REPORT OF A DIALOGUE
about
COMMUNITY CAPACITY BUILDING
Glasgow, 7 June 2011
Background
CLDMS initiatedtwo dialogues between national partners and potential partners about the case that we are all seeking to make for community-based approaches to achieving outcomes. These dialogues were supported by Learning and Teaching Scotland as part of its partnership programme with CLDMS.Thedialogues sought to make a contribution to:
- Obtaining the widest possible support for a consistent approach to understanding and promoting the value of Community Learning and Development and community-based approaches to achieving outcomes
- Achieving greater clarity on what the role of our approach should be within Scottish policy, and who could do what, at a time of considerable change, to support and develop that role
- Sharing understanding of the roles in and contributions to adult learning, youth work and community capacity building of different partners and sectors
- Potentially, building and strengthening alliances and structures for promoting the value of CLD and improving practice.
This particular discussion lookedat the role of and case for community capacity building and the contribution of CLD towards it. It brought together agencies with a role in delivering, improving or making policy for community capacity building.
Participants
John McKnight, Barbara Allan, Peter Taylor, CLDMS
Tanveer Parnez, BEMIS
Angus Williamson, CLD Standards Council
Stewart Murdoch, Community Development Alliance Scotland
Angus Hardie, Community Sector Alliance
Jon Harris, COSLA
Ian Cooke, Development Trusts Association Scotland
Jim Rooney, HMIE
Anne Jardine, Colin Ross, Cath Hamilton, Mhairi Gilfillan, Learning and Teaching Scotland
Anne Lee, Emma Witney, NHS Health Scotland
Fiona Garven, Scottish Community Development Centre
Jackie Doig, Scottish Community Safety Network
Andrew Jackson, Scottish Government Joint Improvement Team
Michelle Colquhoun, Scottish Government Adult, College and Community Learning Team
Alasdair McKinlay, Scottish Government Regeneration Team
Ruchir Shah, SCVO.
Apologies: Colin Mair, Improvement Service, Fergus Millan, Scottish Government Public Health Division, Andy Milne, SURF
Introduction
After a welcome from John McKnight, Chair of CLDMS, who welcomed the diversity of interest in the discussion, Fiona Garven of Scottish Community Development Centre made an introductory presentation on “Understanding community capacity building”.
General outcomes from community capacity building (CCB) include:
- More power, or authority, is devolved to communities themselves to identify and produce local solutions to local issues
- Communities are more organised and have the infrastructure, skills and resources to address local issues and deliver local solutions
- Communities have more influence about how public services are delivered to ensure that they respond to local requirements
These are becoming more prominent in discussions about national and local policy. People have realised that we have been doing things to people instead of delivering outcomes with them. This is not sustainable either financially or socially. Yet at the same time there isdisinvestment rather than investment in actual community capacity building work.
A working definition of CCB is;
‘The activities, resources and support that strengthen the skills, abilities and confidence of people and community groups to take effective action and leading roles in the development of communities’ (Skinner)
How this is applies will vary according to context: it may include the ownership of assets; in very deprived communities, there may be a need to build trust, reciprocity and feelings of safety.
Key questions;
- How do we develop a strategic approach to CCB?
- How do we cohere our efforts so that all the different activities which aim to support the development of strong resilient communities add up to more than a sum of their parts so that we see real social progress in Scotland?
- How do we influence more investment, at national and local level?
Discussion
Any opinions quoted are not necessarily those of the organisations involved
A ‘Big Society’?
Tanveer: How does this differ from the ‘Big Society’ approach?
Stewart: It is important to use our own language to reflect our different practice. Though sceptical of labels, we need to constantly re-examine what it is that we are talking about.
Ruchir: The debate about a ‘Big Society’ has at least given a lot of visibility and recognition to work in communities.
Alasdair: The phrase is not in use within Scottish Government. The First Minister has spoken about the ‘Fair Society’. Community empowerment is said to be ‘a thread that runs through’ the SNP manifesto.
Reshaping Public Services
Jon: Both financial and demographic factors require a fundamental rethink of public services. Issues relating to capacity building and empowerment are likely to fill up to one third of the forthcoming Christie Commission report. But do we understand what they mean? We talk about ‘co-production’, for example. But do we understand what this means in practice. There is a need to tackle problems in the ‘bottom 30%’ of the distribution of disadvantage. He expects Ministers to support that approach.
Andrew: In promoting taking a capacity building approach to reshaping care, we are trying to bring together those who currently understand this approach with those with less understanding in order to achieve change. There is often the difficulty of balancing community choices and organisational agendas.
Stewart: The cuts are often driven by a narrow view of protecting mandatory responsibilities. How do you get from here to the future? Where does existing power and influence lie?
Tanveer: Programmes are often driven by funding requirements rather than what people actually want to achieve in a community.
Partnership working
Barbara: Influencing the mindsets of the people in control of agendas is part of the purpose of community capacity building. It is about skills: How we influence others that work with us; and how we work in partnership and develop cross-professional skills.
Colin: There are implications both for specialist community capacity building workers and for other managers and staff who may require to work in different ways. They may say that the ideas are good but additional to their existing jobs. The message that jobs have to change is critical.
Jackie: There is a big difference between working in partnership and a real joint direction. The latter is needed for community capacity building. Community Safety Plans seek to achieve this through Joint Strategic Assessments.
Fiona: There has been an over reliance on formal partnership models. We need more creative approaches.
Barbara: How many community activists actually want to sit around partnership tables?
Tanveer: No matter what the model, it is essential to take the community with you.
Coproduction
Ruchir: We are struggling to understand ‘coproduction’ and ‘asset based approaches’, But the adoption of such language by senior people e.g. in the NHS presents a big opportunity, even though there is much inertia and protectionism to overcome.
Colin: The temptation when pursuing policy objectives such as reshaping care is to try to sell ideas to communities. Community desires need to be built into the equation.
Angus (Hardie): Terms like ‘coproduction’ are not just a convenient new idea for hard times: they demand a fundamental rethink. The must not become a Trojan horse for the cuts.
Community assets
Alasdair: Agrees, but wants to know whether for example the money the Scottish Government invests in the Development Trusts Association is seen as a contribution to community capacity building.
Ian: Yes it is. The discussion should not just be about public sector reform, but about the direct generation of assets by communities, about supplying the technical support to allow them to achieve what they need and want.
Alasdair: Ministers understood this, without community capacity building being specifically mentioned.
Fiona: But progress relies on communities first having the strength to be able to take on assets.
Outcomes
Jim: We have spent too much on dealing with negative outcomes. We are not putting enough emphasis on impacts and outcomes – we need to get beyond the process to what it can deliver.
Peter: But are we clear about the level at which community capacity building contributes to outcomes?
Jim: In the current national performance framework, there is now much more scope than before to make the connection to national outcomes clear.
Stewart: In Dundee at the time of the Social Inclusion Partnership communities controlled local budgets. Their decisions did not always fit local or national priorities. But it the period when we were most effective at achieving outcomes.
Andrew; The discrepancy between state and community objectives will change as people realise that the state will simply not be doing some things. There is already a different understanding between rural and urban areas. In the former, communities are often involved and innovative because they realise that otherwise the services will not be there.
Summary
Fiona: Reductions in spending create both tensions and opportunities. We need to have a shared language; to show what works; to change cultures and let go of professional control. But community capacity building does require a specific value base that sees people as equal partners.
Who is community capacity building for?
Angus Hardie of the Community Sector Alliance gave a presentationon “Who is community capacity building for?”
People assume that you understand the term ‘community capacity building’, but he has never really been sure that he does, so he has looked at some definitions. These are not compatible with each other.
His starting point is that it must serve the best interests of whatever community people are working with. He was surprised how clearly people responding to LTS’ survey of CCB workers were in acknowledging that their work is shaped by external pressures.
Arguably it is good for an external agency to train people so that they can engage more effectively. But he is uneasy about this assumption of responsibility and role. It fails to grasp the fundamental tenet of community empowerment: that lasting change must come from the community. It tends to encourage a ‘deficit model’.
Whereas for example in the ‘Community Organisers’ programme south of the border, people are being recruited from within communities and trained by local community anchor organizations. Their principal task will be to listen to people and help them to organise around what they say. In Scotland we should be looking at how to help the community sector build its own capacity. This could lead to identifying a genuine grass roots agenda.
So community capacity building is for – the community.
Discussion
Any opinions quoted are not necessarily those of the organisations involved
Community vs outside agendas?
Michelle: How much difference really exists between the different approaches you refer to?
Angus H.: Community organisations are different because they have no pre-set agenda.
Barbara: But is it the CCB workers or the other services that are at fault here? My local authority CCB team are expected to go in to communities and listen. We try to change service delivery if the people in the community choose that.
Colin: There is a danger of setting up a false opposition. The type of outcomes which ‘capacity builders’ who responded to LTS’ survey say they seek are also fundamental to the approach that Angus describes. I am strongly in favour of community organisations employing their own staff. But there are dangers in them taking this on at too early a stage. CCB should serve government agendas only if it is first doing the first thing – working for communities. The values and principles are fundamental, other things like who employs you matter less. Dilemmas arise, but it is the professional responsibility of a worker to explain these to a community.
Stewart: We can share the principles of good practice even if there are different interpretations of power.
Cath: Vested interests can also exist within communities.
Angus H.: How can communities ever prove their legitimacy if such things are always raised against them?
Emma: In promoting prevention in health we are grappling with vested interests in our services; you can’t dismiss the possibility that such vested interests exist within communities. Improving health is a very clear agenda. Any CCB has some agenda: health and well-being is one of the clearer more straightforward ones.
Andrew: The vested interests of public services are in the delivery of services. If you change what they are expected to deliver, you can change them.
Ian: We spoke to DTAS members about community-led regeneration and asked them what would be the key intervention. Given the choice, though there are good local authority interventions, they would prefer direct investment in communities. Though I am not sure that the ‘Community Organisers’ model is correct, we do need to deprofessionalise CCB: encourage peer mentoring and support within and across communities.
Tanveer/Ruchir (both): Communities connecting with each other works/ is needed.
Barriers and opportunities
Alasdair: Data to demonstrate the impact of CCB is a problem. Ideas would be welcome.
Emma: What do we do with what we already have? For example are we using the rich evidence from GoWell?
Jon: Leaders and front line workers both tend to adopt new ideas. There is a group in the middle who have been called the ‘permafrost’ who protect their budgets.
Alasdair: Yet I have rarely met anyone who admits to being a middle manager!
John: The practice and skills of fieldwork staff are vital any sector. In reality the quality of work varies.
Fiona: Overall failures of public services sometimes get pinned on the tiny input from CCB, even though this is often confined to specific projects. The models are there but they have not had a lot of investment.
Jackie: The criteria for funds such as CashBack for Communities are frustratingly explicit, losing the key idea of reaching out to the community.
Alasdair/Ruchir: There will always be a tension about this: Ministers need to be able to see major outcomes – They do seem to be taking a wider view now – yes, but they have many hats to wear.
Jackie: We keep destroying our experience and starting again.
Summary
Fiona: Let’s not set up false oppositions.
We should talk about building healthy, strong, sustainable communities. We need to build the communities themselves as well as their capacity.
To influence those ‘middle’ ranks they need to see it work, not just as words on paper.
Who are the capacity builders?
Colin Ross of Learning and Teaching Scotland gave a presentation on ”Who are the capacity builders?”based on their survey “A Snapshot of CCB in Scotland”[1]
80 responses from national organisations – public, voluntary and private sector - local authorities and CVSs.
Work Patterns: A mix of full-time, part-time and voluntary; Across these – varying %s of time spent on CCB
Who Do Capacity Builders Work With? Unemployed people..... Care Groups.... Tenants Groups... Migrants/Asylum seekers.....Sport clubs..... LGBT groups.... Arts and heritage groups...Parents and Families
Related Activities: Community engagement; Other work with communities
Community Capacity Builders:
- Are a recognisable workforce
- Work in both public and voluntary sectors
- Have varying work patterns
- Often undertake other related work in the communities
- Work with a huge range of community groups who act on all types of community issues
- Are in high demand
- Have limited resources that are under pressure
Discussion
Any opinions quoted are not necessarily those of the organisations involved
Jim: The HMIE’s Learning Communities report[2] shows the role of schools and a huge range of activities by young people which should not be missed. There has been a huge expansion of youth volunteering.
John McKnight looked at where we go from here and identified some key threads:
- The importance of community leadership
- The need to capture impact across sectors
- The existing disconnect between policy and resource allocation
- The need to follow through and make the case in the context of the Christie report and the community empowerment agenda
- The contribution of CCB work is often missed - we need to capture it, pull it together and bring the information to bear
- Need to bring the community perspective more fully into the dialogue.
[1]
[2]