In 2005 the Scottish Government published National Standards for Community Engagement. These set out best practice principles for the way that government agencies, councils, health boards, police and other public bodies engage with communities.
To help everyone involved in community engagement to achieve the standards, the Scottish Government commissioned the Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) to develop a database tool for planning monitoring and evaluating community engagement called VOiCE (Visioning Outcomes in Community Engagement).
VOiCE can support organisations to:
- plan community engagement and service user participation
- conduct it effectively
- monitor and record the process
- evaluate the outcomes
It can support participation from overall area regeneration to specific concerns of users of particular services. It is designed to be relevant both for individual services and for integrated, cross-disciplinary community planning. VOiCE enables all users to have a common system for analysing, planning, monitoring, evaluating and recording that provides common definition of terms and understanding of different types and purposes of engagement. It will carry the records of all engagements conducted in an area and enable analysis of patterns and outcomes of engagement.
>> find out more about VOiCE
>> VOiCE case studies
>> access VOiCE online