A short film to celebrate the journey and achievements of the VOICES project in Stoke-on-Trent. The VOICES project was funded by the National Lottery through the Big Lottery Fund as part of the Fulfilling Lives programme: Supporting people with multiple needs. Stoke-on-Trent was one of 12 areas to share £112m over eight years which ended in March 2022. The programme objective was to test alternative approaches to improve services and systems for people experiencing multiple disadvantage (by this we mean combinations of homelessness, mental ill health, addiction and offending behaviour). VOICES mission was to empower people with multiple needs to change their lives and to influence the services they access.… Continue Reading

Click video above to play   This year’s Volunteers Week took place between the 1st and 7th of June. On the 4nd VOICES in collaboration with 1000 lives and Expert Citizens CIC held ‘The Big Thank You’ to celebrate and thank volunteers across the city for their kindness and hard work. It goes without saying that the past year has been both different and difficult – the response from volunteers up and down the UK has been integral to our unified response in supporting our communities. Never has it been so  important to take the time to recognise and acknowledge this, and so a massive thank you goes out  to everyone that came along to make for such a great day! We hope you enjoy the video of ‘The Big Thank You’ above, in addition you can view the comments and feedback from the ‘live chat on the day, here..… Continue Reading

Click video above to play   The experience of prison for people facing multiple disadvantage is often a reoccurring series of short sentences, which create huge disruption to their lives with limited benefit in terms of rehabilitation. Among Fulfilling Lives beneficiaries, there is an association between spending time in prison and having poorer outcomes. In this webinar that took place on the 10th June 2021, the evaluation team shared findings from their recent study exploring the experience of prison release for people affected by multiple forms of disadvantage and how this transition might be improved. The VOICES team were privileged to take part, presenting the findings, and subsequent recommendations, of a real-life example of a prison discharge plan entitled, “An Improbable Journey.” (click here for a downloadable pdf)   Below is some feedback kindly provided from attendees of the webinar:   “I have been tasked with strengthening relationships with our Referral Agencies who issue vouchers on our behalf and setting them up as E-referrers. E-referral codes are generated through a foodbank data system and can be issued verbally or via text message so no more red paper vouchers! I attended the webinar to gain a better understanding about the difficulties that prison leavers face. I also wanted… Continue Reading

Following the last Community of Practice discussion around prison release on the 9th of September, members of the community met via zoom to reflect and discuss how it went and to touch on some of the points of the discussion.… Continue Reading

System Broker Diane Allman talks to us about the teams recent visit to the Blackpool Fulfilling Lives project.… Continue Reading

Get Talking Hardship was a community research project commissioned by the Hardship Commission in Stoke-on-Trent and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund through VOICES. The research was led by Staffordshire University.… Continue Reading

Lee Dale, Community Development Coordinator of VOICES, talks to us about his 10 year journey from rough sleeping to his recent full time employment.… Continue Reading

In this short case study Anna talks about the origins and necessity of our Food Banks, and how this relates to our customers who are often rough sleeping.… Continue Reading