It is becoming increasingly apparent as I continue to explore the next steps of the Route Map for Community Participation in the Recovery Phase, that the intention will be to continue on a road already identified prior to COVID19. The Local Governance Review and The Community Empowerment Act (2015) have already paved a way through to the Third Sector playing a major role in our place; economically, environmentally, culturally, and socially. We now have the opportunity to expedite the vision in the context of the pandemic and the community response to the emergency. That response, as I have mentioned before, made a massive impact in limiting the immediate damage of the crisis, which the Public Sector acknowledges, they could not have achieved alone. This overwhelming sense of citizenship in a time of community need has the potential to help shape a new way forward in perhaps less urgent but equally challenging and difficult circumstances as we take the cautious steps into rebuilding what has been lost over the past few months. This situation offers a unique opportunity to look at what regrowth might look like. There are many innovative approaches up for consideration including concepts such as Degrowth, Community Wealth, and Local Economics. This dialogue is providing fertile ground to grow an audience more open to Community Participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, before we contemplate the next steps, I wanted to understand \u201cWhy Community Participation in the Recovery Phase?\u201d When reading papers which looked at communities across the world dealing with the impact of natural disasters the key point made was that participation has a positive psychological effect in overcoming trauma. COVID19 impacted all our lives to varying degrees; the mental health impacts will be felt in months to come. Perhaps the opportunities for communities to participate in the recovery phase in itself will contribute to strengthening our community wellbeing and mental health. Loss of control is a driving factor in mental health issues; offering control could be part of the recovery itself. There are a range of other suggested benefits, but participation is not a quick fix solution. There are clear principles but not a rigid ideology which can be complex and full of challenges. Communities will need to be supported with continued capacity building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next steps are not unfamiliar to those of us working towards realising the vision set out in the Community Empowerment Act (2015), but they are so pertinent now in terms of dealing with the budgetary challenges ahead. Step Three<\/em> \u2013 Better Collaboration <\/em>and Step Four \u2013 Trust in Community Ownership and Community Enterprise.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone who knows me, will be aware that I am an avid believer in the concept of Coproduction. I also believe that Coproduction is not just a relationship reserved between Public and Third Sectors. There are opportunities across all sectors to coproduce services to offer the best value for money, quality of service through knowledge of \u201clived experience<\/em>\u201d and innovation. This is especially prevalent across rural areas where communities and businesses are one of the same, where there are no clear demarked lines between the two sectors as your next-door neighbour could be one of your local businesses. If there is scope to improve the design and delivery of public services whilst maximising the impact of public investment, the time is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I refer back to my Facilities Management days where our aim was to create assets from our overheads and at a time when there will be an immense financial hole to fill one can understand the rational behind selling of assets commercially. Perhaps if these assets which often are more liabilities with expensive maintenance responsibilities could be considered as Golden Geese providing space for growing community capacity and resilience\u2026golden eggs if you like\u2026 How can the goose be nurtured to continue to produce the golden eggs? These golden eggs make a positive impact on numbers of older people able to stay in their own homes saving the costs of hospital beds and social care. These golden eggs are there to help someone in mental need before they are in mental crisis and need to be hospitalised. These golden eggs are engaging young people keeping them safer from becoming involved in antisocial behaviour or substance abuse. If the golden goose is killed, yes you will gather a few golden eggs but there will be no golden eggs in the future. Can more be done to improve the process around community ownership? This comes with the understanding that it is not the case that just \u201cbecause<\/em> it is community it is inherently good\u201d <\/em>as with any part of society there are great Third Sector Organisations and there are some that are not so good. Step Two <\/em>in the Route Map highlights the need to support Anchor organisations. These organisations are skilled in building the capacity with communities to help ensure robust business and project plans are in place before community ownership should occur for the benefit of all parties. However, a successful transfer of an asset can lever in external funding to an area, relieve overheads and produce many golden eggs which will produce bigger picture savings longer term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is becoming increasingly apparent as I continue to explore the next steps of the Route Map for Community Participation in the Recovery Phase, that the intention will be to continue on a road already identified prior to COVID19. The Local Governance Review and The Community Empowerment Act (2015) have already paved a way through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,12,8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-empowerment","category-coproduction","category-covid19","category-health-wellbeing","category-trending","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_1911-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirdsectortalk.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}