FLIC was an eight-year Lottery funded learning programme, designed to support people experiencing multiple disadvantage and affect system change to improve the experience and outcomes for people accessing services.
Too often the voices of people experiencing multiple disadvantage aren't heard. Putting clients at the centre of everything we do was key to our work. Our support service was intensive, trauma-informed and led by the experiences and insights of our clients.
We worked in partnership with statutory and voluntary agencies across both boroughs to improve services for people with multiple needs and drive systemic change, influencing how services are designed and delivered.
Since May 2014, Fulfilling Lives Islington and Camden (FLIC) has supported people experiencing multiple disadvantage relating to drug and alcohol use, homelessness, offending and mental ill health, to build more positive and fulfilling futures.
In that time our clients have achieved some amazing things, and the service has succeeded in achieving a high level of sustained engagement with people often deemed ‘hard to engage’.
Too often, mainstream support services have proven inaccessible to people facing multiple disadvantage, who find themselves struggling to navigate a 'maze' of services that are overly complex, inflexible and insufficiently coordinated to meet their needs. To tackle this, as well as supporting individuals, we have been committed to driving systemic change by working in partnership with local service providers to find ways of making services more flexible and responsive.
Building on this learning, our Strategic Action Plan places an even stronger emphasis on system change and lays out our priorities for change over the remaining four years of the project.
"With the best will in the world, senior people at local authorities, health services or the police don’t see or understand the day to day life of the individuals FLIC works with. FLIC completes the feedback loop between the high level and the operational level, so we can spot the system gaps and weaknesses, and do something about it." - Michael Gray, Multiple Needs Programme Lead, Islington Council
Integral to everything we wish to achieve in Camden and Islington is our vision of a cohesive, cross-sector strategy to meet the needs of people experiencing multiple disadvantage.
With the benefits of joined up funding and planning, this strategy will provide a coordinated multi-agency service response for each borough. It will result in a 'whole-system' approach to commissioning, with services integrated around the needs of the individual. Crucially, people experiencing multiple disadvantage will themselves participate directly in the process, ensuring that their perspectives and experiences directly inform service design and delivery. We are working in partnership with both local authorities to drive this vision forwards.
In addition to developing and implementing a Multiple Disadvantage strategy, our Action Plan focuses on four key priority areas: Mental Health, Housing and Homelessness, Working with Women and Physical Health.
Too often the voices of people experiencing multiple disadvantage aren't heard. Assumptions are made as to their needs, wants and wishes. We work alongside our clients to ensure they have an active role in the shaping service design and delivery. Read more