Transcript Friendship Care Choices

Values into Action
- lessons for community
development and sustainable
regeneration.
fch: the organisation
We are a English Midlands
based social business. Our
goals are:

To provide high quality
services tailored to
people’s needs and
preferences

support
which
helps
people to live fuller lives

neighbourhoods which
are better places to live.
Neighbourhood Management
The fch approach
Anticipating National Strategy
for Neighbourhood Renewal
 Pilot neighbourhood initiatives

• Anti-poverty
• Sustainability of neighbourhoods
• Service delivery
Building capacity
 Enabling communities to have
greater impact on decisions

Neighbourhood Management
The Way Forward

New Government initiatives for joint
working

Community-led approaches, not
short-termist approaches of the past

Most effective strategies engage
at all levels

fch Locality Teams provide nucleus for
such strategies in its key neighbourhoods
Sparkbrook, Birmingham

Among most deprived areas in the UK

First housing action area in Britain, 1975

Inner city partnership programme funding for the
area in 1980s

Urban Action Plan for the area (1995),
developed by Birmingham City Council

SSTARI Regeneration Initiative (1996)

Designated health improvement area
Local Service Partnership
A Community Vehicle for
Sparkbrook

Involves fch, Focus Housing
Group and Birmingham City
Council

Specially established body
delivering a range of services

Involves local community in
running multi-function services
Background to LSP
 Inadequate communication between
agencies
 Agencies not well integrated with SRB
Partnership
 Facilitating Childcare Project
 Quality of Life Project (CURS, 2000)
research demonstrated need for better coordination of regeneration activities
Local Service Partnership
Objectives:
• To obtain accurate information and views from the community
about the neighbourhood
• To develop a suitable mechanism that meets local needs and
addresses issues of decline
• To establish a model of neighbourhood community
involvement
Structure
• Board comprises 4 local community representatives (including
schools and businesses)
• 5 local residents
• 3 landlord representatives
Community involvement in the
LSP
Consultation involved tenants
and service users of fch and
Focus
 Identified need for capacity
building
 Role of capacity building to
develop, later to include
prioritisation and budget reviews
 Emphasis on active involvement
of tenants, rather than local
councillors

Community facilitator
project
• Enables effective and inclusive involvement of the
community in establishing the LSP
• Local community mapping exercise and developing
database of local groups
• Enables groups to access training, employment and
funding opportunities
• Identifies opportunities for joint working by social
landlords in providing “street services”
• Aims to build capacity of wider community, not just
social housing tenants
• Transferable model of community empowerment, if
developed successfully
Lessons learned to date

Contending with other City Council priorities
• Some activities overtaken by politics of whole stock
transfer
• Provides useful information to shape future City
proposals
• Confirms the need for holistic view of service provision

Financial viability

Three -stage process

Multi-landlord v single landlord experiences

Involving frontline staff

Evidence - anecdotal v. empirical
A paradigm shift
•UK Government expects cultural shift in
attitudes of staff in statutory and local
agencies
•Could take up to 10 years for local strategic
partnerships to include genuine community
representation
•Statutory agencies vulnerable to overnight
changes in political leadership and direction
•Local Agencies in a better position to sustain
this shift
Conclusions
Effective Neighbourhood
Management must…



recognise that holistic working is
resource intensive and needs
time to develop
not create structures which are
set in concrete at the outset
recognise the need for informal
as well as formal structures - the
“weak” tools of persuasion and
knowledge building as well as
the “strong” tools of regulation