During this interactive workshop session, hosted by Jo Stapleton and Jessica Duffy from the Good Practice Mentor team, you'll explore how to find and engage the people you most want to reach - including those less likely to be known by services, or say yes to formal groups and support. We'll explore barriers to engagement and practical strategies to identify and find the people you want to meet. We'll also explore how you create the welcoming spaces to keep people with "it's not for me" preconceptions returning and engaging, using Warm Welcome tools for a pro-active approach.
Workshop content will include:
- "It's not for me" common barriers and preconceptions to engagement and the psychology of loneliness.
- An introduction to proactive outreach including street outreach, door knocking and steppingstone activities, and how they can help you find and engage the people you want to meet.
- Using outreach friendly comms as a tool to 'speak to' and engage the people you want to reach, and a practical comms task.
- Using informal conversational approaches to capture insight from seldom heard voices.
- Using this information, we'll consider what a warm welcome looks like in principle, and then consider how you can make it work in YOUR group.
- It will cover practical aspects of group organisation which work incrementally to create a warm welcome - reception, introductions, signage, informal volunteering, simple coproduction techniques, keeping in touch with members.
- We will also touch on the need for group agreements or a contract to help you manage behavioural challenges.
- Signposting to further GPM support and reflecting on people's priorities and next steps.