duration

Location
Virtual

An interactive session designed to explore power dynamics when working with residents and staff, helping you understand how power affects meaningful engagement and giving you the tools to deliver more equitable resident involvement.

  • Read more

    Power structures exist in every aspect of our lives yet often go unnoticed or just ignored. The power imbalance between residents and their landlord is felt particularly acutely when residents have no option to choose another provider.

    Devastating examples such as Grenfell and Awaab Ishak have shown that when residents are powerless to enact change the consequences can be dire. But has the sector learned from these tragedies to openly address power structures when working with residents?

    This session is designed to help housing practitioners understand what power dynamics are, how to talk openly about them, and what steps they can take to reduce their impact. Through discussion and activities, we’ll explore how resident involvement can be more equitable and lead to more meaningful resident engagement.

    What will be covered:

    • Where power dynamics exist in housing and wider society
    • How these power dynamics affect the context of residents’ lives
    • How addressing these dynamics can lead to more meaningful engagement
    • How to have difficult discussions around power, both with residents and colleagues
    • Seldom-heard voices: how power silences communities
    • Practical tips to create a more inclusive environment for engagement.

    Who is this for?

    This session is ideal for:

    • Resident involvement/tenant engagement officers and managers
    • Housing officers, neighbourhood and estates teams
    • Complaints, customer insight and service improvement leads
    • Resident scrutiny/tenant panel members and co-ordinators
    • Heads of housing, heads of service and policy leads
    • Anyone responsible for designing or delivering resident engagement activity.
  • Our speakers
    Lewis Kinch, Housing Engagement Lead, HQN
    Lewis is a co-creation and engagement specialist driven by a belief that the people closest to challenges hold the answers to solving them. With 15 years experience across housing and community work, he champions power-sharing and genuine partnership between organisations and the communities they serve.

    Lewis has led the development of innovative frameworks and strategies that give residents meaningful influence in decision-making, always centring seldom-heard voices and challenging traditional top-down approaches.

    He combines systems thinking with participatory design methodologies to tackle complex challenges, committed to embedding person-centred cultures where residents, staff, and stakeholders work as equals.
  • Programme

    12:00pm Welcome and outline of session

    12:10pm Understanding power dynamics

    • Where power sits in housing and wider society
    • How power imbalances show up in landlord-resident relationships

    12:30pm Power, voice and engagement (interactive)

    • How power dynamics shape residents’ day-to-day lives and their interactions with landlords
    • Seldom-heard voices: how power silences communities
    • How to have open, honest – and sometimes difficult – conversations about power with residents and colleagues.

    1:00pm Putting it into practice

    • Practical tools and approaches to create more equitable, inclusive engagement
    • Steps organisations and individuals can take to rebalance power
    • Developing personal actions/commitments to take back to the workplace.

    1:20pm Wrap up and practical takeaways

    1:20pm Close

  • Cancellations and substitutions

    If you are unable to attend an event or public training course, please let us know in writing (email is fine) at least 48 hours before. Please email [email protected]

    Otherwise, a cancellation fee of £60 plus VAT will be chargeable.

    If you are using a package place to attend and do not inform us within the agreed time frame, then a place will be taken to cover your non-attendance.

    Cancellations must be made in writing and will be acknowledged by HQN Limited.

  • Price and booking

    Bookings are closed for this event.

    If you experience any issues when submitting your booking, please email [email protected] with the name and date of the session along with the delegate name(s), email address(es) and job title(s) and we'll process the booking for you.

Dates



This event comes with a professional development certificate

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