Like other Poverty Truth Commissions, Poverty Truth Ilfracombe seeks to discover the answer to the question, ‘what if people who struggled against poverty were involved in making decisions about tackling poverty?’

The commissioners for each Commission comprise two groups of people. Around half of the commissioners are people with a lived experience of the struggle against poverty. The other half are leaders within the town and region. Collectively they work to understand the nature of poverty, what are some of the underlying issues that create poverty and explore creative ways of addressing them.

More info

Purpose

Purpose of commission:

To create a set of collaborative leaders who will have a shared understanding of:

  • Poverty, lived experience and the data, including:
    • the nature of poverty 
    • the drivers of poverty
    • the effects of poverty
  • Civic/business system we’re working in
  • What we can influence
  • Task & finish groups to make changes or recommendations

Purpose of the launch event:

Up to 45 Community Commissioners (15 plus 2 friends/family for support per commissioner)

Up to 45 Civic Commissioners (15 plus 2 related organisational colleagues)

  • To explain the purpose of the commission
  • To get enthusiasm from people so that they want to be part of it
  • To explain and model our approach
  • To launch the commission with some work

Timeline

Phase 1 – Recruit & Prepare  (Pre Sept 2024)

Recruit 12-15 Community Commissioners (lived experience), who have a direct experience of poverty and want to share their stories to help create positive changes within organisations, services, policies and the wider system. We meet every other week (for 3 hours) to explore our experiences and decide what and how we would like to communicate about poverty to their area. We will:

  • Share a meal together 
  • Get to know each other and build a supportive group 
  • Explore ways of communicating experiences of poverty in a safe way 
  • Work together to decide which civic/business leaders we need to invite to join the commission and what we want the opening event to be like 

12-15 Civic and business Commissioners are recruited to form the other half of the commission based on the experiences and hopes of the community commissioners.

Opening event (Sept 2024)

Community Commissioners share their experiences of poverty with civic and business leaders and the full commission is formed (both groups working together) and officially begins.

Phase 2 – Engage, Explore & Experiment (Oct 2024- Sept 2025)

All the commissioners start meeting monthly (3-4 hours) for full commission conversations to build relationships with each other and identify issues that they would like to address.

Issue groups are formed to explore the issues the commission wants to address.

One-to-One meetings enable commissioners to encounter and understand each other’s world.

Task groups are formed to create recommendations and implement changes (meeting twice monthly, inbetween full commission meetings – that will move to every other month as everyone gathers together to update on progress)

Phase 3 – Embed (Oct 2025-Dec 2025)

Work continues to help commissioners to embed what they have learnt into their communities, organisations and institutions.

Closing event (Dec 2025)

A closing event is held to communicate the findings of the commission. This will include the work undertaken by task groups and the effect that the process has had on all involved.

Approach

Based on the Poverty Truth Network’s experience of over 14 years, the ‘Poverty Truth’ way of working has three key distinctives that the Network seeks to harness. All three are inter-related and combine to form the approach.

  1. Poverty Truth starts with the direct experience of people who know what it means to struggle against poverty. A traditional commission will often bring together an alliance of civic and business leaders, thus excluding lived experience. A PTC purposefully includes those with lived experience. It is these experiences that initiate the conversation and concerns that set the agenda. Through this wisdom, the important issues are articulated. Crucially, these concerns, experiences and wisdom remain throughout all Poverty Truth work.
  2. Poverty Truth builds powerful relationships between those who have experienced the struggle and decision-makers. Difficult conversations only happen when trust is built, and relationships are the soil in which trust grows. So, poverty truth insists that we take time to pay attention to one another. We listen deeply with our hearts and our heads rather than rushing to fix problems.
  3. Poverty Truth seeks to humanise people and systems. We meet one another as human beings not merely professionals or service users. As we do this, we will see more clearly the causes of poverty recognising that whilst they are systemic, we can find long-term solutions where we all flourish.

Values-based

Involve those with lived experience

• People with a direct experience of poverty have the missing expertise. Let their concerns set the agenda.

Humanise everyone

• Leave your title at the door. Meet as people not as professionals or service users but as human beings.

• Encourage and support one another throughout the process. Creating space for people individually and collectively to reflect on their experiences.

Pay attention

• Learn to listen with your heart as well as your head then set your hands to action.

• A safe space for honest debate that is characterised by encountering one another, deep listening and mutual reflection.

Powerful relationships

• Take time with one another, building relationships, friendships and trust not just examine problems.

• Co-produce and co-own the commission. Everyone’s experience is relevant and powerful.

Seeing more clearly 

• Some of the things you will hear will be challenging and difficult. Your perceptions of people in power and people in poverty will not be the same again. Be open to challenging your assumptions and sharing from the heart. 

• We see more clearly by examining the local context and realising there are no quick fix solutions. The causes of poverty are systemic and it is not enough to be simply concerned with its symptoms. At the same time practical progress matters.

Want to be involved?

Community Commissioners (People with lived experience)

We are looking for participants:
  • with personal experience of the struggle against poverty / financial insecurity (see image below)
  • that live or work in the Ilfracombe area
  • a willingness, with support and alongside others, to share their experiences at the launch event on September 26th with local/regional civic/business leaders
  • the desire to build relationships with civic/business leaders, work closely with them to explore the potential for how to implement positive change
  • Able to commit until Oct 2025: Meeting approx. twice per month for 3hrs (Every other Thursday 11-2). Participants will receive a free lunch and expenses to attend each session.

Call, email or text James – james.lander2@nhs.net – 07491581962 and he will reply asap.

Civic/business Commissioners  (Civic/business leaders)

Email Andrea Beacham – andrea.beacham@nhs.net 

The Poverty Truth Network

Those who have been part of Poverty Truth Commission’s across the UK talk about how they are changed by becoming involved as well as the changes in policy and practice that have resulted from the work of their commission.

Civic and Business leader feedback includes:

  • Slowing down and listening to support more effective decision-making
  • Sense of purpose by working directly with beneficiaries
  • Deeper understanding of the experience and barriers to those in poverty
  • Importance of building relationships as a foundation to good collaboration
  • Encouraged to be the change you want to see in your own organisation and community

Community participants with lived experience feedback includes:

  • Realise that your voice is meaningful and your experience has great value
  • Support decision makers to improve services
  • Be part of a space that values each member as a human with no hierarchy
  • Relationships built on trust, shared learning and mutual respect
  • Collaborate to bring about positive social change

Individual Impact

Other community commissioners have consistently spoken about how being involved has changed them:

  • increased confidence
  • support work skills
  • new friendships
  • more motivation
  • fresh ways of understanding difficult problems

Organisational Impact

The organisations most impacted are, unsurprisingly, the ones that have got most involved. Commissioners take what they have discovered back to their organisations and communities. In this work we encourage people to be the change that they want to see in their own organisations and neighbourhoods

  • West Cheshire, a social housing provider has reported a 75% reduction in evictions since it changed its approach to managing tenancies. The organisation moved from a reprimand approach to offering a well-being service which focuses on early intervention and supporting people to sustain tenancies.
  • Wolverhampton, a Mental Health Community Partner said, “the service going forward will be person-centred. The expert is the person sitting in front of you…put the computer aside and have a conversation with the person sitting in front of you.”

Policy Level Impact

Changing policy often takes a long time and involves many people working together to bring it about. So the direct link between the work of a Poverty Truth Commission and a change in in policy is not always easy. Some of the changes we have seen happen include:

  • Morecambe Bay, over 100 travellers were saved from potential eviction by working through the Poverty Truth Commission to change attitudes towards loss of a site they had lived on for over 30 years.
  • Scotland, the Commission instigated a mentoring programme for civil servants through which those who have direct experience of poverty coached senior policy leaders. This programme is now being developed more widely.

Wider Societal Impact

Poverty Truth Commissions are helping to change the public debate about poverty across the UK. The expertise of commissioners is often also drawn into other events.

  • Birmingham commissioners have spoken about the Poverty Premium at the 2018 Conservative Party Conference; were interviewed by The Sun; and have been featured on BBC Panorama.
  • Leeds, working with True North, commissioners produced ‘Fighting Shame’ a film about their experiences of poverty. This was featured on the Guardian website and premiered at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival.

Poverty Truth grew out of a belief that the wisdom, experience and understanding of people who struggled against poverty was vital in making decisions about poverty.

In 2009, the first Poverty Truth Commission was launched in Glasgow, Scotland

15 people stood and told stories of their struggle against poverty through drama, dance, speech and poetry. There was laughter, hope and a recognition that whilst life had been tough, they were still standing. As Public leaders reflected on what they had just seen, they acknowledged that if positive change was to be made, they needed to work with those who stories they’d heard over the coming months.

For 18 months the commissioners met regularly to consider the ‘real’ issues that people were experiencing when facing poverty. They built relationships, listened well and learned much. At the end they shared challenges for organisations, institutions, communities and society as a whole about how change might happen. They also acknowledged the ways that they had changed.

In February 2014, the first place outside of Scotland where a commission emerged was in Leeds.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation had been involved in Scotland and were now engaged in Leeds. A ‘what if’ conversation between them and people who were involved in both commissions ended up in a commitment to supporting others around the UK who might want to establish Poverty Truth Commissions where they were. Effectively, the Poverty Truth Network was born.

Between 2015 – 2020, 10 new locations hosted commissions

In 2019, the Poverty Truth Network became a separate charity

The Poverty Truth Network, funded by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation; Lankelly Chase; and The National Lottery Community Fund, supports Poverty Truth Commissions and encourages them to work together. All local commissions are responsible for their own work.

Every Poverty Truth Commission is invited to become part of the Poverty Truth Network after their opening event. A commission does this by proposing two of its commissioners to become members of the network.

Any talk about poverty must include people who experience the struggle against it. This is at the heart of the Poverty Truth Network. Our strapline captures this, ‘nothing about us, without us, is for us.’ We believe that better responses to poverty will be made if they include people who have experienced it. It is that simple and that challenging.

PTN What is the Network? (video)

The Poverty Truth Network seeks to champion this approach in four ways.

  • Supported us to establish a Poverty Truth Commission
  • help established commissions by networking commissioners, supporting facilitators and creating opportunities to learn together
  • amplify the voice of commissions on themes and issues that are shared across the network
  • build partnerships with other organisations who want to alleviate poverty by having the lived experience in the lead

Established Poverty Truth Commissions (orange markers), Starting one (light green). Similar but different work exists in Scotland (dark green).

Steering group