How can a new service successfully and innovatively enter the ‘homelessness’ sector?
Beacon note: over the last couple of months, we’ve been fortunate to be joined by Julia Mullin and support her in delivering a pro bono project for Gateway Baptist Church. Julia is an early career public health professional keen to apply her skills and build her experience through an applied ‘internship’. Julia’s project involved a needs assessment to determine the gaps in the current homelessness service landscape, and provide options around what a potential service response could look like. We asked Julia to share her thoughts on the thinking behind the process, which she has kindly outlined here.
When a service establishes itself in a new location, should they replicate what has worked for them previously or should they innovate? Really, it comes down to what’s pragmatic – did the service have time to ask around or did they need to be established within a certain budget or time frame?
What the project was about
Gateway Baptist Church (GBC) established a new church in the Brisbane City Centre at the end of 2019, with the sentiment to serve their ‘neighbours’. With the luxury of time (thanks COVID-19), they had breathing room to ask ‘who is my neighbour and how do they want to be supported?’. As a member of this church and as a passionate, new graduate from the UQ Master of Public Health program (with too much time on their hands; again, thanks COVID-19), I jumped at the chance to help answer this question. With an internship at Beacon Strategies, I have led a needs assessment of the ‘Homelessness’ sector of the Brisbane City area and created space for members of this sector to collaborate for change.
We started with a partnership
Acting as an external consultant for GBC, we created a formal partnership and defined the scope of the project. It could have easily grown into a 3 year behemoth if we were to explore all population groups accessing services within the sector or deep diving into training programs for the church that would facilitate success of their entire care arm. So defining and agreeing upon a scope was an important step to ensure the needs assessment could be completed in an appropriate time frame.
We asked:
Are there any services for people experiencing homelessness in Brisbane at the level of ‘love and belonging’ on Maslow's Hierarchy of Need?
How can GBC tailor their community care ministry to best serve Brisbane City's population of people experiencing homelessness?
Photo of Julia Mullin, the project lead on a Pro Bono piece of work completed for Gateway Baptist Church
Applying an existing framework
To answer the questions above, I chose to apply Bradshaw's Taxonomy of Needs, which suggests that there are four ‘types’ of social/health need, which include:
Normative need: as defined by experts (e.g. opinions)
Felt need: as perceived by an individual (e.g. thoughts and feelings)
Expressed need: as observed in actions (e.g. help seeking)
Comparative need: as expressed in differences between groups (e.g. statistics)
Choosing to follow an established framework gave me confidence in my process. Not only could I be assured that I was exploring all angles, I also knew that this framework was well accepted by a wide range of professionals in the health promotion/evaluation space. This added theoretical rigour to my process and outcomes, which allowed me some authority when discussing my findings with a variety of stakeholders later.
Capturing insight by prioritising felt need
With that framework to guide me, my approach involved the following steps:
Conduct a needs assessment on what ‘love and belonging’ programs are currently available for people experiencing social disadvantage in Brisbane City
Understand and categorise the current available services using Maslow's Hierarchy - locating service area gaps.
Conduct a pre-implementation analysis on adapting/modifying/building a new GBC Mackenzie Campus Care for City Campus based on partnership with community representatives.
In practice, I used published data only as a general overview and leaned more heavily on the stories of community members and organisation representatives, given that each community is unique and holds their own idiosyncrasies for success.
More than that, good health promotion should work with communities and their (health) agenda, avoiding prescriptive or disempowering missteps. This meant I bounced between drop-in centres and food vans to gather client and organisation perspectives. It also meant I had to practice some serious self-reflection to avoid presenting myself in an offensive, arrogant, coercive or expert manner; some of the greatest ways to put people off-side as a qualitative researcher. Navigating these social interactions in (what I hope was) a gentle but assertive way, I gathered a total of 15 conversations[1].
I recorded these interviews, with an abbreviated transcription, coding, triangulation against my field notes and advisory team’s insights, before creating a ‘complex’ [read: messy] mind-map of the findings.
But the findings weren’t complete; I wanted to ‘member check’ my findings with the community and the partners, ensuring I was representing voices accurately. Especially with vulnerable groups, I didn’t want to perpetuate previous experiences clients may have had with institutions[2]. So, I went back to the community and advisory teams for feedback, to turn my findings into recommendations.
5 things I learnt about conducting a needs assessment within a vulnerable community
1. Partnerships and collaborations aid innovation and sustainable changes.
I understand why collaborations don’t always happen; they are time-intensive and communicating across agencies can be difficult. However, taking the time to reflect and learn the language and rhythms of another discipline improves understanding and action. Collaboration means a stronger voice in vertical advocacy; a larger pool of material resources; and a larger think tank of creativity and experience for innovation.
2. Be based in community knowledge and experience – who are you serving?
Understanding that published literature holds weight and value but should not be valued over your community group when doing community health promotion. The people you are speaking to and working with hold their own funds of knowledge[3] that we can lean on.
3. Know how to speak to your audience.
Lean into ways of doing that hold credibility to your audience and use your resources to be heard once you have created and reflected on the efficacy of your work.
4. Understanding your place: the process of continual reflection
Reflecting on your own position, perspectives, and prejudices is a vital part of being a social being and conducting research. What you say and do affects other people.
5. Seek out opinions that you don’t agree with and be critical
Converse to what the internet might say and do, we should be seeking out opinions that make us uncomfortable. It's vital with the process of making informed decisions, even if you land on the decision you would have without it. It builds compassion and understanding.
[1] With probably as many dead ends or non-replies, which say a lot about the services in themselves.
[2] Research Relationships and Responsibilities: ‘doing’ research with ‘vulnerable’ participants https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649365.2017.1346199
[3] Funds of Knowledge in Families and Communities https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xvlq1JmmbQ8C&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=funds+of+knowledge&ots=pKqvLnlOSI&sig=Jq61UqZCuS4POOW_2BwCOjzaw8c#v=onepage&q=funds%20of%20knowledge&f=false