Using social policy to campaign for change 2

Hackney CAB Crowdmap

Sharing Stories on the impact of Housing Benefit cuts in Hackney

Hackney CAB Crowdmap

Sharing stories on the impact of housing

benefit changes in Hackney Aims: To raise awareness and provide people

with information on options and where to get help

www.hackneycabcrowdmap.com @hcabcrowdmap on Twitter Hackney CAB Crowdmap on Facebook

Crowdmap - How it started

Ushahidi ‘testimony’ or ‘witness’ - group of developers

and bloggers in Kenya Developed open source software to share and map

reports of violence in Kenya in the post-election violence in January 2008

www.ushahidi.com Crowdmap software - off-the-shelf version of Ushahidi www.fixyourstreet.ie - South Dublin county council www.immigrantharassment.com - Arizonans Unite

Crowdmap - How does it work?

Crowdmap provides you with - A website With a live map of any selected geographical location To which you can add your own geographical and dated

reports And you can invite people to add their own reports Live map - adds time dimension to geographical data As reports are added, you can create a snapshot of reports

at any time and play through a timeline to demonstrate how and where reports have been added

All for free!

Hackney CAB Crowdmap project

Working Title - Hackney CAB Crowdmap Mapping impact of Housing Benefit shortfalls in

Hackney Affects approx 8000 households in private rented

accommodation in Hackney, almost 10% of the borough

Average shortfall £40 per week Reporting bureau and other agency enquiries Public reports


The project collects stories of how people are affected

and how they are coping Pointing people towards resources and help available

in Hackney Information on options Blog posts - most recently on landlord mystery

shopping exercise to see how many properties available to Housing Benefit tenants - we found 14 out of 1600!


Open to local community to report directly and to share their stories - to know that they are not alone and that there is help out there

Bring people together over the issue Provides a route to advice on the related issues - on

options available and how to get help and advice in Hackney

Awareness raising Compiles the stories of those affected in one place

over time - so that we can build a picture of how the community is affected by the Housing Benefit changes


Issues we needed to consider for the project

Anonymity How we use the service How the public use the service Reaching out to public to share

stories

Partners

Local advice organisations Homelessness and Tenancy support

services Parent support groups Local government

Data

Hackney Council data modelling

research 8000 affected households Welfare Reform working group Welfare Reform Impact Dashboard

Resources

Three social policy volunteers at Hackney CAB

Young Foundation mentoring and support Pro bono web support and free hosting from

Base Creative Volunteer designer on photography and

design Free and easy to use software - Crowdmap

and Wordpress (with free hosting options)

The Young Foundation

Applied to Building Local Activism programme in summer 2011

Support and mentoring Help with building Wordpress website around

Crowdmap Pro bono help from Base Creative web design Constant source of support from advice on political

and press issues, to practical help with landlord survey, street leafleting, workshops

Helped to make the website a much richer resource and the project more ambitious and far-reaching


Outcomes so far: Other bureaux and orgs running

Crowdmap projects London Assembly DWP research Hackney Scrutiny Review on Housing

Benefit changes Local workshops

Please get in touch -

You can contact me at Hackney CAB on email: Catherine Dempsey - [email protected]

Technology

Using social policy to campaign for change 2