Between October ’22 and January ’23, Homeless Link facilitated a Community of Practice for managers of frontline homelessness services across England, which focused on ‘Psychologically Informed Management’.
As a group, we came up with a collective definition:
Psychologically Informed Management is empowering staff to feel safe and do their job well through:
- Building trusting relationships within a safe and supportive environment.
- Providing person-centred supervision, reflective practice, and peer support.
- Acknowledging the impact of life experiences and accommodating different communication styles.
- Working together to achieve shared goals and providing development opportunities.
- Finding a healthy balance between meeting outcomes and understanding the needs of staff.
Following the CoP series, we have developed a suite of resources aimed at ensuring frontline staff receive person-centred support, in a psychologically informed way. We know that a large proportion of people working in the homelessness sector experience burnout, vicarious trauma, and secondary traumatic stress so understanding the symptoms of these and the support that should be provided, is vital to having a happy and healthy organisation.
Our new resources are:
- Psychologically Informed 1:1 Meetings briefing
- Psychologically Informed Inductions briefing
- Template for 1:1 Meetings
- Understanding burnout, vicarious trauma & secondary traumatic stress (STS) briefing
- 2 posters depicting common symptoms of burnout, vicarious trauma & STS
- Poster outlining how staff can look after themselves at work