Scottish Government

What are learning points?

Learning points share what people have learned from their experience in regeneration - from people working or talking together, or from research into issues and evaluation of what is happening. Learning points can help people and organisations to improve their practice through identifying what works and what doesn't.

The views described in this paper do not mean that the Scottish Centre for Regeneration or the Scottish Government necessarily support them. They are a summarised reflection of the presentations and resultant debate amongst the invited participants involved in the workshop. The event format is intended to draw out potentially useful learning points from the diverse perspectives and experience of those involved.

What is this learning point about?

The key messages in this learning point arose from a workshop event delivered in partnership between the Scottish Government, through its Community Regeneration and Tackling Poverty Learning Network, and The Improvement Service in November 2010.

What are the main issues?

• How can we balance areas of future spending with demand for services?
• How can we effectively change local internal cultures from a focus on service based activity to the outcomes approach?
• How can we encourage the support of leaders at a strategic and political level?
• How can we include our communities in the prioritisation process?
• How can we ensure we have the appropriate evidence base to support the prioritisation process?

What do we know already?

• The Scottish Centre of Regeneration (SCR) is working collaboratively with the Improvement Service to deliver hands on, practical support to five pilot Community Planning Partnership (CPP) areas across Scotland. These are Dumfries and Galloway, Falkirk, Fife, Midlothian, West Lothian and Fife.
• There is no single prescriptive model for the work. The needs for each area were determined through a detailed scoping exercise with the partnership.

Thematic areas covered by the project include:

• Partnership working: Reviewing, the structure role, remit, membership and links to the broader CPP and Single Outcome Agreements (SOA).
• Developing an evidence based poverty profile.
• Linking the poverty agenda to the SOA including improving prioritisation and reviewing current indicators and targets.
• Developing outcome focused action plans which draw on the evidence base and link to the SOA.
• Effective communication and dissemination of key messages and an understanding of the outcomes based approach.
• Prioritisation is important because of the difficult economic climate which CPPs are operating within.

What have we learned from the pilots?

The pilot areas face a number of common issues

• Prioritisation can be challenging. The nature of the poverty agenda is that it is very broad-covering areas such as employment, income, health inequalities, educational attainment, concentrations of deprivation and community empowerment.
• Some of the CPPs are dealing with a very large number of outcomes, indicators and targets
• Stronger links need to be forged between the poverty agenda and the SOA / Community Plan in some areas.
• It will be challenging to shift the culture of organisations away from service activity to an outcomes based approach in some areas.

Key issues for consideration by the pilots

• There has been considerable debate within partnerships about how to give weight / value to priorities. Also how to determine what are the key actions within each priority.
• There are concerns about the possible impact of budget reductions on the ability to deliver.
• There has been discussion about the definition and context of terms such as poverty, inequality, deprivation and fairness and the need to have a standard understanding across all partnerships.
• Employability, increasing income and educational attainment have been consistent priorities across all pilot areas.
• There is a general agreement that Partnerships need to move toward early intervention and prevention. However, it is acknowledged that considerable work is still required to fully achieve this.
• Partnerships appear to be more focused on providing support to their most vulnerable people and communities- for example the elderly, young people in transition, workless households rather than on specific geographic communities.
• Partnerships have maintained a focus on inequality and closing the gap for key outcomes.

What have we learned about prioritisation?

How should priorities be used?

It was felt that prioritisation is inevitably a "political" issue, and consensus and in some cases compromise will need to be reached by partnerships. There is little point in a partnership agreeing a set of priorities if it doesn't actually influence anything.

Priorities should be:

• Understood and agreed by stakeholders
• Reflected in key strategy documents
• Reflected in operational plans
• Reflected in performance management systems
• Reflected in resource allocation (including Budgets, Staffing, Equipment)

What questions do we need to ask when we prioritise?

• Do we actually know 'what works' (which interventions have an effective and sustainable impact, represent good value for money)?
• Is there agreement on the evidence base / key issues / challenges / opportunities / what's important?
• Are there any limitations placed on individual partners due to funding, etc?
• Does the priority have a strong strategic fit? (Including contribution to SOA Outcomes, Objectives and Targets)?
• What is the likely impact / difference that can be made in the short, medium and long term?
• What value for money does it represent? (ratio of inputs to outputs / outcomes)
• What is the sustainability of the impact? (Early intervention / prevention / downstream savings)
• Does it add value? (collaborative gain / complement other activities)
• Does it contain any innovative approaches?

Key considerations for agreeing priority outcomes

• Agree a clear process for decision-making on priorities, based upon the appropriate governance arrangements for the organisation / partnership. Leaders should recognise that there is a need for further prioritisation and clear benefits to be gained from the process.
• Draw upon the available evidence base to better understand the partnerships needs and limitations. Use agreed criteria and weighting to assist in ranking priorities and appraising potential options.
• Agree a relatively small number of key outcomes as the partnership's priorities along with clear targets and milestones. The partnership should be equally clear about what is no longer deemed to be a priority.
• Engage the views of a wide range of stakeholders and understand individual partners' priorities, flexibilities and restrictions.

Key considerations for implementing priority outcomes

• Effectively communicate agreed priority outcomes to stakeholders.
• Ensure the agreed priority outcomes are reflected in the strategic / operational plans and in the resource allocation decisions of partners.
• Utilise partnership structures to consider the most effective mix of interventions and delivery mechanisms for achieving the desired outcomes.
• Consider how best to achieve a shift of activities towards a greater focus on prevention and early intervention.
• Develop detailed action plans, which set out the agreed interventions that are designed to deliver on the agreed priority outcomes.
• Track and assess progress against the agreed targets and milestones for priorities and scale back or cease non-priority activities.
• Keep priorities under review and re-assess them at regular periods and also following significant developments.

The economic climate may be tough but doing nothing isn't an option

Partnerships should:

• Focus on outcomes, not services
• Respect the inter-relationship of outcomes: economic wellbeing; safety; health and social care etc. Intervention in one area can impact on others.
• Recognise the benefits of comprehensive research and logic modelling.
• Recognise we cannot do outcomes to people. Communities need to be involved in the process. This would demand co-production and a change to current public service delivery models.

What were the key challenges for the delegates?

• There is a need to influence the 'hearts and minds' of a number of those working in our local authorities and community planning partnerships in order to change the culture of service activity in 'silos' to an outcomes focused approach. It was recognised that this would take time and effort to achieve.
• There was the acknowledgement that everyone is buying into the theory of early intervention but the reality of staff and budget reductions could lead to protectionism in some areas.
• Prioritisation can be a 'political' issue both in terms of working with elected members and also dealing with internal structures. This can prove to be challenging when trying to progress the agenda.
• Prioritisation, especially around poverty is such a multi faceted, multi agency issue that it can be difficult to organise and manage. Especially in regard to evidence gathering.
• There is a need for a greater understanding across organisations of the agreed definitions of 'poverty', 'regeneration' and 'early intervention'. It is possible that various partners, divisions or departments may interpret the issues differently. Practitioners felt the need to have agreement on the fundamental, long term issues.
• There are issues around stigma, the preconceptions of the 'undeserving' poor and the use of other terminology which may be considered offensive. This can impact on the ease with which some poverty activities are implemented.
• It was felt that some of those working with CPPs could improve their level of interaction with those actually experiencing poverty to enhance their understanding of the issues locally and contribute to the local area poverty profile.
• The groups which are experiencing poverty are increasingly hard to define as many previously more affluent people are now dipping below the poverty line. It was felt that practitioners need more sophisticated methods to be able to deal with both those new to poverty and those who are experiencing persistent, intergenerational poverty.
• Partnership working is a time and resource intensive activity which needs to be consistently evaluated and maintained to be effective. It was commented that some agreements between partners may often decline after a certain length of time.

What actions could be taken to address these challenges?

• Building on existing strategies to work across services in order to develop a holistic view of a service user. This can save time, effort, duplication and money. Frequently it is the same group of families in a particular area who are repeat users of services.
• Looking into income patterns, individual behaviour and spending trends is important but there is the need to recognise that poverty manifests itself in different ways.
• Investing in the capacity of future and recent parents can increase the life chances of their children. Especially in areas such as literacy and numeracy.
• The delegates recognised the benefits of Local Authority and CPPs using a logic modelling approach.
• Communities need to be 'on board' and contribute meaningfully to Local Authorities (LA)s and CPPs. Some delegates felt that Community Engagement and Empowerment should be effectively funded and communities given greater responsibility for delivery of some of their services.

What kind of support would be useful? Who from?

• Strong leadership at a high level is essential to embed an early intervention approach and to push forward an agenda of prioritisation.
• It is vital to have political backing of the prioritisation agenda. Politicians need to have the courage to look beyond the short term to back early intervention in their own wards / constituencies as well as others.
• The learning network is well placed to provide practical support and advice to practitioners.
• The further development of the national outcome indicator menu led by the Improvement Service will be a key tool.
• Case studies with a greater focus on outcomes at a project level would be useful to give practitioners examples of approaches taken and how it can be done. Also case studies on how the successful implementation of an early intervention approach has balanced current demands and future need.
• Projects and organisations need to be supported to develop the skills and capacity to evaluate themselves. This would allow them to recognise and respond more quickly and effectively to issues.

What next?

There will be a case study produced from each pilot area and range of thematic documents to capture the learning from the pilot project experience.

The Community Regeneration and Tackling Poverty Learning Network will continue to run dissemination events from the pilot project with the Improvement Service in the spring of 2011.

Further information

The Improvement Service has produced an in depth paper on the topic of prioritisation. This will be available on the Improvement Service website. Contact Dr Andrew McGuire for more information.

Scottish Centre for Regeneration

This document is published by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, which is part of the Scottish Government. We support our public, private and voluntary sector delivery partners to become more effective at:

• regenerating communities and tackling poverty
• developing more successful town centres and local high streets
• creating and managing mixed and sustainable communities
• making housing more energy efficient
• managing housing more efficiently and effectively

We do this through:

• coordinating learning networks which bring people together to identify the challenges they face and to support them to tackle these through events, networking and capacity building programmes
• identifying and sharing innovation and practice through publishing documents detailing examples of projects and programmes and highlighting lessons learned
• developing partnerships with key players in the housing and regeneration sector to ensure that our activities meet their needs and support their work

Scottish Centre for Regeneration
Scottish Government
Highlander House
58 Waterloo Street
Glasgow
G2 7DA
Tel: 0141 271 3736
Email: contactscr@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.partnersinregeneration.com

The views expressed in learning points are those of participants at various events and are not necessarily shared by their employers, the Scottish Centre for Regeneration (SCR) or the Scottish Government.

December 2010