2.0 Background and Context
In January 2004 the Scottish Executive set out in Working and Learning Together to Build Stronger Communities ( WALT), its desire "to be able to assess more thoroughly the contribution of CLD to outcomes".
Avanté worked together with the Scottish Community Development Centre ( SCDC) on the early and joint, Development Department and Communities Scotland, study that informed further work in this field: The September 2004 CLDManagement Information System Project: Scoping Study Report.
The Scoping Study suggested a national working group to take forward the recommendations in the report, which led to the establishment of the CLD Performance Information Project ( PIP). The research that is the subject of this report seeks to contribute to the last of the PIP's four key objectives, which is to " establish a programme of longitudinal research to develop better understanding of the impact of CLD."
This study seeks to establish the contribution of CLD activity to the achievement of outcomes for the three national priorities for CLD1 and to the Scottish Government's Regeneration Statement: Closing the Opportunity Gap (CtoG).
' Delivering Change - Understanding the Outcomes of Community Learning and Development' was published by Learning Connections in 2006 and sets out both intermediate and end outcomes as an agreed outcome framework for CLD.
These include outcomes related to the economy and employment, learning and education, democratic participation and health; as well as wider outcomes related to community safety, integrated communities (equality and diversity), sports, culture and leisure as well as those related to the physical and natural environment.
'Delivering Change', has been widely welcomed by CLD practitioners. It reflects not only CtoG objectives and WALT Guidance; it also complements the Scottish Government's 2006 Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education ( HMIE) second edition of ' How Good is Our Community Learning and Development? ( HGIOCLD?)'.
The latter is widely used by CLD partnerships across Scotland to support the self-evaluation of the quality of CLD services. It provides a range of quality and performance indicators against which any self-assessment or inspection process can take place.
In November 2007, a concordat set out the terms of a new relationship between the Scottish Government and local government, which underpins the funding to be provided to local government over the period 2008-09 to 2010-11. This is represented by a package of measures and takes account of the Government's Spending Review.
One of the central tenets of this agreement is that there will be:
"A move to a Single Outcome Agreement ( SOA) for every council, based on the agreed set of national outcomes (underpinned by agreed national indicators), supported by streamlined external scrutiny and effective performance management.
And that….
The Scottish Government will work with local government to develop an agreed response to the Crerar review2that will lead to improvements in performance management and self-assessment across the public sector thereby enabling a more focused and proportionate inspection regime to apply to local government".
Nov 2007 Scottish Government and COSLA Concordat
The national outcomes and indicators form part of the Concordat between the Scottish Government and CoSLA, which requires councils (and hopefully their community planning partners) to seek to establish a Single Outcome Agreement setting out local outcomes and priorities that take account of the National Performance Framework set out in the concordat (See Appendix One). SOAs are expected to be in place across all councils during 2008-09.
The University of Edinburgh has also undertaken a smaller scale study into the CLD outcomes linked to work around social capital. Work on this was ongoing during a similar timescale to this research with collaboration between researchers assisting both.