Our Way Leeds is about supporting young people particularly with housing need and preventing homelessness.

We are here to help you with problems or situations that maybe impacting where and how you live so we feel it is only right that you have your say in how we do that!

Young people have always been encouraged to be involved in how services in Leeds designed to support them have been delivered but at Our Way Leeds (OWL) we’d like even more 16-25-year-olds to play an active part in this.

Two of the ways that young service users are currently involved in shaping what OWL does are in the recruitment of Intensive Support Workers and reviewing our new referral and assessment tools. Young people have recently been involved in the interview process for new support workers, taking part in role playing scenarios to see how interviewees respond and engage.

“It is vital that young people have a voice and opportunity to influence how OWL interacts and supports them. They are the people who are going to be using the service after all,” said Dan Crowther, OWL Hub Team Leader.

“In a recruitment situation they will be looking for different qualities in a candidate than the rest of the interview panel. For instance, how they feel about the candidate, could they engage with them, talk to them and trust them? The candidate may come across well in the interview to the rest of the panel but they may miss something that a young person using the service would pick up on,” explained Dan.

“We’ve done a lot of work on the referral process during lockdown. We wanted to make it easier for young people to refer themselves so have sought the input of service users in how it could be more user friendly.”

The referral form is one of the ways OWL finds out about the young person concerned and along with other assessment tools, forms a framework to get to the heart of any issues they might be facing so that a support plan can be put together.

“Conversation between a young person and OWL starts with the referral process so it needs to be welcoming, personal and straightforward not daunting and difficult and who best to advise us on this than people who’ve already been through it,” said Dan.

The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent social distancing and safeguarding restrictions have impacted greatly in the last year on how OWL has been able to interact with its clients. Input has been through virtual means like Zoom instead of face to face with regular get togethers for group discussions.

“Young person involvement and engagement needs to be embedded in the development of OWL services. There are still plenty of opportunities for service users, past and present, to have an input and we are looking forward to involving more people in this as and when restrictions allow,” said Dan.

“I have a core group of around six service users who I consult with regularly and would like to extend that, maybe even form an autonomous unit of young people who could work together and with us along the lines of a focus or consumer group.”

Would you like to have your say in OWL’s future? If so, click here.