Themes
echo update
echo, our framework to assess and develop public sector openness to community influence is now being used within Local Strategic Partnerships, thematic sub-groups and public sector agencies.
It is the first framework that is easy to get .. it is a gentle challenge .. the first framework I have seen which is about cultural change
Developed in the West Midlands with support from the National Empowerment Parntership, Community Development Exchange, Improvement & Efficiency West Midlands (L2D programme), Wolverhampton Partnership and the Black Country Take Part Pathfinder we have now started running the first echo facilitator training courses. As with Voice, these are commissioned courses which may be opened up to wider audiences and which target people who are in aposition to facilitate discussions in their organisations
echo promises to have a wide application and has already been used to:
- help a Partnership Board to consider how genuinely open they are to community influence
- help inform proposals for improving the quality of community engagement across a locality
- increase awareness and understanding amongst key decision makers and influencers of the need to be open to influence and of what being open to influence looks like
- prioritise actions to move community engagement forward across a Partnership
- enhance understanding of engagement & empowerment.
- contribute to an LAA NI4 Delivery Plan
If you have not yet come across echo, but this raises your interest, you can find out more in our resources section and/or join us on our network.
Voice update
Hugely useful, quite enlightening, the breadth and depth is interesting. It doesn’t require significant adaptation to be used in a variety of circumstances.
Voice, our framework on assessing and developing community influence, is now being widely used by Community Groups, Networks, Organisations and Forums. Groups that have worked with it include: Police Independent Advisory Groups, Community Centre Management Committees, Community Anchors, Voluntary Sector Organisations, Forums and a Third Sector Partnership.
We have had an increased uptake of our 2-day Voice Facilitator Training Course, which is specifically designed for people who already work with groups and have good facilitation skills. In 2010 we have delivered this training in London, Wiltshire, & Birmingham and are due to deliver more in Redcar & Cleveland, Wolverhampton & Birmingham again. These are all commissioned course which potentially have places available for people from different organisations. Watch this space or join our network for updates.
If you haven’t come across Voice yet but like the sound of it so far, then check out our resources section to download a copy of our leaflet and handy guide, or read more about community influence under our areas of work.
Voice is of particular relevance for workers assigned/attached to particular community groups, networks, organisations, and workers working with and supporting community groups, networks and organisations.
Making the business case for community engagement
We are interested in debating this – click on the title of this post if you would like to proceed to a message board where you can comment and contribute.
This might be about
- explicit messages on how community engagement can help agencies to meet targets, in the light of statistics like the 85.7% of Local Authorities who think that the economic slowdown will make it more difficult to achieve Local Area Agreement targets (Survey of the Impact of the Economic Slowdown on Local Authorities 2008)
- ideas for, and experience of, measuring ROI (Return on Investment) where the investment is community engagement
or something else …
echo update
echo, our framework to assess and develop public sector openness to influence, is now being tested in the West Midlands as part of the Improvement & Efficiency West Midlands ‘Learning to Deliver’ Programme.
It promises to have a relatively wide application and has already been used to:
- help a Partnership Board to consider how genuinely open they are to community influence
- help inform proposals for improving the quality of community engagement across a locality
- increase awareness and understanding amongst key decision makers and influencers of the need to be open to influence and of what being open to influence looks like
- prioritise actions to move community engagement forward across a Partnership
- as part of a broader action plan on delivering community engagement in a District over a three year period.
- enhance understanding of engagement & empowerment.
- contribute to an LAA NI4 Delivery Plan
If you have not yet come across echo, but this raises your interest, you can find out more in our resources section.
Voice update
Recent comments about Voice include:
Hugely useful, quite enlightening, the breadth and depth is interesting. It doesn’t require significant adaptation to be used in a variety of circumstances
Voice, our framework on assessing and developing community influence, is now being widely used by Community Groups, Networks, Organisations and Forums.
We have recently introduced it to: Police Independent Advisory Groups, Community Centre Management Committees and Community Anchors, and are soon to see how it works with Voluntary Sector Organisations and Forums.
If you haven’t come across it yet but like the sound of it then check out our resources section to download a copy of our leaflet and handy guide, or read more about community influence under our areas of work.
Voice is of particular relevance for workers assigned/attached to particular community groups, networks, organisations, and workers working with and supporting community groups, networks and organisations.
Very useful tool it has clarified things and has given us a lot more to think about
Dispersed leadership
We have been thinking about what we understand by ‘leadership’, with the help of some ideas from ‘Power, Leadership and Change’ (OU Business School, 2000) produced by the Certificate in Management Programme Team:
Instead of seeing leadership as something invested in one person we consider leadership as a process: – tackling the big issues that face a group or an organisation.
For example, if we agree that there are three types of core issues in a group or organisation:
Strategic: the overall direction of the group and the vision
Task: how the group will achieve what it wants to
People: maintaining the morale, commitment and enthusiasm of people over time
Then, a leader is someone who helps the group tackle any or all of these issues - meaning that there can be several leaders at any one time, all working on different things.
It is therefore possible to talk about leadership being ‘dispersed’ throughout the group or organisation – with some having more dispersed leadership than others depending upon culture and membership.
People can demonstrate leadership in different ways:
- Reviewing where the group or organisation is going
- Making sure people feel comfortable and welcomed
- Searching for funding opportunities
- Representing the group in wider forums
- Researching matters of interest to the group
- Knowing the local political and funding context
People can only be leaders if other members of the group or organisation accept them as leaders, accept their influence. This acceptance is often based on knowledge and expertise.
echo – a tool for public agencies
echo is a tool for public agencies to use to consider how open they are to community influence, in relation to their potential to respond to that influence. We have been talking to different agencies about it and it seems to make sense to them, so we are currently in the process of testing it out.
For a brief lowdown – download the 2-page summary and, if you want more information, you can download a copy of the original research report.
We recently ran a ‘rapid briefing’ session in the East Midlands where officers identified a variety of uses for echo:
- It is an easy toolkit, could be useful across the County to help consistency and to talk to the non-converted
- It could help with the Community Engagement Strategy development thought process
- It could provide us with a baseline of where we are – and an action plan
- It made me think differently – more deeply into what outcomes could be
- It turns the intangible into the tangible
- I can see how we could usefully apply this to help the organisation move forward in terms of equality and diversity
- There has to be recognition of good practice in the organisation, echo can help us to locate this and learn from it
- Within an LSP context it is important – funding reductions will make it hard for the LA to respond so we are going to have to work more in partnership
changes offers short (3 hour) sessions to introduce echo and facilitate discussion about how it might be useful to agencies and partnerships: contact us for fees and availability
DiCE: planning & evaluation framework
changes is pleased to introduce DiCE – download the 2-page summary here!
Researched for over 10 years, DiCE has been developed by community development specialists, to enable organisations to carry out effective community empowerment, putting the values and principles of community development into action.
DiCE can help you work with communities:
- Increasing skills, knowledge and confidence
- Promoting equality and inclusion
- Bringing people together around common issues and concerns
- Building positive relationships across communities and groups and enabling co-operative working
- Encouraging and enabling communities to influence decision making in public services
DiCE can be used for work which focuses on community wellbeing and community empowerment, at policy, programme or project level. It is appropriate to people who work in public and voluntary sectors, in roles such as: Community Engagement, Community Services, Neighbourhood Management…
changes offers 2-day training courses on DiCE – contact us for information
Voice (formerly the Axis of Influence)
We have changed the name! The axis for community networks – once called ‘axis of influence’ – is now called ‘voice’. The reason for the change is that we have developed a second axis – for public sector agencies – called ‘echo’. Voice and echo are BOTH axes of influence so we wanted to give them each their own unique name.
‘Voice’ is a tool which helps community groups and networks to assess and improve the influence they have on agencies and partnerships. The ‘axis’ in ‘voice’ plots existing capacity to influence against how influential the group feels. It can be used to: assess and monitor community influence, prompt discussion and debate within groups and help plan how to become more influential.
“If this was America you’d be paying a fortune for the information and know-how that’s contained here. This model is indispensable for any organisation serious about making an impact” – comment from recent ‘Voice’ facilitator training
changes has developed a Resource Pack to help people to make the best use of voice.
- Part 1 – handy guide is available to download here
- For information about the other sections of the Resource Pack, click to check out the ‘introduction and overview’
voice in print
In its former guise as ‘the axis of influence’, articles about voice have been published in the Community Development Journal and NCVO newsletter.
Contact us to talk to us about commissioning a course for people in your area who work with community groups and networks to learn more about ’voice’ and how to use it.
Learning, Support & Development
This briefing paper summarises the Women Take Part (WTP) findings in relation to the learning, support and development opportunities available to women