Turn2us Local Programmes
Local Programmes – learning in the open
Local Programmes is a new area of work for Turn2us. We know that our national offers such as our Benefits Calculator and grants do not reach lots of people. Our Local Programmes will work in partnership with a community for up to 10 years to help people build financial security and thrive.
Via our local programmes, we want to explore:
- How we can use our resources as a national charity to shift power to communities experiencing financial hardship.
- How we can add value to the existing great work happening locally.
- How we build on networks and contribute to existing place-based strategies
- How we work with residents and community organisations to tackle the root causes of financial insecurity.
- How we can work slowly and learn deeply from this work to influence Turn2us’ways of working and the wider grant-making sector.
The first two areas we will work in are Middlesbrough and Barking and Dagenham. As part of our new Care Programme, we are now working partnership with community organisations and local residents in the North West, working to deliver programmes which ensure people giving and receiving care are financially secure.
Collaborating on Gendered Poverty in Middlesbrough
We are working with the Smallwood Trust and Buttle UK to tackle the root causes of gendered and child poverty by creating a collaborative programme which aims to test the effectiveness of a co-produced approach to grant-making for women and their children.
Our goal is to build a strong partnership between local communities and funders, who will take an intersectional gendered lens approach, to support longer-term transformational change. We believe that working alongside local communities will help create a movement of change against the systemic poverty suffered by women and children.
Read more about our collaboration in Middlesbrough here.
Barking & Dagenham
Alongside local partner, Barking & Dagenham Giving, we are working in Barking and Dagenham to build relationships and, through co-production, work towards financial security for all.
Our goal at Barking & Dagenham is to work with residents to build on existing initiatives and co-produce a programme that assures financial security, shifts power to residents, and destigmatises financial hardship. Barking & Dagenham Giving is an invaluable partner in this with expertise in participatory grant making and knowledge of the borough. As part of the initial conversations we have met many amazing organisations working in Barking & Dagenham including Mums on a Mission & Future M.O.L.D.S and through them hope to reach the range of voices necessary for a representative co-design process.
Care Programme
We believe thriving communities are ones where people can live in dignity and get the support they need. We also know that it is organisations and residents in those communities that know best how to support people who are carers or people with care needs. In partnership with community organisations and local residents in the North West, we are working to deliver programmes which ensure people giving and receiving care are financially secure.
Read more about our Care Programme.
Our strategy
You can read our full Local Programmes strategy for 2022 here.
Local Programmes learning blog
As part of our commitment to learning in the open, the Local Programmes Team and our partners will be writing a regular monthly blog to share our questions, what we learnt, and our and our partners honest reflections on how we are doing to generate conversation and hold ourselves accountable.