Building Tenancy Skills win the Dick Fletcher Consumer Protection Award 2024
The Building Tenancy Skills team was honoured to receive the Dick Fletcher Consumer Protection Award on Friday 15 March, 2024. We were honoured to be nominated alongside Consumer Credit Legal Service, Financial Counsellors’ Association of WA and Midland Information Debt and Legal Service, such important services doing incredible work in a difficult housing and financial environment. The Award gives a greater profile to the issues impacting tenants with disabilities, in particular, the need for tenancy communications to be in plain, everyday language and accessible formats. We believe it is the right of every tenant to receive information in a format that allows them to really understand their rights and responsibilities. One of the best ways to achieve this is to bring together sector organisations and people with lived experience of using services and experiencing housing insecurity as tenants. This combination of knowledge, shared through a co-design process, has been an essential component to our work. Our thanks to all of the organisations and individuals who worked with the Building Tenancy Skills Project over the past years.
The team left to right: Kirsten, Wendy, Louise, Donna, Aimee and Kelly
The Renting With Confidence Workshop emerged as a vital means of sharing information to tenants with disability. We have delivered the Workshop in every region of the state, gathering feedback and suggestions from tenants in diverse situations. The workshop co-facilitators, Wendy Wright, Louise Grant, Kirsten Whent and Kelly Campbell, are all people with experience of disability and renting, and their empathy and lived experience has been key to our success in meeting tenants and sharing information with them that will support them to self advocate or to reach out for formal supports if needed.
Our thanks to the Minister, Sue Ellery, to the Commissioner for Consumer Protection, Trish Blake, and to the members of the judging panel, for recognising the importance of lived experience voices in improving outcomes for tenants.