Brighton and Hove Common Ambition aims to improve support systems in Brighton and Hove through co-production and advocating for lived experience voice to be central to service and system change.
Justlife is proud to be a partner of this unique project that brings together people with lived experience of homelessness or drugs and alcohol harms, frontline providers, and commissioners, with the aim of improving health services and outcomes for people experiencing multiple compound needs in Brighton and Hove.
Central to the project is co-production, which operates on the premise that those who use a service are best placed to offer insights as to how it could be improved. This goes against the usual hierarchical nature of large-scale projects, and blurs the boundaries between delivering and receiving a service. For Common Ambition, safety, trauma-informed working, accessibility, balancing power dynamics and enabling equal voice are all key components to co-production.
Common Ambition was supported by The Health Foundation from March 2021 - May 2024 to focus on homelessness and health. At the heart of this work was the Steering Group made up of people with lived experience of homelessness, as well as staff members from Arch Healthcare, Justlife and the University of Brighton. During this time the key outputs of the project were as follows:
The group and project is something I really enjoy. It's a chance to change things. I like doing things together as a group to make change. Sometimes I’ve been pushed into things that I haven’t enjoyed but this is something I have chosen to do and it feels like we are on the right track! I’m taking the lead in small groups and coming forward to do things which I didn’t before. I’m loving it!
Steering Group Member
From June 2024 onwards, Common Ambition has continued to grow. There are now two programmes of work.
The homelessness and health work continues, with support from the Health Foundation, Brighton and Hove City Council Housing Department, Changing Futures, Arch and Justlife. This work includes continuing to work on medical student training and the homeless healthcare hub.
The second programme, supported by Brighton and Hove City Council Public Health Department, is the development of a lived experience programme of work for the city’s Combatting Drugs Partnership. This has seen Common Ambition’s approach to co-production applied to working alongside people who have experienced drugs and alcohol harms to identify the challenges and work with the partnership to co-produce service and system improvements.
These are all available to view on the co-produced Common Ambition website.
