Empowering Good Practice programme
END PROJECT REPORT
CASE STUDY
Project Title: Empowering Good Practice ProgrammeProject aims and objectives?
The Empowering Good Practice programme is part of the work of Empowering Communities, the Regional Empowerment Project, managed by Creating Excellence and funded by DCLG 2007-2011. This adopted a strategy of ‘top-down’ support for local authorities, and ‘bottom-up’ support for local communities to improve NI4 scores principally in LA areas which adopted this target.
Research for Empowering Communities in the first year of the project by SERIO at the University of Plymouth explored what training local government officers would find helpful in learning about empowerment, with a view to improving NI4 scores. The full report can be found at this link:
http://www.creatingexcellence.org.uk/mod-Downloads-index-req-viewdownloaddetails-lid-291.html
The Empowering Good Practice programme aimed to help local authority staff, managers and elected members increase their skills and confidence to develop more empowering authorities by:
· Developing knowledge and understanding of empowerment principles and practice
· Developing facilitation skills and the confidence to use these
· Promoting a culture of empowerment across local authorities
An additional aim during 2010/11 was the support of Creating Communities and Targeted Support for Empowerment and Participation Improvement projects in selected areas.
The programme is jointly funded by Empowering Communities and SWIEP. In 20010-11 the SWIEP contributed £16,000 to a total programme budget of £36,000. SWIEP’s contribution has been two-fold:
· the extra funding has enabled the programme to deepen and broaden the work with authorities, and
· the endorsement of the programme by SWIEP has significantly increased the credibility of the programme with local authorities.
What happened?
The project was delivered by Zebra Collective, a social enterprise which specialises in participation work. For more information see www.zebra.coop. Zebra's previous work includes training, facilitation and capacity building contracts for clients in the public, voluntary and community sectors. Zebra's core values of equality and inclusion and commitment to empowerment contributed significantly to our ability to deliver this project.
The delivery was carried out by the following Zebra Directors and Associates:
Liza Packer, who has many years of experience working in the community and voluntary sector, with an emphasis on community engagement at a grass roots and strategic level. Liza is a qualified youth and community worker and is Zebra's lead on solution-focused management.
Marc Gardiner – Experienced youth and community worker, who was resident chair of his local NDC for seven years. Marc brought his expertise in solution-focused communication
Jacky Clift – Educator, manager community activist and expert in conflict resolution, chairing and meeting skills.
Marilyn Doyle – Facilitator, mediator and trainer (Zebra Associate)
Michelle Virgo – Zebra's lead on participation and engagement, Michelle is an experienced facilitator and trainer who brings knowledge of a wide range of participatory methods and experience of the community and public sector.
Zebra initially approached Plymouth, South Gloucestershire, Bristol, Swindon, Poole, Exeter, Torbay, North Somerset, BANES, Bournemouth, and Gloucestershire councils. All except Bristol, Swindon, and Gloucestershire had participated in the programme before. The approach to Bristol and Swindon was made via the GOSW locality managers. Zebra visited Gloucestershire County Council in 2009 and met with Jackie Harris, Policy and Partnership Manager, and five other colleagues and at the time she said they couldn't commit but may be interested in the future. When we went back to them with the renewed offer they declined.
The offer included:
· Training in facilitation skills and methods
· Introduction to community research and/or community researcher training
· Training for front line staff on the importance of good community engagement and their role in this
· Training for elected members on the Duty to Involve / their role as Community Leaders
· Facilitation of events for staff / partners / community representatives either on specific issues or to develop shared understanding or vision for their work together
· Mentoring for key members of staff
Torbay, Bristol, BANES, Swindon and Gloucestershire declined to take up this offer. Exeter and Poole stated their intention to participate, but planned projects in these local authority areas these didn't materialise due to political changes and limitations on staff and community capacity.
Plymouth, South Gloucestershire, Bournemouth and North Somerset did participate in the project. Once the demand had been filled in these priority local authority areas, additional capacity was used to complete a set of good practice case studies in partnership with Wiltshire County Council.
Plymouth
Zebra agreed to deliver four Practical Tools for Community Engagement training sessions for Plymouth City Council officers and staff from partner organisations. The first of these was delivered on 21 September, and one scheduled for November was cancelled at short notice. A further workshop scheduled for February 2011 was also cancelled and one was delivered on 21 March 2011, with participants the local authority and other agencies. Plymouth City Council requested that the cancelled workshops be replaced by two joint workshops for elected members and Neighbourhood Liaison Officers to support their Neighbourhood working initiatives. These happened in March 2011.
South Gloucestershire
South Gloucestershire requested more in-depth training for their Safer and Stronger team who had participated in the project in previous years. Zebra developed and delivered a two-day workshop on Solution-focused Community Working, which 16 people attended and became a licensed ToP provider to deliver the internationally recognised Group Facilitation Methods two-day workshop for a further 14 staff.
Zebra also facilitated a series of two workshops with 8 South Gloucestershire elected members to develop a Community Leadership skills framework.
Bournemouth
In Bournemouth Zebra worked with ten community project volunteers to support the group to develop and provide some key skills as they move towards becoming a viable social enterprise. We delivered four workshops which covered: communication and meeting skills, ground rules for working together, dealing with disagreements and conflict, equality and diversity, confidentiality and boundaries.
North Somerset
Zebra delivered two workshops on Practical Tools for Community Engagement for Officers at North Somerset and partner organisations from the voluntary and community sector.
Wiltshire
Zebra worked with Wilshire Council to produce a series of case studies highlighting projects that demonstrated local collaboration, community involvement and engagement, supported by Wiltshire's Area Boards. Each case study identified and demonstrated what was working well, what the challenges were and the outcomes and impact of supporting communities.
Keeping Empowerment Working
A region-wide learning and networking event attended by eighty people who had been involved in the programme. The focus of the day was Making the Case for Empowerment and keynote speakers were Simon Burall from Involve on the economic case, Sue Warr from Dorset Popp on the social case and Peter Lipman from Transition Network on the environmental case. Practical workshops looked at a variety of tools and methods for measuring and communicating the impact of empowerment. These included:
· Where do we go from here? Building support for community empowerment - Isabel Livingstone, South West Forum
· The importance of embracing the skills of local people to develop and deliver responsive, preventative and sustainable services and activities – Sue Warr, Dorset Partnership for Older People Programme
· Learning from the NDC experience - Dominic Murphy, Community at Heart
· Keeping Empowerment Working – John Skrine, Creating Excellence
· What makes empowerment measurable and meaningful? - Alison Gilchrist, Independent Consultant
· Staying motivated in times of change - Marc Gardiner, Zebra Collective
· A whole area approach to empowerment - Lorna Prescott, Dosti
· Social accounting and audit: hitting the triple bottom line - Helen Vines, CEU Ltd
The full report, links and follow-up information are available on Zebra's website:
http://www.zebra.coop/live/KeepingEmpowermentWorking.html
with more information on the empowerment works blog at:
http://empowermentworks.blogspot.com/2011/03/keeping-empowerment-working.html
Project Outcomes and Benefits
Fourteen workshops delivered to a total of 90 people (some people attended workshops on more than one day – so a total of 150 person-days).
Date / Local Authority / Workshop title / Number attending
21/09/10 / Plymouth / Practical Tools for Community Engagement / 10
21/03/11 / Plymouth / Practical Tools for Community Engagement / 13
17/01/11 / North Somerset / Practical Tools for Community Engagement / 17
15/03/11 / North Somerset / Practical Tools for Community Engagement / 6
7/09/10, 8/09/10 / South Gloucestershire / Solution-focused community working / 16
2/09/10,
3/09/10 / South Gloucestershire / Group facilitation methods / 14
Nov / Dec 2010 (four workshops) / Bournemouth / Working Together and Working with the Public / 10
01/03/11 / Plymouth / Neighbourhood meetings / 17
04/03/11 / Plymouth / Neighbourhood meetings / 17
The learning outcomes for each workshop are appended.
Plymouth
Twenty-three people attended two Practical Tools for Community Engagement methods workshops. Evaluation feedback included:
What we learnt:
· that consultation and engagement are a tool to help achieve not an obstacle
· the tools made me think – you got us to put the ideas into practice
· how to work with partners to improve community engagement
· use less formal approaches
· even the theory and history was good
What we loved:
· the tools – very logical, very simple .: very effective.
· getting so many tools
· meeting other people from different agencies
· speed of delivery and concise content
· trainers brilliant – very enthusiastic
· "how would you like it to be” questions – liked the positive spin on questions – will definitely be using this in the public surveys we carry out.
An additional outcome of the March workshop was the decision to establish a network of community engagement practitioners and managers across the organisations represented, with the intention of co-ordinating engagement activities across the city.
Thirty-four people (Neighbourhood Liaison Officers, Councillors and police) attended Neighbourhood Meetings workshops. Actions arising from these workshops included:
· Talk – to people in the community who are not coming to meetings
· Talk – to partners – share/co-ordinate.
· Share contact details from this group – send out e-mail details.(Nick)
· Hold quarterly events for police, NLOs, councillors and other partners to get together and share good practice.
· Raise awareness of Neighbourhood Meetings across Plymouth City Council.
· Centralise admin – like with the standardised poster. Find other tools like this to avoid duplicated work.
· Give credit to each other and share best practice. Congratulate and compliment each other.
· Circulate handouts to councillors, with an explanatory paragraph. (Jacky/Nick)
South Gloucestershire
The solution-focused community working was an in-depth two day course that built on earlier work on community engagement and facilitation skills.
The experience on the day, and the evaluation reports tell us that participants found this course less useful than others they attended. Comments suggest that this was because we included a lot of underlying theory before moving on to practical applications. We're also aware of underlying internal issues, which led to some of the people who'd been asked to attend feeling resentful about this.
However, evaluation reports tell us that people planned to use the learning
· in working with community groups
· in the team environment
· to improve coaching practice
By contrast, the two-day Group Facilitation Methods course met the group's need for some powerful and well-established facilitation tools. People said:
· It has reached all my expectations and hopes and more. My aim was to experience and learn GFM methods and that was achieved.
· Clear structure and good delivery aided learning and ability to meet aims.
· Hands on practical application. Really positive feel from both days. Surprised by how enjoyable it's been!
One specific outcome we're aware of is the use of the methods to facilitate a consultation event on the NHS South Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire Council Joint Strategy for People with Physical and Sensory Impairments and Neurological Long Term conditions.
North Somerset
The first training day was for voluntary and community sector partner organisations and one of the outcomes was the creation of new links and sharing of learning within and between these organisations and the local authority. One participant from this workshop has since been in touch to say that the workshop has been very helpful with the voluntary work that he's doing. The second session was primarily for for local authority managers; learning from that will be used to develop engagement strategies and transmitted to other staff. Evaluation comments from both sessions included:
What we learnt:
· Questioning techniques.
· How to involve people in projects
· Lots of things to be aware of and tools that can be used to help in community engagement
What we loved:
· Interaction – learning from others
· Tools for planning
· Enthusiasm and knowledge of trainers
· Meeting other organisations
· Ladder of participation with practical example
· The top five tips and principles
Bournemouth – West Howe Community Enterprises
This community group grew in confidence and cohesiveness during the four weeks we worked with them. After the first session we received the following feedback:
“You certainly worked magic last week - people came away really excited and motivated, looking forward to this week. One participant talked about how it helped her understand herself much better and how this will support her in other aspects of her life.”
As a result of the workshops the group produced:
· A set of ground rules for working together
· A Customer Service Charter
· Guidelines for dealing with complaints
· Confidentiality guidelines
· Lone working guidelines
· A set of first steps for moving towards their vision.
Evaluation forms completed on the final day included the following comments:
· I will put it (the things we learnt) into a manual for our staff to use - shop volunteer.
· I really enjoyed all the workshops we did and I generally (genuinely?) feel I had learnt something out of every one of the lessons – shop volunteer.
· I appreciated...the variety of methods used and sensitivity to people’s individual needs. The sessions were good fun and even when discussing quite heavy topics, continued to be inspiring and positive.