Community of Practice Update: Arson & Fire Setting

Author: Lee Dale, Recovery Community Coordinator, Expert Citizens CIC

A Community of Practice (CoP) is defined as: “A group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Lave and Wenger) CoP’s are usually informal, self-organising, and span across departments with members distributed throughout an organisation.

To that end, the purpose of the Changing Futures Community of Practice is to create a learning structure that allows staff across public, private and third sector organisations to learn alongside people with lived experience to promote best practice and build common capability in supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage across the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

To bring the current series of CoPs based around arson & fire setting to a conclusion we will be holding a workshop with stakeholders and people with lived experience to co-create a good practice guide. We have already identified through the lifetime of the Changing Futures project that accommodating people with arson charges or case notes alluding to incidents fire setting are significant barriers to accessing temporary accommodation. Expert Citizens INSIGHT Academy have commissioned a training event titled ‘Effective Factual Recording’ in response to what we’ve found about case notes and recorded information not providing enough context around incidents, which can then act as an immovable barrier to accessing services. This is a really challenging subject to consider and appreciation is given to lack of resources and recruitment difficulties across the sector.

The co-creation of a good practice guide around alleviating barriers to accommodation for those who fall into the arson and fire setting category is an opportunity for the sector in Stoke-on-Trent to work together in unison and agreement.

We will be holding the workshop in February with a date to be announced soon.

If you are interested in being involved with the Community of Practice please contact lee.dale@expertcitizens.org.uk