By Rob Gooding and Rachel Cole, the Tenant Involvement team
Following on from the highly successful Tenant Connectors Pool event in July, this month RotherFed staff hosted a taster session for the interested tenants to join the HIP (Housing Involvement Panel) and Scrutiny panels on a watching brief to see if the panels were suited to them and gain a better understanding of what the panels do.
The first of these were the Scrutiny panel held at Springwell Gardens, this saw four excited new tenants join the panel for the first time, supported by RotherFed staff these tenants sat an observed the meeting until they felt comfortable enough to join in the session, this gave the cohort of new tenants a valuable insight into what the panels do at their monthly meetings, after the watching brief three of those tenants said they would like to join the panel on a more permanent basis not adding more tenants voices to the diverse mix of tenants already attending the panel.
The second event was a watching brief for the HIP meeting, this was held at Springwell gardens over teams, so the four new tenants could be supported by RotherFed staff and ask questions that they might not have asked in the more formal settings of Riverside House, the tenants were all excited to see how these meetings run and what information they find out in them. At the end of the meeting, I’m happy to say that all four of them would like to join the panel moving forward, these tenants have now been paired with a tenant mentor to support them in future meetings.
Moving forward to build on the success of these sessions we would like to host more of these events to open this offer up to as many tenants of Rotherham as we can.