Not sure whether to blog about the events of the past few days. On the one hand, I don’t want this blog be the place where I (and you) debate the rights and wrongs of industrial relations at Shelter. On the other, it would be entirely disingenuous completely to ignore the subject and whitter away about something else.

What was interesting about the last 72 hours is the experience of being under fire rather than doing the firing. Going into the Today Programme studio to respond to criticism rather than dish it out was a new experience. Two weeks before, I had been there challenging Housing Minister Caroline Flint about her proposals on linking social housing to work. Now I was defending myself against similar accusations of hard-hearted behaviour from Ken Loach.

And it certainly gave me something to think about. My e-mail in-box has been busier than usual recently, with messages of criticism, concern or – gratifyingly often – support. Most of the brickbats are relatively easily dismissed: I don’t find the experience of having my morality questioned by the Wormwood Scrubs branch of the Prison Officers Association that upsetting. There is little in the usual suspects saying the usual things in the usual way which makes one stop and think.

But one or two e-mails have given me pause. Those were not the ones which just expressed outright opposition to what we are doing or merely took moral stances. The ones which hit home were those which understood the nature of the problem and suggested other approaches to responding to it. The fact that the suggestions themselves were not really workable was not the point. What mattered was that there was a possible solution on the table.

Which is a lesson for me. It is easy – and fun – to oppose. Moral outrage is Shelter’s stock-in-trade. Problem identification is also a simple game. But it is not enough for us to say that something must be done. We must also say what that something is.

An event with a Housing Association to launch a new guide to enable greater participation of service users in decisions about the services they are offered.  The usual serious speeches (with mine definitely falling into the worthy-but-dull category) and pious intentions.  And then all off for coffee and cakes.
 
Which is not to criticise the event or the Housing Association who organised it; certainly the scheme that they had been running seemed excellent.  But I am always a tad nervous about how deep the commitment to user involvement and empowerment actually goes: it is all too easy to pay lip service to the idea but not go too far beyond that.
 
After the do, I got chatting to one of the Housing Association residents who had been part of the project.  A former heroin addict, he was now looking for a job as a drugs counsellor, looking to move from being a user of services to being a provider of them.  And that is both a vital transition and one which organisations find incredibly difficult to enable.
 
I’ve seen the good and the less good.  In RAPt, where I used to work, we developed a training and placement programme to help former addicts and prisoners become full employees.  At one point, the manager of our project in Pentonville worked out of the very cell he had occupied as a prisoner.  But that was an organisation which had a very intensive relationship with its service users.  In Shelter, because we deal principally in giving advice and information, our contact is much more fleeting, with many of our service users having single conversations with us over the phone or through the web, never to be heard of again.  Growing those on to be the employees of the future is much more of a challenge.
 
But even here, we can do something.  Our tenancy sustainment projects allow the possibility of service users graduating to volunteer status and then in some cases to full employment.  The prisoner we used as volunteer housing adviser in East Sutton Park then came to work for us after her release.  Our shops volunteers, often people with few skills when the come to us, can become paid managers or deputy managers.
 
This is work in progress and we a long way to go.  But I can think of little more empowering way of relating to your service uses than offering them the chance to become service providers.

Blogging is still a new thing for me and I am still not sure about how far it is possible to meld candour with the fact that, as someone with a formal position in Shelter, I have to be a little careful that I don’t go too far and embarrass the organisation.  Over the past few months, there have been a couple of occasions when stuff I’ve written here has got me into trouble with people inside and outside the organisation.
 
The irony of that position was very much brought home to me the other day when I was privileged (and I use the term advisedly – it was a privilege) enough to share a platform at the Guardian Public Services conference with Tom Reynolds, an ambulance man whose blog, Random Acts of Reality, is one of the best examples out there.  One of the questions he was asked was about how difficult it was for him as a relatively junior member of his organisation’s hierarchy to discuss openly and honestly the issues he was facing.
 
His reply was clear.  Far from his bosses disliking his blog, they welcomed it.  They were keen to see the problems he was grappling with discussed, happy even to have him exposing some of the poorer areas of practice.  Indeed, at times his comments had been instrumental in getting things changed at work.  Above all, the stories he told of the people he encountered, the patients he helped, the misery he saw – all of these helped to explain why the service his organisation offered was so important.
 
Me – I can’t claim the same.  Removed as I am for the most part from the day to day realities of homelessness (although as I have said before I try to get to see as many clients as I can), I cannot tell the stories which show how much our services are needed or why our campaigns are so important.  Over the next year or so, we will be looking to introduce more voices to our website, including – and especially – voices from those who are facing homelessness.  Until then, you will have to make do only with the random musings from someone at the top, rather than at the bottom, of Shelter’s hierarchy.
 
 

Blimey – what a week.  Nothing like the arrival of a new Minister to shake things up a bit.  Fresh ideas and fresh directions are not necessarily bad things.  But, bluntly, I could have done without Caroline Flint and Shelter immediately finding ourselves on the opposite sides of the row that kicked off over social housing and worklessness.
 
Not that it was entirely unexpected of course.  Ever since the publication of the Hills report into social housing a year or so ago, the idea of ending security of tenure in the social rented sector had been floating around in one form or another.  When it eventually reached the ears of the Mirror in the summer, the resulting front page story elicited condemnation from us and a quick denial from then Minister Ruth Kelly.   But any impression I may have had that the idea was dead and buried was quickly squashed at the Labour Party Conference, where three MPs mentioned it privately in quick succession one Monday afternoon.
 
So it was not a total shock that Caroline Flint, fresh from a stint as Employment Minister, should decide to run with the idea that tenancy should be tied to seeking work.  What was difficult was the timing.  As I have written before, successful campaigning demands a judicious mix of stick and carrot, insider and outsider, criticism and encouragement.  Too much Government’s friend, your influence is negligible; too much its enemy, your influence is non-existent.  It is a delicate balance.
 
And getting it right takes time.  What you certainly don’t want is to get into a fixed, and very public, fight within days of meeting each other.  And, while the courtesies were observed by both of us, in our media comments and on the platform at the Fabians, there is no doubt but that the disagreement was real.  There is no harm in showing that we have teeth and are willing to bite.  But it will also be important over coming weeks to remind her that there is a lot of what the Government is trying to achieve that we are happy to support.

Apologies.  Not blogged for a while.  And in answer to the enquiry from my loyal reader (yes – there is one.  Reader, that is  - I cannot vouch for the loyalty aspect), I am still alive.
 
Why the radio silence?  Simple – no time even to dash off 300 words.  It has been a hectic period, even by the standards of the past few months.  Political change.  Policy change.  Organisational change.  And all the grinding work of planning and budgeting which you always get at this time of year.
 
But finally a few minutes without anything in the diary to fill them.  Admittedly not leisure exactly – in truth, I am on a train to Newcastle to see our new volunteering project we have set up in partnership with Northumbria University law school, take in a quick visit to our local housing aid centre, and then see friends I have not seen for a while.  And I am not exactly at my best: last night’s hugely successful premiere of our new interactive film, followed by the inevitable post-premiere celebration, did not combine well with a 6am dash for the train north.
 
Nevertheless, it is nice to have a few minutes to think.  And it is especially nice to get out of London.  One of the things I am most conscious of is how much of my time is spent crossing and recrossing a tiny patch of ground in central London, dotting between Kings Cross, where I live, Old Street, where I work, and the meetings rooms, studios and offices in Westminster, Whitehall and the City which so many of the people I need to get to inhabit.  The occasional trip to a project (like the fantastic Shelter children’s education project in Stratford which I saw on Monday) or flight out to Edinburgh is not enough to redress my inevitable metropolitan bias.
 
And housing is an issue which looks very different in very different places.  A speech like the one I made last night about homeless children would simply not have the same resonance in Whitehaven as it did in Whitechapel.  In the east end, the issue is the huge length of time homeless children will spend in temporary accommodation.  In the north east, despite the booming marked in places like Jesmond, where I will be spending the next couple of nights, housing market decline is still very real. 
 
So a weekend out of my comfort zone will do nicely.  And, when I return, I promise I will try to find a few more minutes to blog.