Participantion in Policy Making: the Get Heard! Process

For the first time the NAP 2006 reflected greater engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, particularly people experiencing poverty. The Get Heard! project was carried out between 2004 and 2006 and involved people with experience of poverty from across the UK in giving their views on the effectiveness of the Government's policies for preventing social exclusion. It was designed specifically to assist grassroots organisations to get involved in the development of the NAP.

The Get Heard Toolkit was developed in partnership with people with direct experience of poverty and the Social Policy Task Force and the DWP. Its goal is to involve people experiencing poverty and social exclusion more centrally in the debate on tackling poverty.

Across the UK over 140 workshops were organised by grassroots organisations using the toolkit. The outputs from these workshops were collated, and the findings used to inform the drafting of NAP 2006.

The toolkit is designed as a simple guide to getting involved rather than an instruction manual. It provides enough information to help groups in their thinking about government policy and poverty and what needs to be done.

The Bridging the Policy Gap project builds on the experience of the Get Heard project by seeking to add greater depth to the discussion around key areas of policy

The Get Heard Toolkit and the outputs from the project can be viewed on the internet at http://www.ukcap.org/getheard/