Wales & West Housing Association picked up first place in the Mainstreaming Tenant Participation category at the Tenant Participation Advisory Service Cymru Awards presentation held in Cardiff.
The Association have recently revised their Resident Participation Strategy, which incorporates the views of almost 1,000 residents who were consulted on resident participation issues during 2007. This has underlined the commitment of Wales & West to making resident participation a priority throughout the organisation.
As well as the traditional and more formal styles of participation, a number of new methods of participation have been introduced following the introduction of the new strategy, including:
Sandwell Homes launched a new initiative to help tenants of Sandwell Council engage in housing matters by offering a series of training courses.
The Sandwell Tenants and Residents Training programme consists of various courses designed to improve tenants' skills in contributing to meetings, IT and computing, and making presentations, as well as raising their awareness of equality and diversity issues.
Each course was identified following close consultation with tenants and residents associations. Officers from Sandwell Homes and its partner organisations will deliver most of the courses in-house at no cost to the recipient.
