Information from CDAS Members Meeting, 22 May

• Main discussion

Robin Tennant and Sarah Welford of the Poverty Alliance each gave a presentation and took part in discussion on the role of community development in tackling poverty, in particular its relationship to the Scottish Government’s ‘Achieving Our Potential’ framework and the role of the Alliance’s Evidence-Participation-Change project. A note of the presentation and discussion is now available here.

The Scottish Government Regeneration section reported on progress with the Community Empowerment Action Plan. The framework of competences for better community engagement is being developed by the Linked Work & Training Trust, and groups have shown a good level of interest in participating as local demonstration projects. The Development Trusts Association Scotland is working on building community capacity for asset ownership and a leaning resource about Development Trusts for community organisations.

New statement of competences for Community Learning and Development

The Executive Committee of the CLD Standards Council for Scotland has finalised the new statement of competences for Community Learning and Development, which is now publicly available for use. Discussions about mapping these competences to the National Occupational Standards for Community Development and the ‘How Good is our CLD’ framework have begun.

Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland

The Scottish Government has launched a new policy and action plan for mental health improvement for 2009-2011: Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland. It lays out the Government’s plans to support:

• the promotion of good mental wellbeing
• reducing the prevalence of common mental health problems, suicide and self harm
• improving the quality of life those experiencing mental health problems or mental illness.

The action plan states:

• “Our approach is based on a social model of health which recognises that our mental state is shaped by our social, economic, physical, and cultural environment…
• The participation and engagement of individuals themselves in activities has a clear well being benefit
• The actions of individuals and communities are also central to this agenda”

The Third sector is specifically mentioned as making “a significant contribution to the mental health improvement agenda both nationally and locally. Its key roles are to:

• “Deliver services which directly or indirectly promote mental health improvement
• Innovate in the development of new service approaches and interventions
• Act as a catalyst in promoting active citizenship and social capital to develop community capacity
• Advocate change and improvement for service users and the general population”

Minister ‘keen to maintain momentum’ on empowerment

Local People Leading reports on its meeting with Alex Neil MSP, Minister for Housing and Communities. They discussed the Minister’s wish to maintain momentum on community empowerment, the danger of backward steps in some parts of the country in response to financial pressures, and other related topics.

Future Jobs Fund seeks community benefit

The Future Jobs Fund is a major new initiative which will operate across the UK, and is designed to create 15,000 jobs across Scotland between October 2009 and April 2011. The 18 month initiative is focused on young people aged 18 – 24 who have been on Job Seekers Allowance, but it will also support some long-term unemployed people who have barriers to employment or live in areas with high concentrations of unemployment.

A key element of the programme is that the jobs created should provide community benefit and in Scotland there is an expectation that over 1,000 green jobs will be created as well as jobs in social care, childcare, health, energy efficiency, sports and the arts.  Funding of around £95m will be available in Scotland and this will fund the costs of employing an individual for 6 months on at least a minimum wage.

SCVO have a Future Jobs Fund Team who can advise on how voluntary and community organisations might get involved: contact 0141 225 8017 or futurejobsfundscotland@scvo.org.uk .

Preparing for a Changing Climate

In April, the Scottish Government published a consultation ‘Preparing for a Changing Climate’. This is the second consultation to inform Scotland’s Climate Change Adaptation Framework. It builds on the responses to the first consultation and has also been informed by the Scottish Climate Change Bill which is now in Parliament. Views can be submitted by July 20 2009.
The consultation makes a positive but very general recognition of the role of the community and voluntary sector, which reads in its entirety:
“The Scottish Government recognises the pivotal role the Third sector has in achieving its aim of building Scotland’s resilience to the impacts of climate change. The Third sector is often best placed to connect with individuals that the public sector finds hardest to reach, working with the most vulnerable in our society – those who may struggle the most in the face of extreme weather events or changing climate. . The Third sector also provides a valuable public service in helping protect our natural environment and presenting opportunities where the private sector doesn’t operate. The Scottish Government will continue to work with the Third sector in pursuing its climate change adaptation objectives.”
Participatory Budgeting pilots

The recent Scottish Government / COSLA Antisocial Behaviour Framework proposed, as one of the specific national actions, the establishment, by autumn 2009, of a participatory budgeting pilot exercise across three Community Planning Partnership areas as part of the community empowerment agenda. Participatory budgeting should enable local community and neighbourhood groups to influence local action by helping to direct how small action funds are spent to develop solutions to local antisocial behaviour problems.

COSLA has now received a report on the overall approach, which reveals that 14 Councils/Community Planning Partnerships have formally notified COSLA to declare their interest in being part of the Participatory Budgeting. There will be an initial stakeholder information and awareness event to encourage the development of creative uses of Participatory Budgeting; and COSLA and the Scottish Government will establish an appropriate evaluation system for the pilot projects.

Scottish Government Programme For Third Sector Research

The Scottish Government‘s current programme for Third Sector research covers three themes:

• Alignment of research evidence to government strategy
• The localism agenda
• Sustainable growth of the third sector

A project on ‘The contribution of the third sector to the Government’s purpose and five strategic objectives’ has already been commissioned. Further projects will include:

• “The Opportunities and Challenges of the Concordat for the Third Sector”
• “Evaluating the success factors for establishing a thriving social enterprise in Scotland”
• “ The Opportunities and Challenges of the Changing Public Services Landscape for the Third Sector in Scotland: A Longitudinal Study”

Progress on Community Allowance
The campaign for a Community Allowance has passed another milestone. The proposal is to enable community organisations to pay local unemployed people to do part time or sessional work that strengthens their local community and for those people to be able to keep their benefits and keep what they earn on top of their benefits, up to a maximum of £86 a week. The CREATE Consortium’s proposal  to DWP’s Right to Bid scheme, for £2.2 million to run a pilot programme with 15 community anchor organisations across the UK, has now been selected to go through to the last stage of assessment. More information.

Communities And Renewable Energy

The Scottish Government has provided information on the advice and support available from the Communities And Renewable Energy Scheme, and also a Community Renewable Energy Toolkit which aims to encourage and help communities considering how they can lead their own renewable energy projects.

Development Trusts Manifesto

The Development Trusts Association (UK) has issued a manifesto pledging:

• to help every community set up an effective development trust
• to promote community ownership of land and buildings
• to grow a culture of community enterprise
• to build alliances with partners in all sectors
• to demonstrate community impact.

Social Capital & Community Resilience

A conference on this theme was held by the Assist Social Capital network in New Lanark on 4 June. According to a Herald report, the Scottish Government was accused of ignoring social capital. “It is disappointing that when social capital is seen around the world as such an important currency, the Government’s enterprising third sector plan doesn’t mention it once, and it isn’t mentioned in the community empowerment plan either”, said Colin Campbell, executive director of Assist.

ACPOS advances community development

The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), which represents the heads of the nation’s eight forces and their most senior colleagues, has been granted charitable status because of its work in “advancing citizenship and community development”. We look forward to a possible dialogue about what this means in practice.

Looking into community resilience
The National Community Forum (NCF) is a group of 25 individuals – both residents and professionals – from some of England’s most deprived communities, which was established as an Advisory non departmental public body in 2002. Members are selected through an open recruitment process. “It acts as a sounding board for Ministers and civil servants, providing them with a grass roots perspective on policies aimed at narrowing the gap between deprived areas and the rest of the country.”
This Forum is now commissioning research to “increase understanding of the factors that contribute to resilience and community wellbeing at a time of economic downturn and how this can be promoted at a local level.”
Campaign for community reinvestment

The Urban Forum in England, mostly made up of local community groups, has launched a campaign and a petition “calling on political parties, civil society groups, entrepreneurs, opinion formers and the financial services sector to embrace the concept of community reinvestment, and establish a new system of banking with a social purpose. A system that offers a return on the public investment made – people-centred finance”.

Gobbledygook

An adult learning plan produced by the Isle of Wight council has been labeled one of the worst official documents ever published in the UK. Dismissed by the Plain English Campaign as “baffling gobbledygook”, the document was meant to help adults learn how to speak and write in clear and intelligible ways. Yet it contains 16 acronyms and a variety of terms, including the word “moodle”

One sentence includes a description of the council’s Train to Gain programme, which “has been well received within the Isle of Wight council with recent pilot with leisure staff leading to the future expectation of this would be to have this project open to all departments of the council and have people directly referred through self-referral and the PDR cycle”. More.

Online resources:

Connecting Rural Scotland

A new network to help rural communities share ideas, experiences and information has been launched. The Scottish National Rural Network is supported by a website within which communities can share common problems, examples of good practice and development ideas. The website, the first of four to be set up in the UK will encourage links to other countries throughout the European Union.

New EU website on integration

The EU have launched a new website on integration, looking at the successful integration of third-country nationals legally residing in the Member States of the European Union. Open to all, it enables visitors to share good practices, to discover funding opportunities and to look for project partners, and to stay updated on the latest developments at EU, national and local level.

Youth Scotland e-bulletin

Youth Scotland, the network of youth clubs and groups across Scotland, is soon to be launching a brand new e-bulletin. To subscribe, visit the website and enter your details.
Publications:

Making the links : greenspace for a more successful and sustainable Scotland

This new greenspace scotland publication is a book in two parts:

• The first half (making the links) draws on international research and project examples from around Scotland to demonstrate how greenspace contributes across the Government’s five strategic objectives and national outcomes to create healthier, safer and stronger, wealthier and fairer, smarter and greener communities.
• The second part (making it happen) looks at the actions that are needed by a range of partners to make greenspace deliver these outcomes and benefits; this section signposts readers to a range of useful tools and resources, and highlights examples of good practice from across the country.

Positive Psychology

The ‘Have a word with yourself’ project sought to implement principles from Positive Psychology to increase subjective wellbeing in adults living in Wellhouse, Glasgow and was initiated by the local Housing Association. A report on the project finds that all measures of wellbeing improved significantly over time.

Flexible Learning and Support Packages for Young People

The Scottish Government has produced five ‘Case Studies of Flexible Learning and Support Packages for Young People who Require More Choices and More Chances’, which appear to demonstrate many links with community learning and development.

Citizenship Survey

The Department of Communities and Local Government has released headline findings from the Citizenship Survey of England, covering April-December 2008.  The findings are divided into three sections covering:

• empowered and active communities
• community cohesion
• prejudice and discrimination.

New Books

Two new books from the Policy Press may be of interest:

In “Searching for Community: Representation, power and action on an urban estate” Jeremy Brent “asks the vital question ‘what is community anyway?’. Is it an answer to social problems or an illusion to be dismissed?”

David Donnison, one of the elder statesmen of British and Scottish social policy, has published “Speaking to Power: Advocacy for health and social care” in which, based on the Scottish experience, he argues the need for the development of a new kind of advocacy, working alongside disadvantaged and disenfranchised citizens and service users, helping them find and express their voice more powerfully and more effectively

Community Leadership

The Urban Forum has published a new research report called ‘Leading Lights: Research into councillors and third sector representatives in community leadership’, which includes recommendations to strengthen relationships between the two groups to address the major differences in perception that exist.