Impact of Involvement

Being active and getting involved in your local community can help you learn new skills, make new friends, improve the environment in which you live and can also make you feel better about your life.  These outcomes are just some of the benefits of being involved but they are very important for anyone who has no self-confidence, mental ill-health or who feels socially excluded.

In the same way, getting involved in how Salvation Army Housing Association is run – from helping to recruit new staff, to commenting on policies and seeing changes being made on the ground – can greatly improve the overall quality of life for all residents.

For example, encouraging residents' to join SAHA’s Customer Panel, or attend meetings, can lead to individuals; improving their reading, writing and IT skills, gaining confidence travelling on public transport to meetings, making friends with the others on the team and learning to organise themselves and work as a team.

The new skills and confidence gained this way can lead to residents organising their own trips out, feeling able to join a club or group near home and eventually (where this applies) moving on from supported housing, safe in the knowledge that they have the skills to budget and understand their bills and tenancy agreements and the confidence to ask for help with they need it.

In short, getting involved can have a seriously positive impact on the enjoyment that a person gets out of life.

We believe that residents having a say in their own lives and influencing the services that they receive, will help people to move towards a better and more positive future.

Measuring the impact

We are keen to provide evidence about how SAHA helps people to improve their quality of life. SAHA are working on a new database, which will hold up- to-date information about the Resident Involvement work which is carried out throughout the whole organisation. This will help us to show that the work we do is effective and producing the right outcomes. Also we will be able to assess which methods of involving residents' work the best.  We will add more information about this as it becomes available.

So what difference does Resident Involvement make to SAHA?

SAHA’s staff and the organisation as a whole can benefit from more residents' getting involved.

Staff Benefit through:

• Developing better relationships with the people they support
• Greater job satisfaction
• Housing and service management problems are reduced as a result of users having a greater sense of ownership of where they live

SAHA benefit through:

• Being able to improve services in line with residents’ needs and aspirations
• Having accountability to customers and other stakeholders
• An increased profile and reputation in the sector
• Knowing more about residents’ skills and knowledge and being able to tap into these to develop services