Sue Goddard, Programme Support Officer Changing Futures Sussex
On a very rainy day at the start of February a group of us from CF Sussex and East Sussex travelled up by train to Birmingham to attend this event. The venue was ideally placed for both Birmingham New Street station and our hotel; an extra bonus was that it was in the Chinese quarter of Birmingham so the night before we were able to treat ourselves to a magnificent Cantonese meal. Here are a few snippets from the day.
Changing Futures are testing new ways to support people who are experiencing multiple disadvantage; they are often receiving support from a number of services for overlapping needs. Their needs can be poor mental health, substance misuse, homelessness, and rough sleeping, contact with the criminal justice system, or experiences of domestic abuse.
There are around 336,000 people with multiple disadvantage in England and the system doesn't work for them at the moment, which can lead to people falling through gaps and high costs for public services. Changing Futures wants to change the system as it’s not coordinated, around the needs of the individual, but more often the needs of the system itself. To bring about this collaborative, person centred approach, we all need to work together.
On average, a person with multiple disadvantage costs public services 5 times more than an average citizen.
The day opened with updates from TNLCF (The National Lottery Community Fund) and MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government). With funding news, direction, and context for the coming year.
James Rogers - Deputy Director, MHCLG said that the learning, evidence, and insight from people across the Changing Futures programme make a huge contribution to building understanding and shaping action across government. James also shared the government priorities with us: -
Spending Review – This budgets for all government departments and public services. With 2025/26 (funding) secured we are now looking ahead to the next phase with colleagues from across Government.
Devolution – We are supporting colleagues to look at how central government can support local authorities and Mayors to lead local work to reform services and join up support for individuals, families, and communities.
Simplifying funding – Government has committed to making funding simpler for local partners so it’s easier to plan and join-up services locally. We are working with colleagues leading this work on MHCLG and other departments on what this could look like.
Homelessness – We are supporting work on a strategy to get on track to ending homelessness, including looking at access to housing and support, resettlement from custody, and access to essential health services.
Criminal Justice System – As well as resettlement we are supporting other reform including preventing crime, reducing reoffending and diversion from the CJS and sentencing review.
Violence against women and girls – We are contributing to work to halve VAWG including a focus on flexible, person centred services and access to safe accommodation.
Describe what Systems Leadership means to you...
This was a creative activity where we were asked to create a poster. We had pens, scissors, and a pile of magazines to work with. We spent time thinking about:
How we experienced good systems leadership in others.
What it means to lead on this work when you’re not necessarily at the top of traditional hierarchies.
What we imagined the work of Systems Leadership to be at the beginning of the programme (or whenever we joined)
How has it worked out in reality
What have we found to be successful.
What is still difficult to do.
This was the poster from my table…
Ways of Being...
For this activity we were asked to think about ‘Ways of Being’ to move forward with our work in Changing Futures, we were all allocated one ‘Way of Being’ to work on. I’ve given one example of these in practice (from the many) against each: -
Being curious – asking open ended questions
Prioritising relationships – encourage, appreciate, build trust
Being realistic and aspirational – focus on what is really important to the client
Having conviction – stamina to take conversations into other environments
Sitting with discomfort – having those uncomfortable explorative conversations
Once we had completed our task we were asked to connect with other people who had worked on a different ‘way of being’ and confer. Then we were asked to gather around the way of being group that resonated most with us personally. We discovered that Prioritising Relationships was the most popular.
My take out from this is how much the ways of being interlink. For example, being curious involves an invitation to others to share their thoughts and feelings, which fuels open and respectful dialogue. This in turn ‘Prioritising Relationships’.
“To give no trust is to get no trust”
There was good news on Data Collection!
Data collection will be radically reduced/streamlined from participants in 2025/26:
Going forwards there will be NO separate historical data collection.
MHCLG will continue to collect: -
Personal identifiers (name, date of birth etc)
Demographics/characteristics
Agreement for data linking/sharing
Previous experience in disadvantage
Number of individuals, time spent on CF, their destination and reason for exit.
It is likely that they will also continue to collect the New Directions Team Assessment (NDTA) and Recovering Quality of Life (ReQol) measuring tools for levels of individual risk and client outcomes, respectively.
Future Planning
Finally, we were asked to sit together with our area and list what we are hoping to achieve in the future:
What are you (your area/team/personally) hoping to achieve by 2030 in multiple disadvantage?
What needs to happen in 2025/26 to get you there?
How does your work compare to the original focus of your Changing Futures programme?
How can you make the most of this next funded year?
This was our Sussex flipchart.
It was striking how many areas faced the same challenges that we have experienced in Sussex, and it was inspiring to see the different approaches areas are planning.
This was then end of an informative and busy day for us all we all headed back home on the train, I think mine was the longest journey taking 4 and a half hours!
“System Leadership is a practice, not a product. We have defined it as “the collaborative leadership of many people at different places in a system, in order to achieve a shared purpose.”
Systems Leadership - University of Birmingham Our Futures Plans and Looking to 2030
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