Gabriel Chanan of the Community Development Foundation gave a presentation on “The Community Development Challenge – How, Why and Did it Work?” based on his experience on secondment to the community empowerment division of the Department of Communities and Local Government in Whitehall.

A discussion followed on the possible implications for Scotland, and the desirability of an integrated agenda that could bring together different stands of government policy and help people involved in community development to be clearer about their role was noted. A summary of the presentation and discussion is attached to this email.

It was agreed to convene a group to discuss how to take this forward in practice, including Scottish Government and COSLA representatives.

SCDC opts for independent status

The Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) has until now been a partnership between the University of Glasgow and the Community Development Foundation (CDF). CDF is a non-departmental public body which was formerly funded by the Home Office but has more recently been funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government, whose responsibilities are almost entirely for England. Partly for this reason, plans are now under way to lead to the establishment of SCDC as an independent organisation from April 2009.

SCDC will become a charitable trust, and will continue its task of promoting best practice in community development.  While the ‘new’ SCDC will operate independently from CDF, CDF’s Trustees are supporting the move and there is a strong commitment to continued sharing of ideas.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise

The role of Highlands and Islands Enterprise is changing in various ways following a review by the government, and in line with the Government Economic Strategy. In respect of support to communities and to the third sector, the implications are that in future HIE’s work will in almost all cases focus on the development of the social enterprise sector, and in particular on identifying and supporting social enterprises with significant growth potential, rather than on more general community development work.

For further information contact Chris Higgins, chris.higgins@hient.co.uk. There will be an opportunity to discuss this and related Scottish-wide issues at the next Members’ Meeting.

Community engagement and anti-social behaviour

Evaluation of National Standards

The Scottish Government has published an evaluation of the impact of the National Standards for Community Engagement. The report also includes ‘profiles of practice’ in applying the Standards from different areas of Scotland.

The evaluation found that the Standards are helping to bring about a culture change in the way communities are involved in improving public services. They have helped to develop a shared understanding of what community engagement is and there is also emerging evidence that positive change in the way public services are delivered can be attributed to improved community engagement.

However it also found that some practitioners have a misplaced confidence in the quality of their community engagement practice which the National Standards have not been effective in challenging. More help was needed to allow partners to better plan and co-ordinate community engagement activity. The “Visioning Outcomes in Community Engagement” (VOiCE) tool has been developed to respond to this finding.

NICE guidelines on community engagement

In addition to its perhaps better known guidance on medicines and treatments, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England produces guidance on public health topics. In Scotland, such Guidance has no formal status but attracts interest and provides a useful source of reviewed evidence.

NICE Public Health Guidance 9 entitled ‘Community engagement to improve health’ was published in February 2008. A Health Scotland Commentary on this Guidance, produced in collaboration with a specialist Reference Group, is now available. It includes the evidence statements from the original. A summary is also available. They are intended to help organisations, professionals and others make use of the NICE Guidance in a Scottish context.

Single Outcome Agreements – where to find them

Single Outcome Agreements for 2008/09 from all the local authority areas in Scotland can now been read here on the Improvement Service’s site.

Outcome-focused practice in Community Learning and Development

In June, Learning Connections held a seminar on outcome-focused practice in CLD aimed at presenting progress in applying ‘Delivering Change:  Understanding the Outcomes of CLD’. A report of that seminar (which contains links to the presentations given) is available here. (It also contains some information on the new HMIE inspection regime for Community Learning and Development).
Learning Connections’ next steps will be to identify any gaps in their evidence base and develop plans to take forward work on outcome-focussed practice. They will be producing a supplement to ‘Delivering Change’ to reflect the government’s new outcomes-based approach to service delivery, and to demonstrate how CLD outcomes can contribute to the government’s national outcomes, through a National Performance Framework.

They will also be discussing with the Improvement Service the need to assist the sector to look at how CLD’s contribution to local outcomes (and the indicators that underpin them) is developed and recognised, especially in the context of Single Outcome Agreements. 

Community Empowerment White Paper

The Community Empowerment White Paper for England “Communities in control: real people, real power” has been published. It sets out the government’s plans “to generate vibrant local democracy in every part of the country, and to give real control over local decisions and services to a wider pool of active citizens” and “to shift power, influence and responsibility away from existing centres of power into the hands of communities and individual citizens”. It touches on a wide range of issues related to community empowerment, engagement with public services, social enterprise and local democracy. Key points include:

• Introduction of a new ‘duty to promote democracy’ for councils
• Extension of the existing ‘duty to involve’ to other public authorities
• Encourage every local authority to use some form of participatory budgeting by 2012.
• A £7.5m ‘Empowerment Fund’ to support national organisations that ‘help local communities turn key proposals into practical action on the ground’.
• “Community development workers can help citizens to shape their own areas. We are keen to encourage other frontline workers to do community building.”
• A new £70m ‘Communitybuilders’ fund to help ‘independent multipurpose community led organisations’ to become more sustainable, because they “can also play a vital role in empowering local people”.
• A new Asset Transfer Unit to provide information, research and good practice on the transfer of assets to communities.
• A new Social Enterprise Unit to champion the role of social enterprise models in areas such as housing, health and regeneration.

Overcoming barriers to empowerment?

The Empowerment White Paper lists twelve ‘barriers to participation’:

• Lack of interest or understanding about local governance
• Negative perceptions and lack of trust in public institutions
• Lack of awareness of how to get involved and inaccessible recruitment procedures
• Lack of time to participate
• Lack of confidence and perceived lack of skills
• Stereotyping those who do participate
• Scepticism about the difference participation will make
• Earlier experience of poorly executed participation
• Financial costs of participation
• Fear of repercussions
• Institutions’ resistance to community participation
• Socio-economic status and educational status.

The Community Development Exchange (CDX) is asking c.d. workers for their example of something that they have done to help overcome one of these barriers. They will use them to raise the profile of community development work and lobby for additional resources.

If you would like to contribute from a Scottish perspective or keep in touch with the results, contact Beth Longstaff, 0114 241 2760,  beth@cdx.org.uk .

Scottish Household Survey evidence on communities

The report of the 2007 Scottish Household Survey contains new evidence on communities. “Sense of community/friendly people” is the aspect of people’s neighbourhood that they are most likely to ‘particularly like’, though only 55% do so in the 15% most deprived areas, as compared to 66% in the rest of Scotland. In those deprived areas 43% particularly disliked the dubiously grouped together category of “No sense of community/Problem residents/substance abuse”, as opposed to only 20% in the rest of Scotland.

37% said that they “would like to be more involved in the decisions my council makes that affect my local area”, and only 20 or 21% felt that “I can influence decisions affecting my local area” or that “My council is good at listening to local people’s views before it takes decisions” (considerably fewer than rated the services themselves as of good quality). These proportions did not vary very greatly between different types of area, though the proportion who would ‘like to be involved’ rises consistently across the range from the most to the least deprived areas.

Local People Leading

The Community Empowerment section in the Scottish Government have awarded Local People Leading a one off grant to help them to establish a much more sustainable presence and step up the level of their activities.

National Coalition for Independent Action

This Coalition is a new alliance of organisations and individuals who believe there is a crisis in the Voluntary and Community Sector’s ability to act independently from Government and other powerful interests, and to be part of the checks they need within our democracy.

Placebook Scotland

PlaceBook Scotland is a web-based project for Scotland’s people to share their impressions about the places where they were raised, live, or go to school or work. You are invited to express these views through poetry, prose, pictures, photos, video, sculpture, music or song. You will be able to post these on the PlaceBook Scotland website and to search the site to see what others have sent in. Individuals or groups can contribute. The project is organised by the Scottish Landscape Forum. It commences in September 2008 and you can register your interest now at www.PlaceBookScotland.com .

PUBLICATIONS

Connect and Include

CDF’s scoping study on the contribution community development approaches can make to people dealing with mental health issues, ‘Connect and Include’, is now available.

CLD Activity Survey 2007

The results of the Results of the Community Learning and Development Activity Survey undertaken during November 2007 have been published by the Scottish Government. During the survey week the 32 local authorities report that, across Scotland:

• 62,855 adult learning opportunities were accessed;
• 90,317 youth work opportunities were accessed; and
• 3699 community groups were supported.

Some data on non-local authority activity is also provided.

Following up on the Community Development Challenge

As described in the attached note of Gabriel Chanan’s presentation to CDAS members, CDF has produced a series of books examining in more detail the issues raised in ‘The Community Development Challenge’. These are:
Community Development Challenge: Democracy

Community Development Challenge: Management

Community Development Challenge: Strategies

Community Development Challenge: Evaluation

CDF on Faith Communities

CDF has published two new books on the role of ‘faith projects’ in communities. Faith Communities Pulling Together presents accounts of successful faith projects that worked to enhance community life. Faith Groups and Government analyses the experiences of faith based organisations in building relationships with local and regional government.

LEAP Manual

A new edition of the popular LEAP Manual is now available.

Early Years Self-Evaluation Collaborative

Community Food and Health (Scotland) has published the first of three reports about community food initiatives. This report illustrates the impact of their activity for children under 5. Interestingly the work has been carried out in collaboration with Evaluation Support Scotland and can also be used to provide useful illustrations of evaluation practice for community projects.

Third Sector Skills Research 2008

The UK Workforce Hub and NCVO have published a new report which outlines further evidence and recommendations on skills gaps in the voluntary sector, based on the views of third sector front-line employers in England
Key findings include:

• Management skills gaps have the greatest impact on the work of third sector organisations.
• Barriers to skills development are higher for smaller organisations. More than any other type of organisation, they require specific solutions adapted to their needs, for example, pooling resources and consortia purchasing of training.
• ‘Soft skills’ such as behavioural or attitudinal competencies need to be integrated into an individual’s training and development.