Hello. Welcome…
changes is an independent consultancy and developer of the Voice and echo frameworks, the Women Take Part Leadership Programme and the Inspiring Democracy resource for councillors. We specialise in active citizenship, community engagement, equalities & diversity, partnership working, community influence, community empowerment and community development.
Established in 2005, we are based in the West Midlands and are committed to making our work accessible.
This is what we do…
Latest thinking blog…
Resource for councillors
The Inspiring Democracy programme has kept us busy for the first part of 2012 (see post below) and we now have the resource to share. We produced a blog rather than a paper report – this is new territory for us and feels like it opens doors to new opportunities. Check it out here: http://inspiringdemocracy.wordpress.com/
Inspiring Democracy
We have spent the first part of 2012 immersed in this work, contracted by Locality and funded by DCLG. The eventual output will be some form of guidance for local Councillors to help them navigate the changing policy landscape – focusing on localism and community engagement. We have linked up with colleagues in 7 different areas: Bradford, Dudley, Lancashire, Shropshire, Solihull, Wiltshire, Wolverhampton – undertaking interviews and facilitating focus groups to get a handle on the opportunities and challenges of localism from the perspective of Elected Members and their relationships with the voluntary & community sector.
We have been talking to Elected Members, individuals active in their communities, community groups, voluntary sector organisations and Council officers.
Emerging themes may not be that surprising, as they group under considerations of: Elected Member roles, actually ‘doing’ localism, structures and processes, skills & awareness and communications. The content is fascinating – and complex – and we are busy with our research analysis. Next step will be to pull together a draft guide, try that out with colleagues and research participants and then brush it up for final submission in May.
We have been over-whelmed by the active support of our leads in each of the 7 areas and the level of interest generated by this work. There is clearly growing awareness that many Elected Members will need support to embrace a role involving community group development and support, with all that we know that entails.
Policy nutshell
Check out our latest resource – the policy nutshell where we will bring you bite-size pieces of useful informaton about the changing landscape for health and social care with a community, patient and service user/carer engagement flavour.
To produce this resource, we have teamed up with Jan Smithies who has spent the last 2 years with The Health Inequalities National Support Team (HINST) - which was part of a Government programme to support local areas to promote equality and tackle inequalities in access to healthcare.
Jan will be working with us to develop seminars and workshops which explain and explore the ever-changing and complex world of health and social care, including Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, Health & Wellbeing Boards, Joint Health & Wellbeing Strategies, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Integrated Health & Social Care, Local Authority Commissioning, Public Health transition, tackling health inequalities and the development of HealthWatch.
An expanding series
The ‘axis of influence series’ is becoming just that now as we have 4 frameworks sitting under that heading: Voice, echo, DUO and Dynamo. We have also set up a new domain to make it easier to point directly to them so, if you are wanting to tell people about them just signpost them to www.axisofinfluence.co.uk !