West Lothian
Summary
This profile showcases two practice examples. It describes the Locality Planning process in West Lothian and shows how the National Standards were used by the West Lothian Drug Action Team to review and improve the production of resources.
Background
The Communities Team facilitates Locality Planning and supports young people, families and older people to participate in community and council forums. The aim of Locality Planning is to ensure people and communities in West Lothian are genuinely engaged in the decisions made on public services which affect them and to develop a commitment from organisations to work together, not apart, in providing better and more responsive public services. The pilot neighbourhood for locality planning was Craigshill. As a result the structures and resources for community engagement are better developed there than in many other areas of West Lothian.
The National Standards
This profile shows how use of all ten National Standards can be shared across a working group of people with different levels of skills and confidence in community engagement. It shows how application of the National Standards requires some expertise to ensure that those with limited community engagement experience are able to make balanced and informed judgements on their application.
It shows how innovative methods that connect with a community can be successful in attracting an investment of time from communities, even where there is evidence of disaffection with community engagement. It shows how community engagement can be sustained over the long term and demonstrates the relationship between engaging with communities to inform services and enabling communities to deliver services on their own behalf.
Exposure to the National Standards
West Lothian Communities Team Staff participated in the process of developing the Standards. Craigshill was one of the pilot areas for the piloting of the Standards. Community engagement specialists in West Lothian are therefore highly aware of the standards and their application to practice.
Opportunity and improvement
West Lothian Council are presently developing an improved system for community engagement based around Locality Planning, whereby Locality Planning is the main means of delivering long term community engagement and community involvement in Community Planning. Locality Planning areas correspond to the nine multi-member electoral wards in West Lothian. Staff believe that this will increase the positive role of elected members in locality planning. There is a Local Area Committee for each of the nine multi-member wards.
Locality Planning is supported by a virtual frontline team made up of officers from a number of community planning partners including a locality planning officer a community learning and development worker, a public health nurse, and other specialists as required. Their remit includes the facilitation of community engagement at a ward level.
The Locality Planning process involves a review of local statistics and secondary sources of evidence of the needs of the communities within the locality planning boundary. This is followed by discussion groups with local professionals to identify their views of the needs and priorities of by the communities. There is then a tailored process of engagement with the local community, the methods for which are designed to ensure maximum long term engagement. This process of gathering evidence from three separate sources provides balance to the identification of needs and priorities for the community.
"Community Views are important in making decisions on council services, however they are not the only things that are important. Professionals, particularly those working communities have important insights too. Some community engagement processes don't make it explicit that others sources of evidence are valuable. This can lead to disappointment and doesn't really build the capacity of the community to understand how things happen" Communities Team Worker.
There had been a history of community engagement work in Craigshill but communities could see very little that had changed as a result. Local community workers had the feeling that local people were "scunnered with it." The National Standards for Community Engagement were used in Craigshill to develop a detailed process for engagement that involved the major stakeholders, i.e. communities and service providers as informants to the process of identification and prioritisation of community needs and aspirations.
The Communities Team used the National Standards to support community planning partners to understand the process and to encourage them to willingly participate in working with communities. Responsibility for leading on a single standard was allocated to each of the members of the steering group. This meant that one person was tasked to remind the steering group of actions they ought to take to make sure that the standard they were responsible for was properly addressed. Not all of the steering group members had experience of community engagement. The community engagement specialists in the steering group provided other members with assistance in making judgements on when 'their' standard required some additional action.
Given the low levels of confidence in the community, the Methods Standard was used to develop an array of methods that were welcoming and innovative. A series of open days in the local shopping centre and at community events used arts-based methods made expressing views about the community more attractive and easier for participants with lower confidence. In one case a large wall-sized comic strip made up of a collage of photos, comments and facts about the area was produced by local people. This comic strip was displayed in various local outlets where it could be viewed by the community. In another case an empty shop was decorated as a bedroom and local parents were invited to 'Dream Something Better' by covering a duvet with their aspirations for the area.
"The value of open days is that locality planning staff can discuss with communities how to achieve the kinds of differences they want to see in their community and invite them to further discussion and opportunities to take action. This is qualitatively different from other methods which may simply ask people for their views of local needs and priorities. It makes local people partners in achieving change" Local Community Worker
One of the key aspects of Locality Planning is that it continues over the long term - it does not conclude with the production of a plan but is a dynamic process of engagement. In Craigshill this long term engagement has been supported by the development of the Daisy Drop-in, a resource centre for parents, carers and children. The Daisy Drop-in came about due to the identification through locality planning that coordination of work with children was a priority for the area. It has since become constituted and a management committee of local people oversee the programme within the drop-in.
The initial community engagement exercise was conducted using methods designed to 'build in' commitment from communities and service providers to taking action. The initial methods and commitment to working with communities and service providers has been followed through in Craigshill by the development of community resources that increase the capacity of the community to manage services and expand the number and range of individuals from the community engaging with services.
One of the criticisms that communities made of the initial community engagement process was that there were no highlights that would act as milestones of achievement and keep them motivated. The launch event for the Daisy Drop-in provided an opportunity to do so and to provide feedback to the wider community on what had been achieved. By this time over 400 local people were on the mailing list for locality planning and newsletters and invitations were sent out to all of them. The launch took place in the Daisy Drop-in premises in Craigshill Shopping centre. The appearance of an actor from a well known Children's television programme helped to draw a large crowd.
Outcomes
Among the outcomes for the neighbourhood of Craigshill are the increased confidence of local people to engage with service providers and to manage services themselves.
This new confidence is further evidenced by the development of a community council for the area, something which had never existed before. The community council have begun to take over running events, including a local gala day, that previously would have been led by professionals.
The West Lothian Children's services Management Group Early Years plan has also been heavily influenced by the Craigshill locality planning process. Some innovative work is emerging, including using parents from Craigshill who have experience of participating in locality planning to provide 'buddying' support to parents from the nearby Mayfield area who are embarking on a similar process.