Meet the Mancunian - Talking tackling homelessness with Fran Darlington-Pollock

Meet the Mancunian-6.4-Fran Darlington-Pollock -transcript

Intro

Hello, and a warm Mancunian welcome to all my incredible listeners out there. I'm Deepa Thomas Sutcliffe, your friendly host, and you've just tuned in to the sixth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, where I share remarkable social impact stories from the heart of Manchester every Tuesday throughout the season.

This podcast is a celebration of the unsung heroes, the change makers and the passionate souls who are making a real difference in our vibrant city. From social enterprises to non-profits and community groups, I bring you the voices of worker bees and volunteers, all coming together for a common cause. Through heartfelt conversations, my guests share their experiences, dreams, and unwavering commitment to making a difference.

From the challenges they've overcome, to the triumphs that fuel their passion, their stories will leave you moved, enlightened, and brimming with hope. Join me on this audio adventure as my guests and I explore the transformative power of collective action and the remarkable impact we can create when we unite for a common cause.

Their tales are a testament to the power of community, collaboration, and the indomitable Mancunian spirit. They not only address pressing issues right here in Manchester, but also offer insights and inspiration that resonate far beyond these boundaries.

So whether you're commuting, on a run, or just relaxing at home, I invite you to tune in on Apple, Spotify, Google, or any of your favourite podcasting platforms. You can also log on to my website, www.meetthemancunian.co.uk. Let's embark on this journey of discovery and inspiration.

For my new listeners, you can catch up on the incredible stories from the first five seasons at www.meetthemancunian.co.uk where you'll also find out more about my own journey as a podcaster. And to all my returning listeners, I can't thank you enough for your support. You make this podcast possible and I'm immensely grateful.

So join me as I continue to share these inspiring tales of change and community support from the beating heart of Manchester. Together we can spread a bit of good news, spark meaningful conversations and inspire positive action. Thank you for being a part of the Meet the Mancunian community.

Welcome to the fourth episode of Season Six of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester.

Passionate about addressing homelessness, we hear from Fran Darlington-Pollock, CEO, Greater Manchester's Mayor's Charity in this episode.

This episode is being released ahead of World Habitat Day, which talks about the importance of every person having a home. The United Nations designated the first Monday of October, 2nd October 2023 in this year, as World Habitat Day.

The idea is to reflect on the state of our towns and cities, and the basic right of all to adequate shelter. It's also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.

Episode 6.4

[00:03:32] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'm delighted to introduce my guest, Fran Darlington-Pollock, CEO, Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity. Thanks so much, Fran, for taking the time on a Monday.

[00:03:42] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Thanks for having me, Deepa.

[00:03:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And a very exciting day because you've just been named as CEO today.

[00:03:49] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I have. It feels a bit surreal, but very exciting.

[00:03:52] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Looking forward to talking about that. But before we get started with learning about your work in Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity, I'm really keen to understand how did your passion for homelessness start. Where did that come from?

[00:04:05] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I get really angry about inequality, and specifically thinking about structural inequalities when it comes down to differences in income, wealth, and power.

So that's what really riles me up. And homelessness is just a really acute manifestation of inequality. People talk a lot about poverty and just not having certain resources or not having certain access to certain incomes but that all stems from inequality. If we closed the gap and addressed that in a meaningful way, we wouldn't have the wider injustices that we see so that's what my passion is, trying to tackle inequality and doing that in different ways.

And for as homelessness is such a significant manifestation of that's, how I'm currently focused.

[00:04:47] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that and I'd like you to just explain a little bit about what you meant by structural inequality because we've got listeners around the world and not everybody may be fully familiar.

[00:04:58] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Structural inequalities are inequalities in income, wealth and power, so the structures of our income system, of how wealth is gathered and managed and accumulated, and how power is distributed. When you have uneven distributions of those, that's because of the structures, and then through that inequality, you then see things like gender, or sex, or religion, ethnicity, race, become more important, and the gaps themselves become amplified.

[00:05:30] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that and that was a really clear explanation. I think it comes from your background in academics as well.

How did you get involved with Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity?

[00:05:40] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I used to be an academic, as you said, and then during the pandemic, like many people, I had a bit of a change of heart for a lot of both push and pull reasons.

And I was already on the board of a charity, which is the Equality Trust. I felt I was making a difference through that, but I decided actually, I want to work fully in the not-for-profit VCS sector. And I actually got a job at Save the Children UK, and it was a really interesting job really great people, but it was international development and it was supporting research and proposal developments in universities to address the issues that mattered for Save the Children but at an international scale and for me that's neither my background nor did I increasingly feel my place so I wanted to look more domestic issues and go back to my focus on social justice in the context of where I live.

And despite my accent, I did in fact grow up in Manchester and was living in Manchester and saw this role and thought what an amazing role to get to actually work in the city I grew up addressing such an important issue and being able to bring some of my background in a way that hadn't been done in that charity before. So, that's why I applied for it, and I was just amazed and delighted that I got the role.

[00:06:53] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you and obviously from that start you've now become CEO as well. And I'd love to hear more about it, but tell us a little bit about what Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity does, because I know it works with homelessness, but what are the areas of homelessness that you're addressing?

[00:07:10] Fran Darlington-Pollock: So, we were actually a funder. So, we were set up after Andy Burnham was elected, and he was looking around the city region, and specifically looking around the city, and enough was enough. He wanted to see real change, meaningful change for people experiencing homelessness. And specifically at that time, he was talking about rough sleeping.

Rough sleeping was at crisis levels. It was a huge peak in 2017, and he needed to see change. So, there were two things that happened and led to the birth of Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity. First, he set up a fund. And he was donating 15 percent of his salary and he wanted to lead by example and say, look, we can all pay into this and we can all lead and then deliver something new, doing things differently as we all know, we like to do in not just Manchester, but Greater Manchester.

And through that, and then the public interest in paying into that fund, it became clear that there was a space for a charity. And then the charity was set up, but alongside it, Greater Manchester's flagship emergency response scheme for rough sleeping, which is A Bed Every Night.

A Bed Every Night is a universal offer to anyone who is rough sleeping in Greater Manchester. And it's not just a bed, its food, its shelter, and its wraparound support to help people move into more stable accommodation. It's universal and unique in Greater Manchester because of the funding the Mayor's Charity brings, we're able to make it universal where statutory provisions perhaps wouldn't.

So that's the starting point. And then since then, our role as one of the founding funders and continued supporters, has continued to develop. After we were set up, everybody went through a global pandemic and the priorities for the charity changed a little bit. Still in terms of homelessness, but how can we support more?

So, we have three grant making streams. Emergency response, places and spaces, which ultimately would we be able to support the construction and maintenance of new spaces, but then also, and really importantly, targeted prevention.

And I see these as three interrelated grant streams, because ultimately, if we have more and more effective targeted prevention work, you will see less homelessness. We can stop it before it becomes reality and the pressure on emergency response provisions such as A Bed Every Night would lessen. So, we raise funds through corporate relationships, events, community giving and individual giving to then distribute grants within those areas across Greater Manchester.

[00:09:30] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. And now what would you say would be the key focus areas going forward for you, especially now that you've taken over as CEO? Are there any direction changes that you're envisaging or is it too early to be talking about it?

[00:09:44] Fran Darlington-Pollock: No, we will always be there for the A Bed Every Night scheme as long as our funding is needed to keep it as the offer that it is but I think alongside that, it is about how do we diversify our fundraising to allow us to do bigger programs of grant making in targeted prevention. And that means things like growing our authority, say, as a charity that can talk on and understand the experiences of homelessness, the drivers of homelessness. And that's not just through the learned experience of people within the organisation, but also the lived experience that informs and guides a lot of the decision making.

And that's through things like the Greater Manchester Homelessness Action Network. It's through working closely with the charity partners that we have funded, hope to fund, or have relationships with. It's just about having a real sense of what is needed and how do we direct. And at the same time, trying to build more of a discussion and a conversation around what is needed to address homelessness, trying to challenge some of the stereotypes, unpack some of the myths around anything rough from rough sleeping right through to say being in temporary accommodation.

And, you can see that in some of the work we've done already. We're part of a national campaign at the moment calling for a national strategy to end youth homelessness that's got more than 100 charities signed up. And it's basically saying, look, together our voices are louder and look at the breadth of experience across all these organisations saying specifically this is what is needed to end homelessness.

That's the ultimate goal. Can we end homelessness or end the need for homelessness?

[00:11:18] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you for sharing that. We've spoken to quite a few homelessness charities. I know it's a real problem here and in many parts of the world. And it's really great to see that you're doing so much.

Have there been challenges on this journey and how have you overcome them?

[00:11:33] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I suppose the challenges faced by any small charity, or indeed any large charity. Times are tight, there is not a lot of money sloshing around as there once might have been. And not only are individuals having to make different decisions about what they do with their money, so are businesses, small, medium and large.

So the challenges are how to maximise our fundraising potential, but also do that in a way that doesn't detract from the fundraising capacity of the organisations that we ourselves want to fund. We are raising money by going out into the city region in different ways, whether that's DJ battles, sponsored walks, or building a corporate partnership, or asking individuals to spare a couple of pounds and do that on a monthly basis, for example.

But so are other charities that we work with. They may not deliver the same events at the same scale as us, but the challenge is not to compete or deaden the work of someone else? How can we amplify their work and also mean that we ourselves can have more potential to give more grants?

[00:12:39] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I like that very much about amplifying other charities because I know that the homelessness charities are definitely amongst all the many charities have spoken to definitely stand out as one that has very strong partnerships.

For example, one of the charities, Coffee4Craig was talking about how they fill the gaps. So when, on weekdays, there's a lot of charities that support, but less options on weekends or at night, and therefore they're filling that gap. So I really like that. And I think, again, it speaks to Manchester's community spirit, doesn't it?

[00:13:15] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Definitely, and Coffee4Craig are a really good example of exactly how Greater Manchester does pull together to address these sorts of things, and if you look at the early discussions of A Bed Every Night and the early press around it, something that was emphasised as what made it so unique was that collaboration, that cross sector, VCS, public, private, faith sector groups coming together to say actually we can do this better when we do it together and when we learn from and with each other.

[00:13:42] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Sounds like you're making a lot of impact. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact you made?

[00:13:47] Fran Darlington-Pollock: We've been set up officially since 2018. We've raised more than 3. 1 million pounds. More than 2.2 million of that has gone into A Bed Every Night. If you're like just doing a direct translation of what that could mean, it's more than 70,000 nights of accommodation in the A Bed Every Night scheme.

We've enabled a total of around 12 year’s worth of frontline organisation delivery. We've been able to support multiple innovation projects. We've been able to help some charities keep the doors open during the pandemic.

We've increased the scope of the conversation. And I think, specifically since I've joined, it's around how can we broaden that conversation to show that actually there is a huge amount of interest and appetite for really showing how you tackle homelessness, how you can make sure that people can get the support they need and allow organisations to do it, but also how you can be a charity and do fundraisers that are connecting with what people want to do. We try and deliver events that resonate with how people in Greater Manchester want to engage, and we're fortunate to have a patron who enjoys that thing and champions that approach.

So, I think the impact is varied. It's about what can charities do to raise money. How can they then convene or use their role to convene different conversations? And then also the tangible impact on the organisations that we support and therefore what through them we have enabled.

[00:15:16] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. Those are really great impact and thank you so much for sharing that.

How can interested people reach out to you and learn more? Where can they find your website and social media?

[00:15:26] Fran Darlington-Pollock: We're on all of the main socials. If you want to reach out, you can contact us on enquiries at gmmayorscharity.org.uk. You can come on the website, you can find the charity on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

But you can also find me there if you want to reach out and say Fran, actually really like a conversation to say how can I as an employer support the charity. Equally, how can I as an employee get involved or advocate for my organisation to get involved? What can I do with my friends, my family, my community? There are lots of different things that we can talk about say this is how you can champion.

And also in Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity, what you've got to remember is your impact is across Greater Manchester and through so many other organisations. It's something like more than 160 organisations we funded. That's a lot of impact in places where people can connect to it. So if you want to get involved, whether or not you want to set up some monthly giving, do a one off donation, charity partner of the year, get involved with our events, hear about our advocacy. Just get in touch.

[00:16:33] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Great, and that's how we actually met, wasn't it? LinkedIn, that's how we got connected.

What advice would you have for people looking to start a similar movement in their local community? Like we said, homelessness is a universal problem now. Many people, sleeping rough, or other kinds of homelessness in many parts of the world. How should they get started?

[00:16:54] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I do genuinely think, and I don't know how many of your listeners will be outside of the Greater Manchester area, but I think that the model offered by Greater Manchester is quite unique and is really worth promoting externally.

To have that network of organisations spanning VCS, private sector, faith sector, all coming together and collaborating on how this can be tackled, that means a lot, like that collective set of experiences and the capacity to coordinate means a lot. So I think first champion for that network, advocate for that network.

It also says a lot to have a charity. that can be set up to be providing the funding for initiatives and interventions that perhaps other sources of funding are less able to tackle. If you're in a space where that isn't present, think about how that can be created, or what platforms are there to enable that.

Within Greater Manchester, I think if people are interested in, how can they get involved, what could they do to support people experiencing homelessness or rough sleeping, and as you say, all the different types of homelessness. I would say just have a look at what local organisations are near to you, who needs support, where do you see gaps, but then use the networks that exist.

Greater Manchester Homeless Action Network is there for people who want to get involved and can bring something to understand how to tackle homelessness. So I think it's look at what's there, don't duplicate effort, because that's good for no one, and see how you can maximise the effort that's already ongoing where you live.

[00:18:29] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think it's again very similar to what you said earlier about amplifying each other's work, so I like that very much, and filling the gaps and not duplicating and really doing more good because we've got the power of all of us.

[00:18:43] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Definitely.

[00:18:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: An opportunity now for you to talk about anything I haven't asked you about, anything you want to share coming up, let's say in the autumn.

[00:18:50] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Hopefully some of you will have seen some of the events we've done. For example, we had a bus pull in Greater Manchester's Manchester Central. That will have happened by then. Then we also will have done the Circle Home, which is the biggest sponsored walk Greater Manchester will ever have seen.

And we'll also be coming to the end of a schools’ campaign, which is specifically about getting schools involved, getting our young people to produce a piece of art about what home means to them. So essentially we're saying, show me home. And then alongside the fundraiser they would do with that. There's both an exhibition, actually this exhibition will be going out and it's between the 8th and the 10th of October, so keep an eye on that that'll be at Contemporary Six, a gallery in central Manchester.

For World Homelessness Day, which is the 10th of October, schools will be doing their own set of activities on understanding the experience of homelessness and what's being done to tackle it. All those things may have happened or nearly happened when you're listening to this. But these are examples of some of the annual events, specifically that sponsored walk and the Show Me Home campaign.

It's how do we do things that connect with the whole of Greater Manchester? Let's do a sponsored walk around the whole of Greater Manchester. Let's do a schools’ campaign that invites schools from across all of the boroughs of Greater Manchester.

You'll also see other things coming up like a campaign, which we're calling Deck the Halls. So, for any knitters or crochet enthusiasts out there, there'll be opportunity to get involved with that. And we're looking at other ways of being active and being connected with outside. So, anything from runs to cycling, there's quite a lot to get involved in. And whatever your interests and whoever you are, you should see some Greater Manchester Mayor's Charity event that would work for you.

[00:20:31] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. And it sounds like there's a lot of amazing events coming up where people can get involved. That's really nice.

I'm now going to ask you about the signature questions that I ask all my guests. And the first is to describe the Mancunian spirit in a word or a phrase.

[00:20:46] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I'm trying to come up with something that's completely unique that no one else would have come up with. But I think energising and I've seen that a lot actually. One thing I've been really loving is having come into this role having been, not from, but grew up, all my formative years in Manchester, but then working in different spaces.

Coming into this role means I've suddenly been brought into a network of organisations and people coming together that I just didn't know existed and have the generosity of spirit and giving and wanting to do good and give back across Greater Manchester. The business community for example is amazing and it's shown me ways of working with people that I'd never seen before so that's really energising and that feels very special. And maybe it's unique to Greater Manchester, maybe it's not, but it feels very special.

[00:21:36] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I must say it's the first time somebody's used specifically that term. They've used many others, but energising is unique, so thank you for sharing that.

Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you, and why, and can be somebody from the past or present?

[00:21:52] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I'm going to go with Emmeline Pankhurst, who lots of people will know and will have seen the wonderful statue commemorating her. She was born in Moss Side in Manchester and I think there are, you struggle to find many historical figures, particularly women leaders, who have been such a catalyst for change. So definitely Emmeline Pankhurst for everything she did for the suffragette movement.

[00:22:16] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you. She's very popular with the podcast and definitely her and her family. I think the Pankhurst family has also done a lot, so it's really inspiring.

What's the most important life lesson you've learned so far?

[00:22:31] Fran Darlington-Pollock: It's probably, and I think I'm actually still learning it. Or trying to live it, is not being afraid to say when you don't know, and I think there are different people amongst us who find that harder than others, and I would say, probably, women as a start, in particular.

But then, for women who have more of those intersexual axes of inequality, like the ones we were talking about earlier maybe you're a disability, a race, a religion, that's probably even more of a significant thing.

But I think feeling comfortable when saying I don't know and not thinking that reduces me or minimises me in a space just because I don't know it.

[00:23:15] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think that's quite brave, isn't it? Because everybody wants to look like we know what we're talking about. Especially when you go into new contexts. It does take a little bit of humility to say, I don't know, but I'm a quick learner. I'll pick it up.

[00:23:30] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Absolutely. And it's being okay to not know what you don't even know as well.

[00:23:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's a really good life lesson. Thank you.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

[00:23:40] Fran Darlington-Pollock: It's like a really silly one, would genuinely be able to fly. I would love that. That would be great. Actually, a superpower that I've always wanted I think to just be able to pause time, like just pause it, not even necessarily to give yourself more time to do stuff, but just to completely halt everything for a minute, but you could carry on, and that either gives you like more time to reflect, to understand, to see something differently. That would be great.

I think when I was younger, there was Bernard's Watch, the TV programme, and Bernard had this watch where he could just press it and freeze time. I was always in complete envy of that, and I've always wanted that ability and I still do.

[00:24:19] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I hope we could freeze time today and we could continue to talk for a lot longer but I'm coming to my last question.

Is there a funny story you'd like to share with listeners. Maybe, tell us about an interesting fundraiser that you've done recently.

[00:24:34] Fran Darlington-Pollock: I suppose that they're all things that are coming. I'm pretty sure the Bus Pull's going to be a hilarious event in a couple of weeks. On the 17th of August, we will be inside Manchester Central, once one of the major terminals of the city region.

And we're bringing public transport back inside but instead of trains, we're bringing buses and it's going to be powered by people who will be competing to pull the bus fastest over a 30-meter course. That's teams of five.

I remember when my chair of the board of trustees suggested this to me. I did have to say, and actually this is a related funny story. I was thinking, that's not what I thought I'd be doing. And at our first ever annual dinner, I was stood on the stage welcoming people and saying thank you And I made it like it's been a wild ride since I started.

And talking to people afterwards including our patron and he would say it has been, hasn't it? Was it what you're expecting? I was like, no it was not. I think that's what makes it quite fun as well though. I didn't in a million years think this would be the thing that I'd be doing at this point in time, but I am and it's quite fun.

[00:25:45] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It does sound like fun and I think the bus pull sounds very interesting. I can imagine a lot of teams competing to pull buses and race. I don't know how much you can race with a very heavy bus.

[00:25:59] Fran Darlington-Pollock: These are the things that I'm learning all about on a daily basis. How do you organise a bus pull?

[00:26:04] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Very interesting.

Fran, thank you so much for talking to me. I learned so much about homelessness today. It's really amazing your collaborative approach to working with other charities. I really like that, and I've seen that with other homelessness charities as well.

[00:26:20] Fran Darlington-Pollock: Amazing. It's the way to do it.

Outro

Fran, thank you for talking to me today. I really enjoyed learning about addressing homelessness today. Dear listener, thank you so much for listening to the fourth episode of the Meet the Mancunian podcast, Season Six. Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode, or log on to www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to listen to all the episodes and learn more about my podcasting story.

Next week on Tuesday, 3 October 2023, I speak to Magdalene Bartlett about supporting refugees.

Thank you for joining me on this enriching journey through the social impact stories of Manchester with the sixth season of the Meet the Mancunian podcast. I hope the stories you heard today have sparked a fire of inspiration within you. May they serve as a gentle reminder that no dream is too big and no passion too small.

Your feedback means the world to me. Visit www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to share your thoughts, suggestions and the causes that touched your heart. Your input helps me craft a podcast that truly touches hearts and makes a difference in our community.

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Before I sign off, remember to introduce this podcast to your friends and family so together we can amplify the impact and reach of these incredible stories. Once again, thank you so much for being a part of the Meet the Mancunian family.

Your support fuels my passion and I can't wait to bring you more compelling stories that will touch your hearts and fuel your soul. Until we meet again in the next episode, let's keep creating waves of change together. Remember the world needs more Mancunian spirit, so go out there and be the change you wish to see.

Take care, stay inspired.