Barry-Cluster-Community-Involvement-Plan

Section 5 – Community Involvement Plan

Barry Cluster Community Involvement Plan

“Community Involvement is an essential feature of the Communities First Programme. Each Cluster has flexibility to develop the structures that suit the area. Each Cluster also has a Community Involvement Plan which shows how local people and community organisations will be central in planning and delivering work with other key partners working with them supporting all aspects of the programme.”

Welsh Government, March 2014

Community Involvement Plan Purpose and Definitions

In conjunction with the detailed projects described in-depth in the Delivery Plan, the Barry Cluster Community Involvement Plan (CIP) will directly address the Cluster programme’s anti-poverty agenda and aim to increase levels of involvement with those most disadvantaged and currently disengaged from mainstream services.This plan will demonstrate how we propose to increase current levels of involvement, particularly amongst the most disadvantaged and with our target groups.

The plan is linked to other relevant policies and strategies such as the Vale of Glamorgan’s Consultation Policy and the Vale’s Community Strategy as we believe the CIP needs to fit into the overarching strategy of the local authority as the LDB as well as the LSB to ensure consistency and credibility.

The CIP also acknowledges the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s ‘Strategic Equality Plan and the Welsh Government’s Communities First guidance on Equalities, Diversity and Human Rights.

The aim of the CIP is to ensure that Cluster residents are not only aware of the programme but are involved both in the future development and delivery of the projects. This task cannot be achieved by the Communities First team alone and we acknowledge that high levels of community involvement can only be achieved in partnership with other stakeholders.

We will build on the consultation and engagement work already in place to ensure our present and future partnership work delivers programmes with representation from the community, statutory, voluntary and business sectors. As an example of this, our Partnership Board reflects this objective.

We recognise the National Principles for Public Engagement in Wales and the National Children and Young people’s Participation Standards for Wales as guiding values for the work undertaken in the Cluster, and have used the following ‘Participation Cymru’ definitions throughout this plan:

Consultation is a “formal process by which policy makers and service providers ask for the views of interested groups and individuals”

Engagement is “an active and participative process by which people can influence and shape policy and services that includes a wide range of different methods and techniques”

Participation involves “people being actively involved with policy makers and service planners from an early stage of policy and service planning and review”

Community Involvement can therefore be found in “activities that increase people's knowledge of the community and allow them to give back to the community, while experiencing a sense of connection to it.”

Community Involvement in the Plan

This plan builds on the 2012 CIP which was created in conjunction with service-users, residents and stakeholders and our existing community involvement work which has continued to develop since then.

A draft version of the 2014 CIP has also been presented to our current Partnership Board.

One key issue we’ve learnt from the work we’ve undertaken directly with service-users is that they told us they were often bewildered at the profusion of different advice and guidance that was not always presented to them in a way they could understand i.e. in ‘plain English’. As a result of listening to these concerns we responded by creating the ‘Info Hub’ project.

Once the CIP is approved it will also be made available on our website and circulated to key partners and stakeholders for further comment and updating. We believe this process is a continuous and should progressively feed into our work in shaping services to most effectively meet the needs of our community.

Barry Cluster CIP and Community Involvement

Barry Cluster was formed from two previous Communities First Partnerships in Castleland and Gibbonsdown & Court with a few more LSOA’s added to the programme (for a more detailed history, see the ‘Story behind the baseline’ in the Delivery plan).

Most of the geographic area covered by the Cluster is represented on our Partnership Board by residents or stakeholders who operate throughout the Cluster. The area in Barry covered by the programme is a relatively small geographic area with good links between communities, particularly in respect of transport and access to services. Also, there are a number of accessible community buildings within the Cluster area and the team is based in a building central to the Cluster area, sharing a building with a partner agency, the Vale CVS.

As well as the Partnership Board, we host anumber of service-user focus groups for the purpose of listening to their views on our service provision, giving them a voice in the development and shaping of our services.

Amongst other issues, we ask them if we are providing the correct services for their needs in the right locations. If we can, we then respond to the issues raised by adapting our services accordingly. An example of this in action occurred when service-users told us they were unable to access our job search support due to either a lack of essential skills or lack of access to digital media, sometimes both. We then set up essential skills groups and digital inclusion sessions with partners such as the Vale’s Community and Adult Education Team to meet that need.

Target Audience

A great deal of work was undertaken to produce the ‘story behind the baseline’ and the programme projects (for more detail, please see the individual Project Descriptions embedded in our Delivery plan). To ensure we were targeting the right audience, we consulted widely with partners and stakeholders already working in the areas covered by the three themes. We did this in order to ensure we would not duplicate our work with others and to provide a ‘niche’ element to add value to the work already undertaken. This needs-assessment work has been used to underpin our Cluster plan and projects in order to effectively focus our delivery activities in the most efficient way for the target population.

The Barry Communities First Cluster area, similar to all areas that suffer deprivation, suffers from a broad network of inter-related issues such as mental illness, poverty, poor levels of education and low socio-economic status; in fact all those issues identified by the Welsh Government Indicators published in 2012.

We do not believe we are experts at working with every aspect of our Cluster community and ‘hard to reach’ groups and individuals, so we have developed excellent links with partner agencies in order to work with them and take advantage of their knowledge and expertise in working with those groups and individuals. Previous Communities First partnership teams did not have as much contact with these groups and individuals, so we have also invested in re-training the staff team in order to accomplish this task.

For example, in respect of young people who are NEET, we’ve developed excellent relationships with local agencies who provide support to NEETS in Barry and we work with these organisations in a number of different ways, depending on which Careers Wales ‘Tier’ the young person occupies;

• With JCP we attend the Barry JCP at least once per week to take referrals, discuss options with young people and advise the JCP advisers of plans and projects and training and funding opportunities, not just within the Cluster programme but also those available from partner agencies. We work very closely with Barry JCP as we believe they are the best and most appropriate source of referrals for our Prosperity projects.
• Careers Wales also provide us with referrals (and vice-versa) and we also work on joint training and funding opportunities.
• We receive and also make referrals to other ‘routes to employment’ agencies in Barry, such as the Shaw Trust and the Vale’s Employment and Training team who run a Work programme contract. Discussions with these agencies and their service-users take place on a regular basis.

For further information on the ‘hard to reach’ groups and individuals we’ve identified and work with, please see our Project Plans.

We will continue to work with service users, partners and stakeholders on an ongoing basis in establishing local levels of ‘need’ by frequently‘scoping and mapping’ need and regularly reviewing our projects and activities.We also recognise we need to fully understand current levels of community involvement and the needs of our communities, particularly in the new Cluster areas. This exercise will also consider the local provision by partners and good practice elsewhere. We will utilise questionnaires, community appraisals, and community events to support this process (see Appendix A below for more detail).

An example of this form of consultation and action is evident in our partnership with the Vale of Glamorgan Council and local community centre management committees to establish two ‘Community Hubs’ in local community centres in new areas of the Cluster.

The need for these Hubs was made evident in our original consultation and again more recently when we looked at the geographical spread of our service delivery in the initial phase of the Cluster.

At these venues, we’ll be providing advice and information to allow residents to improve their levels of IT access and skills and apply for services online where previously there was none available. This project will also work with the local CAB and the Vale’s Community and Adult EducationTeam to provide advice and alternative learning opportunities. The Hubs will also help us assess need and establish avenues for communication between the community and Cluster partner providers across all three themes of Learning, Health and Prosperity.

We will acknowledge the varied needs of our communities when considering the different levels of involvement required and will broadly reflect diverse and appropriate levels of engagement, participation and impact (see Appendix A below). Also, we aim to make aspects of the CIP available in a variety of accessible formats; for example, our new website utilises accessibility technology for those who cannot read or have poor eyesight/sight loss and is therefore currently accessible to people with hearing and sight difficulties;

Other ‘hard to reach’ groups include people withdisabilities, those from minorities, members of the LGBT community, disenfranchised older people and young people and all have separate and substantial barriers which will need to be addressed before a meaningful level of engagement can take place. However, the organisations who already work with these groups have expertise in this area and we would not seek to duplicate that commitment, but to learn from them and utilise their knowledge and existing networks of service users.

We have also set up our own mechanisms where we’ve identified a gap in provision e.g. our own BETH (benefits, employment, training and housing) group for all those in the routes-to-employment sector in the Barry area.

Barriers and Opportunities

On the whole, we are fortunate to have excellent working relationships with partner agenciesin the Barry and Vale area, so we have not encountered many significant barriers to engagement with them or their service-users.

Although many of these relationships were in place prior to the development of the Cluster, we have successfully built on the support and contribution from partners and stakeholders when we created the original Cluster Delivery plan. Since then, all team members have taken advantage of those good working links to develop and provide appropriate and effective services to our Cluster residents.

These relationships allow us to be flexible in meeting demands and overcoming barriers; for example if we are unable to meet a particular need then we can request that one ofour partners or stakeholders step in and attempt to resolve that issue.

Also, we’ve been provided with ample opportunities for joint working on issues such as funding bids, joint events for consultation and awareness-raising and shared training. We believe that the barriers to further and more meaningful community involvement are relatively minor and that they can be overcome, mainly by meaningful application of the principles mentioned at the beginning ofthis document.

We’ve also made it clear to partners and stakeholders that we are open to any further opportunities such as the ones identified above.

In respect of barriers and opportunities to working with Cluster residentsand ‘hard to reach’ individuals and groups, we believe an important means of overcoming this lies in working closely with expert’ partners who are already working with that demographic group(s). The extensive consultation we undertook in preparation for our original Cluster delivery plan gave us an excellent insight into identifying these groups and individuals, whilst also accounting for the original Welsh Government indicators which explicitly defined our target audience. For example, we are now a partner on the Vale’s Community Cohesion group, a voluntary sector-facilitated group that brings together interested parties from the diverse community in Barry e.g. the BME community, the LGBT sector and the Police. We aim to utilise these links to ‘reach out’ to Cluster residents who also fall into those groups and who may not be engaging with mainstream service providers (as outlined in Sections F&G in Appendix A below).

Strategic Links and Partners

As stated above, a key element of our work is based on consistentlymaximising partnership and joint working opportunities, ensuring we make the best use of the resources and expertise that are available (key partners are listed below). All have a great deal of knowledge about the people who traditionally do not engage with mainstream organisations and therefore those service-usersdo not always receive the appropriate levels of service provision.

We have strong strategic and operational links at all levels with the relevant agencies e.g. the Leader of the Vale Council sits on our Partnership Board with 5 other Cabinet members (there are 7on the Vale cabinet in total), so we have excellent links with the Vale as the Lead Delivery Body and as a key member of the LSB.

Through various LSB working groups, we have strong links with other Welsh Government-sponsored projects such as Flying Start and Families First.

An example of this partnership work in action can be evidenced by our school engagement project, which involves both projects supporting us to hold awareness-raising events about the Cluster programme and associated activities in local Primary Schools to take our message directly to service-users in their local community. Other partners such as Cardiff and Vale Credit Union also take part in these events, taking the opportunity to network with others, advertise their services and recruit new service-users. We plan on holding similar events in all 8 Cluster schools during the course of 2014.

Similarly, our Job Fairs give service-users an opportunity to tell us what they think about the ‘routes to employment’ network in Barry and how the job seeking-support they receive can be improved. This information is captured by interview, questionnaire and social media.

As stated above, we created the Delivery Plan in partnership with a number of local Agencies and we’ll continue to work with these Agencies on joint projects as well as continue to utilise their own resources, networks and expertise in order to strengthen community involvement in the Cluster e.g. by working with the local Flying Start team’s ‘Men behaving Dadly’ project to support them with job-seeking activities.

As outlined in each of the project descriptions attached to the Delivery Plan, the following Agencies support the work of the Cluster team in the variety of projects we offer people living in the Cluster area;

• The Vale of Glamorgan Council via;

Development Services Directorate

the Families First programme

Flying Start

Adult and Community Education

Libraries

the Youth Service

Leisure and Tourism (which includes sports development and exercise referrals)

the YOS

Housing Dept

the 8 local schools in the Cluster.

• Job Centre Plus
• Careers Wales
• Cardiff and ValeCollege
• The People Business Wales
• Local training providers such as Babcock and the Shaw Trust
• Public Health Wales
• Newydd Housing Association
• Vale CVS
• Vale Volunteer Bureau
• Cardiff and Vale CAB

Community Involvement Mechanisms