Poverty Truth Commissions (PTCs) seek to discover the answer to the question: ‘what if people who struggled against poverty were involved in making decisions about tackling poverty?’ PTCs are increasingly well-established mechanisms for exploring experience of poverty across the UK – since 2009 they have sought place-based solutions in a deeply participatory and relational way. The Commission held in Ilfracombe from 2024-25 was the first in Devon.
The commissioners for each Commission comprise two groups of people: around half of the commissioners are people with a lived experience of the struggle against poverty (‘community commissioners’), the other half are local leaders and decision-makers (‘civic commissioners’). Community commissioners met together in Ilfracombe between April and September 2024 to share stories and build relationships, and to develop an expanded understanding of poverty based on an emerging collective voice. They were then joined by an equivalent number of civic commissioners. Together they all met 21 times over 11 months. This core part of the Commission involved an initial period of relationship building and deep listening, focused on civic commissioners developing a more precise understanding of experiences of poverty and its implications, and everyone identifying some specific areas to focus on. After this, commissioners organised themselves into working groups around these thematic areas, developing ideas and action, and working together on embedding change into organisations.
Community Foundations have been involved in Poverty Truth Commissions in various ways across the country, either as sponsors or hosts, or as participants in the Commission itself. In Devon, I was part of a small learning team, with colleagues from the University of Exeter, established as an adjunct to the Commission process and funded by the NHS, Devon County Council and the University of Exeter. We aimed to provide an ongoing opportunity for participants to reflect on their personal response to the process and to draw on this to describe some more general insight into the necessary conditions for change of this relational kind. We hope that this might be useful for others planning Poverty Truth Commissions but also for the wider Devon context: although not everyone will conduct a Poverty Truth Commission, we are keen to ensure the learning from this process can be transferable to other contexts where people want to learn to work together differently for long-term change.
Our approach saw an experienced qualitative researcher build strong relationships with community and civic commissioners, as well as with the facilitator team. She participated in most of the Commission gatherings, and many of the planning sessions and steering group meetings, running real-time reflection sessions within these contexts, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with participants at the beginning of the process and towards the end. As far as we are aware, having a researcher closely embedded in this way with a Poverty Truth Commission has not happened before. We also convened a wider learning group of people outside the Commission in Devon, interested in understanding its potential to support new ways of working elsewhere.
What did we learn about how change happens?
We have developed a theory of change based on observation of this process in Ilfracombe. This is an approach beginning with lived experience and based on building relationships, which in turn humanises systems. We observed how everyone was being heard, moving through individual stories and experiences to a collective understanding of poverty and its impact on people’s lives, alongside an exploration of how services may or may not respond appropriately to these experiences. Careful facilitation and a measured timeframe which focused on centring less-heard voices works to unravel preconceptions and enables people to accept the challenges in a context of hopefulness.
‘I can speak up as I won’t be belittled or ignored’ community commissioner
‘I’ve got a new lens to see through and I’m grateful’ civic commissioner
This can enable a transformative space which disrupts habitual ways of thinking and acting, where new things can happen. We saw how this space provided the potential for:
These conditions can form the mechanisms for sustained change.
The challenge, now that the (relatively short) formal Poverty Truth Commission process has ended, is to find ways to embed a person-centred approach to addressing challenges around housing, education and health provision into organisations and partnerships longer-term. All this is going on within a context of significant turbulence in the public sector with ICB restructuring and local government reorganisation on the horizon. And there’s also a challenge with the scale of this work. Ilfracombe is the smallest place to have had a Poverty Truth Commission, which means a close focus on the specific needs of the town but also raises questions about its influence on decision-making at the district, county or ICB-level.
The learning team is continuing to think, write and publish about what the research revealed, and the questions it raised – there’s a lot to explore. And more widely, the relevance of this work to urgent local questions presents itself almost daily to me. More personally, the opportunity to work closely with hugely wise, skilled and experienced colleagues, to be challenged and stretched by our conversations along the way, and to be a part of expanding the reach of this ambitious approach to re-centring people and relationships in our communities, was not to be missed.
Read more about the Poverty Truth movement nationally here: Poverty Truth Network | Poverty Truth Network and in Ilfracombe here: click here for PTC Ilfracombe. If you are interested in learning more about the learning work in Ilfracombe, please contact Nicola: nfrost@devoncf.com
