The Place of Community

At the end of day 2 we talked about where next. CDSE (Community Development South East) offered two more days training, and council offers proposed to match this. Ideas for what would be useful to do with those potential days included:

> agree process for CD service review

> look at role of elected members in CD, and their greater role in LSPs they have created

> how to sustain ideas for the future. Great to have ideas, communities remain throughout though

> tools and practical ideas, more of, how to use them and reflect on usage

> Adur – aspirations…

> Hear from someone who has both engaged in decision-making and has got involved (National Empowerment Project case studies?)

> community sector and CD (as opposed to ‘voluntary and community sector’, which is often just voluntary sector)

> meeting to influence LSP, outside the formal LSP process

Making the case for a new partnership!

We asked each group to prepare a 5 minutes presentation to the rest of us as if we were the community strategy sub group of both Local Strategic Partnerships ( so across Adur and Worthing and a mix of people present)

On key points about the partnership you plan to establish.

• aims
• who’s involved
• key issues to be addresses
• how to organise it
• summary of range of techniques that might be used
• resources needed (from LSP)

We used a carousel exercise to take turns reading and receiving principles of community engagement. From this we wrote up in our own words Top Tips we wanted to promote or share.

The wall of Top Tips!

• Feedback is key to continued engagement activity
• Listen to what people are actually saying, don’t hear just what you expect to
• Be honest about what can and cannot be achieved or influenced
• Clear terms of engagement and clear routes for reporting and agreeing further action
• Don’t engage with anyone – unless there’s a real point to it and that you’re gonna blinkin’ well act on it!
• Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
• Ensure those involved know how their input will affect the service, project or intiative and feedback to them once this has happened
• Evaluation and monitoring procedures should be built in at the outset to measure whether the outcomes of engagement have impacted on policy and strategy development and that they have both been effective and have met community expectations with available resources
• Communication must be understood by ALL to be effective. This can be written or spoken word
• Communication is effective when it’s understood by all – plain English
• Allowing enough time and information towards constructive participation and reaching agreed decision making
• Be open and honest about what can and cannot be achieved or influenced
• Be honest about what can and cannot be achieved and why
• Enjoy it!
• Community Development is something you do with people not to them. The results of the community engagement process should be shared with participants, partner organisations and general public and key stakeholders
• Listen!
• Take active steps to involve communities as widely as possible and ensure no sector or group dominates
• Keep it simple, be authentic and only raise realistic time defined expectations

James Appleton gave us a useful overview of what is happening in terms of Adur and Worthing joint council working.

The two councils

He started from the position that both councils are facing dire financial positions, so their working together is motivated by savings and cost efficiency. They are ‘working together, but separate’, which equals two sets of politicians.

Last April there was  a joint Chief Executive, with a number of heards of services being joined together – going from 17 separate heads to 10. This has led to trimming management across both councils.

Both councils are working to the same legislative obligations, but are effectively very different in how they do this – members’ expectations are different and the delivery is different.

Adur – has a community well being team. Community Safety is now part of another team.

Worthing – is less well connected in terms of community engagement strategies.

Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs)

At the same time as the councils have been working more closely together, there has been a review of the LSPs and how they can work more effectively. The question was asked ‘Is there any scope to join the 2 LSPs?’ and a series of workshops were held to look at this. For example, a Sustainable Community Strategy is a legal requirement of both councils, why not do a joint on?

Commonalities and concerns

Commonalities between the two areas are deprivation, and LSP partners are involved across both areas, so there are time and resource issues for partners being asked to attend two LSPs.

Concerns of the public are are whether it is a ‘merger’, and the potential for loss of distinctiveness and partners.

Even with a Worthing and Adur joint strategy you would still need to take account of neighbourhood-level differences.

As Local Authorities we need to ask how we engage with voluntary sectors to bring about change. And how do the local authorities deal with community development. Adur has CD workers employed, not the case in Worthing. And then there are the immediate pressing concerns of the economy to consider.

Notes from discussion that followed

It is a process – the way in which working together is is done is more important than the outcomes

There is no one way of doing things

Need to get away from Adur and Worthing thinking and see as a new area in its own right

It’s encouraging that there’s not just a top down approach, need to recognise what already exists

From a Primary Care Trust point of view, need a strategic level to hear about things we wouldn’t otherwise hear about, so we can support

Need to build trust to design a good process

The scenarios posed to the group to choose to work on were:

Tackling health inequalities in an area – where the main problems have been identified as diet (linked to poverty and lack of access of quality food as well as choices about amounts and type of food eaten) and lack of exercise.

Examining and responding to the impact of the recession on a poor community – at a time when there are reduced resources within the voluntary sector from the last recession – less local advice centres, not much local knowledge of recession

Responding to the divides within communities based on age – complaints about anti social behaviour of young people, lack of employment opps for young people; increasing older population with variety of needs;

Creating sustainable communities which look to the future and plan to cope with changes in resources such as fuel, water, energy; (ideas behind transition towns and villages; community food projects etc)

Responding to current and predicted emergencies – dealing with flooding caused by rainfall , and the expected the coastal erosion and issues of managed retreat or protection. – large voluntary organisations are already involved in some emergency planning bodies – need to involve communities more as they bear the brunt of dealing with people on a day to day basis in emergencies, and in longer term planning

Responding to the increase in intolerance between communities based on identity – the increase in the activities of the far right, of extremists groups, attacks on asylum seekers and refugees, fall out of Israeli invasion of Gaza etc

You have 1 hour before lunch to work through these questions.

In the afternoon you will have 15 minutes to prepare a short presentation of your work to everyone else, of a few minutes.

Working through the case study questions

Assume you are planning to set up a new partnership to tackle the issues you are considering in your scenario.

1. Who should be involved in this new partnership?

   1. Which sectors would you want involved – public, private, voluntary, community – and would they be interested?

   2. Which agencies would you want involved, and would they be interested?

   3. How would you ensure that all of the different communities – of place, identity and interests – had the opportunity to get involved?

1. What is the aim of the partnership?

   How would you get agreement on its vision/goals?

   What level of participation is appropriate to this partnership work?

   Refer to ladders/continuum of participation and handout on techniques

1. What issues have to be addressed for the partnership to be effective?

   See handouts on power in groups; and handouts 7 and 9

1. How would decisions be made?

   How would roles and responsibilities be sorted out?

1. What tensions might arise and what can be done to preempt them? For example, a lack of skills within the organisations that are coming together in the partnership.

1. What resources would you need to restart and sustain the partnership?

We used a warm up exercise to get everybody moving around, and finding out about the skills in the room – partly relating to skills needed for partnership working.

We talked about ways the People Bingo sheet could be used and adapted:

• to get to know people’s names
• to find out about particular skills or experiences
• could add in pictures as well as words

We outlined the planned work for Day 2, explaining how we had responded to the snake evaluation and when we had asked at the end of Day 1 what people wanted for Day 2. We explained this as a model of feedback and response that is so important in community engagement work.

The outline for Day 2:

People Bingo

Input from James Appleton about Adur and Worthing joint working

Detailed Case Study work on scenarios for joint working across districts, focusing on techniques to use

Carousel on principles of community engagement and sharing top tips

Input on Local Strategic Partnerships

Case study presentations and feedback.

Key not listener feedback on the day

Next steps and action planning

We started Day 2 at Worthing Leisure Centre with a memory test/recap of what we worked on during Day 2