By Amy Davies, Head of Independent Living, Independence and Wellbeing, Great Places Housing Group

Thank you to everyone who has commented on and expressed interest in the news of my Churchill Fellowship 2024. The article on the Great Places website and the section about my project on the Churchill Fellowship website both provide more information about my plans, but I thought I’d also write a blog about why I applied and what my plans are.

I have known about the Churchill Fellowship for a number of years; I know a couple of people who have applied previously and some Fellows who completed their period of study and travel a few years ago or more. I had planned to apply a few years ago to research Arts and Homelessness projects as part of a charity I was involved in previously, but then I changed jobs and the opportunity didn’t arise.

Last year, I was watching a makeover episode of Drag Race Spain, as you do if you are an avid Drag Race fan who also speaks Spanish. The guests who were receiving their drag makeovers were people from an organisation called Fundacion 26 de Diciembre in Madrid, who work with older LGBTQ+ people, providing care, training, varied projects and activities, and who mentioned that they are opening the first residence for older LGBTQ+ people in Madrid (and Spain).

‘Residence’ indicates a building for older people in Spain, more along the lines of a care home than our Independent Living model. Social housing is delivered very differently in different countries depending on various social and political influences in the country. A google search later and a deep dive into their website showed me that there are a number of similarities between Fundacion 26 de Diciembre (FVD for short), the plans for the residence and the work we are doing here in Manchester with Manchester City Council, LGBT Foundation and the Community Steering Group to develop the first purpose built LGBTQ+ majority Extra Care scheme. I got in touch and had a Teams meeting with Victor from FVD last year and filed away a plan to visit ‘next time I was in Madrid’ (I lived in Madrid when I was a student, and have visited many times since, and have been planning to visit since I couldn’t go in 2020 due to Covid).

Our work on co-designing the LGBTQ+ Extra Care scheme here in Manchester continued, including hearing about other projects in different countries as well as Tonic in London. Some time in the Autumn, I was reminded of the Churchill Fellowship and enquired about the deadline for applications, which was around that time. At the time I didn’t think it would be a possibility as I haven’t travelled abroad since my mobility issues developed and travelling alone didn’t feel like an option for me, but then I learned that the Churchill Fellowship provide funding for companions to travel with fellows with a disability, and an idea took shape for a project.

An application process, interview and a couple of revisions of my plans later, and I found out in June that I had been awarded a Churchill Fellowship for 2024. I have received funding to visit FVD in Madrid, as well as organisations providing LGBTQ+ specific housing in Lyon and Berlin and to carry out online study with organisations in Sweden and the USA.

By learning from organisations across Europe and the USA, I hope to learn about good practice, challenges and innovative ideas for providing care and housing for older LGBTQ+ people. Due to the above mentioned differences in housing and care provision in different countries, I hope that my learning will help me to ‘think outside the box’ of what is possible when working outside of the funding, planning and commissioning structures we have here in the UK. However, most of all I want to speak with people with lived experience of these schemes, learn about why they chose to move to them and their advice for developing similar projects in the UK. The differences in LGBTQ+ rights and histories, in different societies in each of these countries, is also of huge interest to me. As part of the funding, fellows are required to produce a report at the end of their travel period. My initial intention was to produce a guide to co-producing specialist schemes, but I am already leaning towards producing a guide to raising the experience of all older LGBTQ+ older people in housing and care settings, as I feel this may have a wider impact. I will wait to see what my travels and learning direct me towards.

A brilliant benefit of the Churchill Fellowship is that it is an investment in the individual fellows as potential change makers. The whole ethos is that by funding fellows to travel and learn, they will bring that learning back to the UK and influence change here. I have already been lucky to connect with lots of other fellows from 2024 and previous years, and the wealth of knowledge and learning in a huge range of topics, many of which are relevant to other areas of housing, is incredible.

I look forward to sharing my experiences with colleagues. Thanks for reading.