Housing Futures is a programme which will run for the next 18 months. The desired outcome of the programme is to develop a service, product or new approach that will help solve a challenge facing us in the sector.
The work is being run in collaboration with the National Housing Federation, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, and the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations.
Working with innovation experts ?Whatif!, we want every housing association in Wales to benefit from working together on a sector-wide scale to tackle our shared challenges.
The work will run in the following stages:
- Find out our big sector challenge: staff and tenants from housing associations across Wales have been invited to share what they believe their main challenges and barriers are.
- The challenges will be reviewed by a Welsh Steering Group who will then decide what we need to focus on.
- Gathering insights: Once we have identified what the main challenge is, people from housing associations across Wales will be trained to gather insights on the issue, and feed back.
- Greenhouse: Five people who work for housing associations in Wales will then be seconded into a 16 week programme to try and find a solution to the issue.
- Developing the idea: Once the idea has been created, the team will then work with a support network to decide whether and how to take forward the idea.
This is the biggest collaborative exercise ever undertaken by our sector, and we’ll also benefit from working with teams from across England, Scotland and Ireland.
We have hit the ground running in 2020 with this programme and we need YOU!
Look back on the Challenge Identification workshops
The stories behind Housing Futures
In 2018, Katie Teasdale took part in the National Housing Federation’s innovation programme – then called Creating Our Future. After a three-day ‘hackathon’ event, learning how to solve problems and generate ideas, she was selected to join a 16 week secondment, where 25 people from across the housing sector were tasked with creating and developing ideas to change the world. Katie, Head of Member Services at the National Housing Federation, tells us what happened next…
July
2020
Challenge Identification
- 117 Housing Association staff and tenants involved
- 23 challenges identified which were reviewed and refined into 5 broad themes
August
2020
Challenge Hacks
- 120 people, 78 Housing Association staff and 42 representatives from external organisations
- Sharing insight and knowledge to fully understand the 5 broad themes
October
2020
Public Challenge 1 - Broad Challenge Chosen
- The Steering Group chose ‘Joining the Dots between Health, Housing and Social Care’ as the broad challenge to be the focus of the first public challenge.
November
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December
2020
Public Challenge 1 - Challenge Refinement
- The working group refined the challenge to ‘How do we prevent the mental health of young people aged 14-18 worsening?’
- The challenge specification was agreed ready to crowdsource ideas from the public
January
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February
2021
Public Challenge 1 - Crowdsourcing Ideas
- The challenge was public on our innovation portal for 31 days
- 2556 views of the challenge page
- 93 new users registered on the portal
- 29 ideas were submitted
- 172 comments on these ideas
March
2021
Public Challenge 1 - Launchpad for Working Group
- The real work begins
- Sessions on mind-sets and behaviours
- Agreement on team charter
- Tools such as Idea DNA and Stargazer introduced
April
2021
Public Challenge 1 - Boot camp One: Insight
- The boot camp has three parts: theory, hands on theory into practice and a practical clinic.
May
2021
Public Challenge 1 - Boot camp Two: Solution Refinement & Experimentation
- The boot camp has three parts: theory, hands on theory into practice and a practical clinic.
Organisational Led Challenge - Briefing Event
- For members interested in applying for support with an internal challenge
- Expressions of Interest opened with a two week window to apply
June
2021
Public Challenge 1 - Boot camp Three: Case for action and Impact Narrative
- The boot camp has three parts: theory, hands on theory into practice and a practical clinic.
Organisational Led Challenge Begins
- Challenge Hack to fully understand the problem
- Housing Association team working with CHC’s Alcemi team and Simply Do Ideas to deliver the challenge outcomes.
July
2021
Public Challenge 1 Ends
- Process evaluated and learning shared
Organisational Led Challenge Ends
- Process evaluated and learning shared
September
2021
Public Challenge 2 Begins
Alcemi Case Studies
True Innovation: The One Thing We Haven’t Tried Yet?
Jamie Smith is Director of Research and Innovation at Hafod, and is part of an Innovation Working Group put together by Community Housing Cymru that will be identifying the challenges facing people and communities in Wales, and looking at the ideas the housing sector has to tackle those challenges.
Innovation: A way of truly making a difference to people’s lives
Sharon Crockett is Director of Innovation and Culture at Melin, and is part of an Innovation Working Group put together by Community Housing Cymru that will be identifying the challenges facing people and communities in Wales, and looking at the ideas the housing sector has to tackle those challenges.
Making Sense of the Pandemic
Community Housing Cymru is part of the Live Learning Partnership, a collaboration of 10 organisations using Sensemaker to try to make sense of the impact of the pandemic on our colleagues and our organisations.
Last week we published the analysis of the stories gathered up until the end of January 2021.
The data was analysed by Janine Dube, Linc Cymru, Michael Hughes, Monmouthshire Housing, Chris Jowitt, Melin Homes, Bennett McVeigh, Newydd Housing, and Robert Needham, Family Housing along with Michael Muthukrishna from the London School of Economics.
Janine, Business Partner – Data and Business Intelligence at Linc looks at the findings for us