Making Community Participation Meaningful

by Burns, Danny

• ISBN13: 9781861346148
• ISBN10: 186134614X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-07-21
• Publisher: Policy Pr

Summary

Community participation is now demanded of virtually all public sector services and programs. This handbook provides practitioners, community activists, regeneration managers, teachers and academics with the tools needed to ensure that community participation is effective. The handbook is a companion volume to What Works in Assessing Community Participation? (The Policy Press, 2004), which documents the results of the road testing of two earlier frameworks for assessing community participation: Active Partners: Benchmarking Community Participation in Regeneration (Yorkshire Forward, 2000) and Auditing Community Participation: An Assessment Handbook (The Policy Press, 2000). This book: outlines the key considerations necessary to ensure that community participation is effective; provides detailed sets of questions to enable stakeholders to assess the extent to which the indicators of success are being met; highlights a variety of resources that can be used by community groups to generat

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	iv
SECTION 1: Introduction	1	(8)
What is the purpose of such a detailed framework?	2	(1)
What is community participation?	2	(1)
Why is community participation essential?	2	(1)
Key principles which have underpinned our work	3	(1)
What these frameworks can be used for	3	(2)
Key lessons from the road testing of the original frameworks	5	(3)
The structure of the framework	8	(1)
SECTION 2: A new framework	9	(7)
Health warning	12	(1)
Applying the framework	12	(2)
Additional advice	14	(2)
SECTION 3: Reflective questions for addressing key considerations	16	(33)
What different communities exist within your locality?	18	(4)
Who or what has determined the rules in your partnership or for your initiative?	22	(2)
What is the balance of power within the partnership/initiative?	24	(2)
In what ways, and to what extent, are communities involved?	26	(2)
What level of investment is there in community participation?	28	(2)
Is there strong leadership to support community participation?	30	(2)
Do decision-making structures allow for local diversity?	32	(2)
Are you able to work in a joined-up way?	34	(2)
Are service structures compatible with community participation?	36	(2)
Is your group able to run in an effective and inclusive way?	38	(2)
How does your group or organisation ensure that its representatives on committees and boards are accountable?	40	(2)
How effective is your information and communication?	42	(2)
Do you have an effective approach to community and organisational learning?	44	(2)
Has participation made any difference?	46	(3)
SECTION 4: Tools and exercises	49	(20)
Speedos	50	(3)
Steps and barriers	53	(2)
Stakeholder cards	55	(2)
Objectives exercise	57	(1)
Drawings and pictures	58	(1)
Spider's web maps	59	(1)
Level of participation scale	60	(1)
Meetings checklist	61	(1)
The `hats' form	62	(2)
The decision trail	64	(5)
Recording meetings	69