Rooftop Community Investment Strategy 2021 - 24

At Rooftop Housing Group we make sure that investing in your communities is a key business priority. We want to create and support long term sustainable communities by providing homes you want to live in, and by improving your opportunities and prospects.

We want to support and inspire you to fulfil your potential.

We believe in the importance of community and a place for you to call home.

Our Community Investment Strategy sets out a vision for the kind of future we would like to see for our communities. It lays important foundations, recognising our role in strengthening community resilience, from which we will build stronger communities.

We believe that communities are at the heart of improved health and wellbeing, enhanced life chances and resilience. Providing a home is more than a house or a place, it is a feeling.

Home is feeling safe, secure, and happy, where you feel you belong and where you are part of a community.

Through this Strategy, we will work in partnership to target action in the areas where we can deliver the most benefit - together with partners we can expand our community role to increase social impact through community investment.

Lisa Nicholls Housing Director Rooftop Housing Group

This strategy will make a positive impact on all Rooftop’s communities by supporting residents to deliver the changes you want to see in your Neighbourhood.

We hope that the strategy encourages more residents to get involved and become Community champions.

Lindsey Hendry Chair - Rooftop Resident Excellence Panel (REP)

MORE THAN HOUSING… Community Investment is the work we do that is beyond housing.

This work is designed to help create, support, and develop more self-reliant communities which have a positive and equal relationship with local service providers.

Key elements of this are money, time, skills, and expertise invested to develop and support your communities. Community Investment goes beyond ‘just housing’ because successful communities depend on a complex balance of social, economic, and environmental conditions.

VALUES

Our mission to ‘build great homes and support successful lives by being a better business’.

Through delivery of our strategy, we are supporting our objective of Building Stronger Communities and demonstrating our core values.

our strategy sets out an ambitious path for us to work together to make significant change that will form a legacy.

WHY SHOULD WE INVEST IN COMMUNITIES? We have always invested in your communities. As a rural, community-based Housing Association we are at the heart of your communities, which makes us well placed to support positive change.

We have the key skills and resources to complement that of our partners, customers, and communities.

We invest in your communities by providing services that add to your community; these include our young peoples’ service, older persons’ accommodation, health and wellbeing, money advice and job coaching.

COVID-19 has highlighted the value of existing

community connections in helping us to respond to local community needs. The impact of the pandemic on every community has led to new partnerships and a realisation that there are enormous reserves of skill, good will and energy available when people feel motivated by common interests.

We understand that community investment requires commitment, motivation, capacity, and authority to deliver it effectively.

This Community Investment Strategy sets an ambitious path for us to work together to make significant change that will form a legacy.

Our approach to community investment is adding value to communities by supporting you to deliver the changes you want to see, and to support long term resilience through a strengths-based approach.

By doing so we can support communities, enhance the lives of local people, and help to create places where you want to live, work, and thrive.

The aim of our Strategy is to ‘work together, creating places that are empowering and resilient with community at its heart’.

When we say “empowering” we mean helping you in our communities to be stronger and more confident, especially in controlling your life choices and your environment.

When we say “resilient” we mean being able to recover quickly, and strongly from any adverse conditions (like COVID-19).

In deciding on our priority areas, we have been fully inclusive, working with customers to find out what is important to them, as well as Rooftop colleagues and key stakeholders.

We have identified six areas where we can make a difference based on our skills and experience, as well as expertise focusing upon people and place.

Our priorities: 1. Community strengthening.

2. Health and wellbeing.

3. Employment, education, skills, and training.

4. Financial resilience.

5. Environment.

6. Digital inclusion.

We have identified six areas where we can make a difference based on our skills and experience, as well as expertise focusing upon people and place.

Community strengthening

Health and wellbeing

Employment, education, skills and training

• Aligning partner/stakeholder

• Helping people to live

• Remove barriers to work by

priorities in targeting and commissioning of investment, activities, projects, and services.

• Development of Local Offers in prioritised communities.

• A selection of engagement

opportunities that responds to the different needs and equality strands to promote widespread participation.

• Establishment of community hubs and support where there is an identified need.

independently.

• Increasing access to

affordable and healthy food.

• Reducing loneliness and

isolation and support access to emotional support.

• Promoting an active and healthy lifestyle.

increasing access to pre-employment support and assisting job seekers to find employment.

• Supporting skills development and training opportunities.

• Providing volunteering and

engagement opportunities.

• Provision of work

placements and experience at Rooftop Housing Group and/or through partners.

Financial resilience

Environment

Digital

• Assisting customers to

• Reduction of waste and

• Working with community

sustain their tenancy through pre-tenancy and budgeting advice.

• Helping customers to maximise

increase in recycling.

• Creating, utilising, and

maintaining outdoor/open spaces with consideration to achieving biodiversity.

household income through our money advice service, • Creating and improving Emergency Assistance Fund and physical spaces for play and other grants. interaction.

• Helping reduce fuel poverty • Investment in environmental by providing utilities advice. projects aligned to • Social Return on Investment community priorities. to the value of £300k through the Housing Association’s Charitable Trust’s (HACT) social values bank.

and business partners to create opportunities for digitally disadvantaged customers.

• Exploration of Community WiFi in areas of high deprivation.

• Seeking opportunities to

maximise digital inclusion.

• Support our customers with

training for on-line activities.

OUR APPROACH

To achieve this vision, it is important that we collaborate and work in partnership to tackle the challenges we face.

Our approach to community engagement, we will:

Take an ABCD approach focusing upon strengths, place and adding value.

Listen to our customers and communities to build understanding and rapport to find out your needs, priorities, and aspirations.

Build Relations with communi local partn and organis to help de improv outcomes f custome

d ships

ities, ners, sations eliver ved for our ers.

Partner and collaborate with specialist organisations to ensure that communities have access to the best expertise and resources.

Embrace Innovation in finding creative ways of working with communities.

Empower communities to shape their own solutions.

Facilitate growth and investment from external sources for the communities where it is most needed.

Create a Legacy in building successful and resilient communities.

FUNDING AND SOCIAL RETURN ON INVESTMENT Our current annual budget for community investment activities is £50,000, this will be used to fund projects and initiatives in the communities where we operate.

Within this budget we provide several funding opportunities for individuals, groups and organisations that includes our Community Fund, which offers up to £1,000 each for local projects.

In future we will utilise grant funding, harness social value within procurement and work in partnership to maximise our impact.

We aim to achieve a minimum of £150,000 investment in our communities annually through these mechanisms and through our partnerships.

For all our community investment activities, we will measure the impact of each project and will set measurable outcomes using the Housing

Association’s Charitable Trust’s (HACT) social values bank.

A key aim of this work will be to realise over £300,000 social return on investment through our community investment activities.

This will be reported to our Board and customers as part of our annual review process and will enable us to demonstrate our return on investment.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion lie at the core of all our services, including community investment.

THE BENEFIT Our customers and the communities in which they live are the intended beneficiaries of our investment.

We aim to support a wide variety of people from diverse backgrounds and with different personal circumstances. This includes customers who may be harder to reach, including those with disabilities, the elderly, lone parents, young adults, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and those with specialist support needs.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion is something that we take very seriously, and this lies at the core of all our services, including community investment.

We celebrate diversity within our communities by supporting projects and people who have great ideas for bringing the community together.

REVIEW The delivery of this Strategy will be monitored through the Housing Director, with ownership by the Head of Housing supported by the Leadership Team.

We will produce an annual report to customers on all activities and report to Board at the end of each financial year on targeted outcomes achieved.

This Strategy will be reviewed every three years unless there are major changes in legislation or good practice. A report on progress will be made to the Board annually.

Rooftop Housing Group 70 High Street Evesham Worcestershire WR11 4YD www.rooftopgroup.org Email: enquiries@rooftopgroup.org Tel: 01386 420800