Three of the four tools, Everybody, The Right Ideas and Word Play have recently been developed through co-design workshops with service deliverers from Lancaster City Council. The other tool shared was Visual Voice, a tool that has recently been shared through the Make it Stick workshops.
In the meeting, there were four volunteers from different charities working with vulnerable groups, including Jayne from Out in the Bay, a charity offering support to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual people, Raquel from Making Space, a charity supporting people with mental health problems and learning disabilities and Andy and Apphia from Here 2 Support, a charity that helps people access services and benefits. Laura explained what each tool was, different ways it could be used and how the group could access the tools. In return, Jayne, Raquel, Andy and Apphia had lots of ideas of how they could use the tools with different groups of people. For example, we talked about how Everybody would be great for recording how someone with mental health was feeling over a period of time and with each meeting, placing the responses into the sealed envelope to show how they progressed. We also talked about using The Right Ideas tool for young LGBT people to anonymously ask questions for the charity to answer and using Word Play to explore sexual health themes.
Each member of the group left with a folder full of free materials they could start to experiment with when meeting with people who use their services. We are looking forward to seeing how they use the materials in the future!