who will know what matters, what works and what doesn’t work. At the moment there is no formal channel for patients experiencing homelessness to provide feedback on the healthcare they receive. This project will change this, and embed a system of feedback and collaboration into the future.”
For anyone interested in getting involved in Brighton and Hove Common Ambition, or simply keeping informed, please contact Project Leader Nicky Pyper: [email protected], or call 07517107344.
For further information and press enquiries: contact Louisa Barkla, Communications Coordinator, [email protected], 07928128056
