An article written for people working in tenant participation and community development.

I started my career as a support worker in housing. As my career developed I went into tenant participation, though to working in community safety in a regeneration project and then a community safety manager and then finally a Drugs Action Team manager before setting up Mpowerme to focus on empowering people.

Whether you working in a Local Authority, a Housing Association, or in the voluntary sector tenant Participation, involving clients and community development has been a developing agenda. Some organisations seem, on the outside, to embrace it whilst others remain lagging behind. But just what is behind those words in the newsletter, on the web site, in the leaflet the organisation may have developed? Is the full organisation committed to involving individuals and communities or just a few or perhaps just you?

How many people work for organisations where some colleagues have the belief that the clients/residents should be grateful for what they get? After all, why would we want to give them choices? As policies develop clients are given more choices, asked for more input, asked to participate, and asked to have an opinion. On the other hand there are staff who are struggling to get these clients involved. Do you feel alienated by this process do you truly have the backing of the organisation and the staff you work with? Do you feel lonely in your job?

Whichever camp you sit in and what ever level you work at you have chosen a pressurised career. You may be working with few other staff, within a strict budget, needing to work across all departments and encouraging those departments to involve clients too.

Then there are the clients. Do they believe they are being given choices? Have they got the time, will, motivation or aspiration to become involved? Does the fact that only a few others have volunteered mean that all the work falls on a small number of people?

This may sound negative but the positive aspect is that most people are in their jobs because they are passionate about involvement.

So as a passionate person how can you manage your work, the unsocial hours with evening meetings and weekend events, the sheer number of meetings, minutes, agendas, developing events, policies and the issues discussed above.

Some ideas that may help are:

• be clear what you want from your job with regard to:
  • your personal development, be very clear on what you require for your career, your CV, you’re on a journey this is not your last job, look to the future, plan and be focussed
  • what is needed to enable you to enjoy your day to day work
  • the organisation you work for
  • the clients
• Take care of yourself! Giving up your personal life, being constantly tired and drained and trying to get through an ever increasing to-do list and an overflowing in tray, is no way to live, it is also not a good way to do a good job.�
  Be the best person you can be to yourself first and everyone else second. When you are the best you can be, you are also the best you can be for your job too. Don’t be fooled by believing that working in a stressed and pressured manner has any value, it will just result in damaging you psychologically, emotionally and physically.
• Know your priorities. Be clear on what you can actually achieve in your job. Once you have a plan it is achievable. Write a list of what is actually achievable and stick to it – forget the rest.
• No job is for life, if you were not there someone else would be doing the job. Stop taking it so personally. Know what you want in your life as a whole – work/career AND personal life and manage your life. You are a role model for your clients – show them someone who has a balanced life.
• Know where your career is going, enjoy your whole life and remember these key points:
  • you are the engineer of your life
  • you really do make all the decisions, even the excuses
  • make sure you are living a life not an excuse

Find out how we can support you and the communities you work with by contacting Janet on
023 8061 8388 today.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 10:09 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.