Kate Nightingale, head of marketing and communications and Francesca Albanese, head of research and evaluation, Crisis Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk

1. How can we change the way we talk about
homelessness?
Kate Nightingale
Francesca Albanese

2. • Why we needed to change the way we talk about homelessness
• What the research told us
• Current mental models
• Effective values, metaphors and stories
• How we’re putting it into practice
• What we’ve learned / top tips
Session overview

3. We can change the way we frame
homelessness to build public support and
political commitment for action and change

4. Using evidence to guide the choices we make when telling stories:
• What to emphasise
• How to explain things
• What to leave unsaid
…In order to equip people to think differently
Framing is…

5. What are we telling ourselves about
homelessness?

7. Mental shortcuts
• Homelessness happens because individuals
make bad choices
• Homelessness affects other people. Mainly
middle aged men, young people and
abused women.
• Services and support are already available.
People just don’t know about them, or
choose not to use them.
• The system is rigged and will never change.
It’s just how things are.

8. • The main causes of homelessness are unaffordable rents, a lack of social housing, and a lack of support
to help people quickly and permanently when they are at risk.
• Homelessness happens to all kinds of people, though some groups are more at risk than others. Young
people, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and people
leaving care or prison are all at higher risk. Poverty is one of the biggest drivers of homelessness
• Over time, policy choices have caused homelessness to go up, and particularly the lack of investment in
affordable housing over decades.
• But there have been times when some forms of homelessness, like rough sleeping, have been
significantly reduced.
• This shows us that if we make the right policy choices it is possible to stop homelessness from
happening.
What’s the real story about homelessness?

9. We can use values to tap into deep-seated shared beliefs. They help to:
• Establish why an issue matters
• Guide thinking (if the value is said right at the start)
• Create shared grounds for action
• Establish a powerful unarguable truth
Framing with values

10. People from a wide range of backgrounds from the UK were randomly assigned questions to
test how their responses on the issue changed when the questions were framed using values
of 1) Compassion, 2) Equality of opportunity, 3) Interdependence 4) Moral human rights

11. Moral human rights
In our society, we believe in treating everybody
with dignity and humanity and upholding
everyone’s basic human rights.
All of us, as human beings, have a moral right to
decent housing, yet right now, many people in our
country are homeless.
Treating all people with dignity and humanity
means making sure everyone can afford a safe
and stable home.
Interdependence
In our society, what affects one of us affects all of
us.
When some people are struggling, it hurts
everyone.
Right now, many people in our country are
homeless, and this affects us all.
Making sure everybody has safe, stable housing
benefits us all by creating a stronger society.

12. Metaphor interrupt default thinking. They:
• Provide a strong mental image
• Make abstract, complex concepts simple and concrete
• Explain why something happens (rather than positioning it as normal or natural)
Framing with metaphor

13. Poverty puts constant pressure on people.
If the pressure builds up, people can be pushed into homelessness.
This pressure comes from high housing costs, low wages and inadequate
government support, which can build up to a breaking point.
A sudden increase in pressure from a life event – like losing a job, a
relationship breakdown or a health crisis – can quickly become a rushing
flood that pushes people into homelessness.
Constant pressure metaphor

14. What happens when we use the
constant pressure metaphor?

16. Experiential stories
• Tell many stories that connect people with the
variety of ways in which people experience
homelessness
• Describe homelessness in ways which enable
people to identify with the experience
• Situate stories within the social causes of
homelessness and the systemic solutions that
are needed

17. Putting it into practice

18. • Playing back research findings throughout the process and enabling teams to feed into the research
• Workshops at Staff Conference and Strategic Leadership Group
• Full day’s training for everyone in Policy & External Affairs and Fundraising
• Tailored sessions for media team, story gatherers, and agencies
• Putting spokespeople through their paces
• Framing Champions
• Framing Yammer group
Within Crisis – people

19. • Framing thesaurus – a collaborative effort and constantly evolving
• Toolkit – beta version shared early for feedback
• New organisational narrative
• New set of interview questions for gathering first-person stories
Within Crisis – tools and resources

21. • Media comments and changing the way we brief
spokespeople
• Setting spokespeople a Twitter challenge
• Research team framing the way they present new
statistics internally
• Explaining it to warm journalists
• Celebrity briefings
• Christmas media story focused on sofa surfing – a
hidden form of homelessness
Early wins

22. ‘Behind these
statistics are
human beings,
who like all of
us, had talents
and ambitions’

23. https://twitter.com/crisis_uk/st
atus/1182226591339962370

24. • Testing and gradually evolving our fundraising material
• Establishing a robust evaluation methodology
• Understanding how different audience segments respond and change attitudes over time
• Developing materials to support the media to change the story
• Finding opportunities through culture and influencers
• Encouraging more lived experience voices to use the research
Longer journeys…

25. • Steering group made up of counterparts across the sector involved throughout the research
• Sharing the research widely at every stage
• Work with Scottish and Welsh governments
• Round table with friendly journalists at research launch
• New project funded by Comic Relief to work with sector membership bodies, the media, and others
Working across the sector (and beyond)

26. What we’ve learned
(top tips)

27. • Play the long game
• Involve as many people in the process as possible
• Tailor training workshops and materials to different roles, teams and audiences
• Show, don’t just tell
• Find opportunities for early wins (however small), and make them as visible as possible
• Be prepared for it to feel a bit clunky at first, allow people to experiment (don’t wait for it to be perfect)
• Repetition is good
• The mundane things (signoff processes!) matter just as much as the shiny content
• Incorporate it into brand guidelines and make it ‘business as usual’
What we’ve learned / top tips

28. Thank you

29. 5 March 2020
Conference: Changing hearts and
minds: social science insights for
communicators

30. Visit the CharityComms website to view
slides from past events, see what events
we have coming up and to check out
what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk