"UNDER THE SKIN" OF COMMUNITY PLANNING
CHAPTER SEVEN: CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY PLANNING
7.1 If Community Planning is to fulfil its potential there are a number of challenges and barriers that will need to be overcome. Many of the challenges facing Community Planning partnerships have been alluded to in previous sections. This section outlines some of the key barriers to the development of Community Planning that were identified by stakeholders during the course of the research.
7.2 Many stakeholders emphasised the fact that Community Planning was an evolving process and that it was important that partnerships be given the time and space to develop. It was also clear that stakeholders viewed Community Planning as a long-term process that implied fundamental changes in the way public sector organisations conduct their business. The changes required to make Community Planning work effectively are perceived to be cultural as well as structural and achieving these changes is seen as being one of the most complex challenges facing partnerships and individual partners. In this sense Community Planning can be seen as a change management process and as one stakeholder put it, "managing change within a single organisation is always complex but managing change across a number of different organisations is even more complex".
7.3 Some of the most significant barriers to the development of Community Planning identified by stakeholders were as follows: -
Capacity Building
7.4 If Community Planning is to fundamentally change the way organisations operate it will require individuals to change the way they work. A key priority for many partnerships is to broaden involvement in the Community Planning process by staff at all levels within partner organisations. In order to achieve this there is a need to create the capacity within organisations to make collaborative working a key objective. This may mean that staff will need to develop new skills but it also means that there should be more incentives to encourage staff to work in a collaborative manner. A number of stakeholders suggested that existing human resource policies in partner organisations did not always support collaborative working andcould, in fact, sometimes work against it.
Managing Conflicting Priorities
7.5 A key issue raised by a large number of stakeholders was the fact that the Community Planning process had to be managed against a background of a constant flow of other initiatives and funding programmes. The need to constantly respond to new initiatives from the Scottish Executive means that partners are not always able to devote the time to Community Planning that they would like to. There is also evidence to suggest that some initiatives do not recognise the capacity of Community Planning to provide an overarching framework for the development of collaborative working at a local level. The need to produce a range of different plans, funding bids and policy documents is perceived by many stakeholders to be both an unnecessary burden and a distraction from developing the Community Planning process. Reducing this burden on partners would release resources that could be devoted to Community Planning.
Constant Organisational Change
7.6 Many of the key partners involved in Community Planning have had to deal with major organisational change over recent years. This has been unsettling and is perceived as having made it much more difficult to develop effective partnership working. Organisational change creates uncertainty and often involves changes in management structures that can have implications for Community Planning partnerships. Changes in senior management personnel also means that new relationships have to be established and can lead to a lack of continuity in the membership of partnership groups. The need to devote resources and time to managing organisational change was also cited by a number of stakeholders as a reason why they had not been able to provide as much commitment to the Community Planning process as they would have like to.
7.7 The impact of organisational change on the ability of some partners to contribute fully to the Community Planning process was cited as a factor particularly in relation to the health improvement agenda. Ongoing organisational change within the NHS and the prospect of further structural changes, as a result of the current review of management and decision making, was seen by some stakeholders as one of the main barriers to developing effective collaborative working.
National versus Local Priorities
7.8 A key issue for some stakeholders was the need to balance their involvement in the Community Planning process with the requirement to meet national targets and priorities. Some stakeholders said that there was a perception that the need to deliver nationally set policies restricted some partners ability to respond to local priorities identified through the Community Planning process. While there is limited evidence that there have been significant conflicts between national priorities and locally determined needs, it is seen as a potential factor that could influence the ability of some organisations to contribute fully to the Community Planning process in the future. There was also a strong perception amongst some stakeholders that not all national agencies and sponsoring divisions within the Scottish Executive recognised the importance of Community Planning and that this could limit the ability of local agencies to commit time and resources to the process.
Boundary Issues
7.9 Some stakeholders cited the fact that various partner organisations covered different geographical areas as a barrier to the development of Community Planning. The lack of coterminous boundaries in most Community Planning areas is seen as making it more difficult to develop effective partnership working than in those areas where most partners share the same boundaries. It causes particular difficulties for organisations that are involved in more than one partnership and therefore have to resource multiple Community Planning processes. There were some concerns expressed that this challenge was not always appreciated by other partners and that a lack of capacity to participate in more than one partnership was sometimes perceived as demonstrating a lack of commitment.
7.10 Another associated problem relates to partners having different operational boundaries within the wider Community Planning area. This can sometimes create problems in developing collaborative working arrangements and is perceived as being a major barrier to the development of local community planning.
Lack of Resources
7.11 In the initial stages of Community Planning the process was generally resourced from within existing budgets and using existing staff. As partnerships have developed it has become clear that it is a resource intensive process and many partnerships have now put in place dedicated resources in terms of both staff and budgets. However, there is still a feeling amongst many stakeholders that insufficient resources are being dedicated to developing the Community Planning process. The lack of resources to manage the process is seen by many stakeholders as having a significant impact on the pace at which Community planning can be developed. There is also evidence that resources need to be provided for capacity building within partner organisations to support the organisational and cultural changes that will be required in order to fulfil the full potential of the Community Planning process.