HACT and FFBS reflect on the Anti-Poverty Series

As the Anti-Poverty series nears its six-month milestone, Family Fund Business Services and HACT have taken the opportunity to reflect on and share our learnings so far. This series was borne out of collaboration, partnership and shared commitment to understanding how poverty impacts communities. By bringing together professionals from across the housing sector, key sector partners and tenants alike, this series has become a really important forum for exploring the experiences of those on the frontline, and has provided the space to rethink our approaches to poverty and how we can embed resilience in the way we work. This blog aims to reflect on why we at FFBS were so keen to be a part of this project, what we’ve discovered so far and how this work will shape HACT’s future plans for collaboration.

Why we felt it was important to be part of this series

HACT – HACT is exploring the different experiences of poverty in social housing. This series funded by Fusion21 and Family Fund Business Services, is a collaborative project that aims to reshape the sector’s approach to poverty by highlighting real experiences within social housing and exploring how landlords can work with residents to build financial resilience. Our aim is to embed financial resilience at the heart of housing strategy, redefining community investment as a core function.

Through a discovery process with residents and landlords, we’ll test practical approaches, develop a clear framework, and equip the sector with tools to better support residents. At a time of uncertainty, this work will help housing providers demonstrate the value of community-focused investment and drive long-term, sustainable impact.

FFBS – FFBS are thrilled to be sponsoring HACT’s Anti-Poverty Series, and are proud to be utilising our experience in partnering with organisations supporting people facing many different forms of poverty. We recognise that more needs to be done at a national level to tackle the root causes of poverty and are hopeful that by joining the conversation on the realities and impact of poverty in the UK, we can work collaboratively to build solutions that work for our communities, all the while helping us gain a deeper understanding of the people we are supporting through our partnerships. We are also hopeful our involvement in the series will improve the services and solutions we provide to our partners, as we develop a greater understanding of the needs of communities facing poverty.

Our hopes for the outcomes of the series

FFBS – FFBS have partnered with Local Authorities, housing providers and charities for over 12 years to support with anti-poverty initiatives, delivering local discretionary welfare schemes, housing association hardship programmes, or facilitating charity grant schemes. We have over a decade of understanding of how our partners are working within their communities to provide both emergency support and build long term financial resilience. In addition to this, as the subsidiary of the children’s charity Family Fund, we are also able to draw upon their 50+ years of experience of supporting families on a low income raising disabled or seriously ill children. Through their work of supporting families by providing critical grants and a range of advice and support, they have built an excellent understanding of what challenges people on a low-income are facing, and how to best support people to become more resilient.

HACT – Poverty is a lived reality for many residents in social housing. Both HACT and FFBS felt it was vital to invest in this series because tackling poverty and embedding financial resilience is at the heart of the social purpose of housing. With rising costs of living and increasing financial pressures, housing providers must look beyond bricks and mortar to address the inequalities that impact residents’ everyday lives.

• • Lived experience at the centre: Bringing residents’ voices to the fore so that solutions reflect real challenges.

• • Practical frameworks: Testing and sharing approaches that landlords can embed within strategy and operations.

• • Partnership lens: Encouraging cross-sector collaboration—because no single landlord or organisation can tackle poverty alone.

Learnings so far

HACT – We’re now six months into the project and it’s clear that many organisations are open and willing to find new ways methods to support their communities and address the impacts of poverty. It’s clear doing this work is not easy and the emotional impacts on staff should not be forgotten.

We’re really pleased that the project is providing space for organisations to engage with impactful interventions and connect with organisations who can offer support to residents. This is through crisis support such as fuel vouchers, right through to providing opportunities to engage system change efforts such as the campaign to end furniture poverty through having more furnished tenancies.

Shaping new solutions to the deeper causes of poverty requires time and we plan to hold a roundtable to reflect with the sector on our observations to date and have dedicated space to consider the intervention as that could harbour longer term impacts.

FFBS – As a partner to the sector, the key learning FFBS have taken so far throughout the series is that collaboration not only amongst housing providers, but also with partners to the sector, offers the most practical and tangible opportunity to really tackle issues like poverty. This type of engagement is relatively new for FFBS, and we have taken so much from this learning opportunity on how to better engage with our partners, adopting testing and sharing principles to enhance our services and partnerships, and ultimately better support communities.

The need to talk about poverty

HACT – Poverty is multifaceted covering housing affordability, energy, food, digital exclusion, furniture poverty, fuel poverty, in work and seeking employment poverty. Too often these issues are treated in isolation. HACT wanted to create a space where the sector could explore the intersections, share knowledge, and co-design solutions. By convening these conversations, HACT is fulfilling its role as a centre for collaboration and innovation across housing.

FFBS – At the Family Fund Group, we engage daily with families facing poverty, with the demand for grants as high as ever. The charity’s beneficiaries are moving away from holistic grants, such as holidays and family breaks, to more practical essentials, including furniture and white goods, showing the reality and precarity of poverty. In addition, through FFBS’ partnerships, we have learnt that you can’t address one type of poverty in isolation, with so much intersectionality between types of poverty. For example, people without basic appliances like ovens may fall into food poverty due to a reliance on costly food-on-the-go without access to cooking facilities. With the series addressing a range of poverty types, the sector can begin to co-design solutions to poverty as a whole, and FFBS are delighted to have a part in this.

Value of collaboration

HACT – Creating change at scale and working with complex issues such as poverty, requires a systemic and collaborative approach as no one organisation, or person, can shift the situation alone. That’s why collaboration is so important; it holds the key for deep levels of change, and it is why HACT facilitates the Centre for Excellence in Community Investment, helping to bring organisations in and connected to social housing together to share, connect, collaboration and facilitate positive social change.

Collaborating with organisations like FFBS enables us to bring new perspectives and rich learning into Anti-Poverty Series and we look forward to the project’s next phase. To find out more about how you can get involved in the Anti-Poverty Series visit the website here.

FFBS – As a partner to the social housing sector, FFBS collaborate with housing providers to design a range of different solutions, from distributing hardship funds, furnishing accommodation and building resilience across communities. We are only able to improve and develop what we offer to our partners, and their communities by hearing the challenges directly from the people facing them, which is why collaboration on projects such as this are so important to us.

Our aim for the series

FFBS – FFBS’ aim for the series was to feel more connected to the social housing sector. We were keen to better understand the challenges housing professionals face in tackling an issue as broad as poverty and ultimately develop and enhance our services to better support our partners.

HACT – HACT have a range of ambitions for the series: to reimagine the role of housing in tackling poverty by embedding financial resilience and community investment in all the work we do. Working collaboratively across housing, local authorities, third sector and with residents to co-design effective and sustainable framework for housing by creating meaningful partnerships across the sector and recognising tackling poverty requires joined up work across sectors. Another aim was to ensure solutions reflect the real-life challenges of residents living in poverty by actively listening, involving them in decision-making, and co-designing responses based on their insights.

What’s next?

FFBS – At FFBS we will be taking our learnings from being involved in the Anti-Poverty series and look to adapt our current services to focus on crisis resilience and prevention, instead of crisis support services. This will take the form of holistic, people centred approaches, complementing our current offerings of physical items and emergency vouchers. With our new holistic approach, we hope to help those in poverty to build financial resilience, so they never fall into needing emergency support again.

HACT – As we continue our Fuel Fund partnership, facilitating HACT’s energy voucher provision, we hope to strengthen this collaboration by being involved in further projects and series that HACT look to focus in on, in the future.

HACT want to expand on this work and take the learning from the year of which fits with HACT’s broader work and work the centre is doing around:

• • Health and housing: exploring how social housing can contribute to health equity and
    wellbeing.

• • Sustainability and climate justice: ensuring the transition to net zero is fair and
    inclusive for residents.

• • Digital inclusion: making sure communities are not left behind as services and
    opportunities move online.

• • Networks

• • Equity, diversity, and inclusion: ensuring the sector’s response to poverty recognises
    the disproportionate impact on marginalised groups.

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