Fuente : UK Government
http://www.open.gov.uk/

UK: IT MAKES SENSE TO ASK - WOOLAS

/noticias.info/ Involving local people delivers improved public services and saves money by better targeting local needs, says an independent report published today by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

The report concludes that community involvement is a crucial factor in improving services especially in deprived areas. Based on a review of evidence from fifteen case studies, it shows that the use of different involvement mechanisms - including surveys, questionnaires, discussions, debates and delegating service delivery to users and communities themselves - is growing.

Community involvement is a key element in the government's drive to improve public services. The report concludes that the relatively modest costs of community involvement are generally outweighed by the benefits. The benefits identified included:

* reductions to the cost of public services;
* increased user satisfaction and easier access;
* lower crime rates, reduced fear of crime and better local environments;
* better prospects for improved health outcomes;
* improved employment opportunities for local residents;
* more motivated front-line staff and more joined-up local services.

The costs of these activities are £45-£60 per annum per household or less, which is about the same as a CCTV camera, a duvet or a micro-wave cooker.

'Improving delivery of mainstream services in deprived areas: the role of community involvement' also shows that complementary changes in service providers' behaviour and performance are needed. The study considers the constraints on more comprehensive and intensive involvement of communities in deprived areas and what more might be done to encourage it.

The report, commissioned by ODPM, the Cabinet Office and the Home Office, looks at 15 case studies, covering crime, health, education, worklessness, housing and cross-cutting issues. The projects are in: Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Durham, Hastings, East London, Leicester, Liverpool, Norfolk, Reading, Sedgefield, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent, and Weston-Super-Mare.

Phil Woolas Minister for Local Government and Neighbourhood Renewal speaking at the National Association of Councils for Voluntary Service annual conference in Telford said:

"This report confirms that the Government's emphasis on community involvement can pay off in terms of better service delivery. The case study examples paint a very clear picture of what can be achieved. It is clear that it makes sense to ask the local people.

"We recognise that the picture is mixed and some services are more effective at involving people than others. Through the Safer and Stronger Communities Fund, the Together We Can strategy and the work across all government departments, we are committed to strengthening the mechanisms and incentives for service providers to meaningfully involve communities and service users.

"The Together We Can action plan sets out the cross-government commitment to empower citizens to work with public bodies to set and achieve common goals. By having this shared plan of action, we can ensure the key initiatives from all relevant government departments are carried out so they make a real difference to people's lives.

"This report should be welcomed by the voluntary and community sector. It re-affirms that voluntary and community sector is a key partner in our common goal of improving public services, strengthening local democracy and renewing our poorest neighbourhoods."

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. 15 case study summaries are attached below.

2. The 'Improving delivery of mainstream services in deprived areas: the role of community involvement' executive summary, the full report and case study report are available on the ODPM Neighbourhood Renewal Unit web site http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk

3. Hard copies of the executive summary are available from PO Box 236, Wetherby, West Yorkshire, LS23 7NB; Tel: 0870 1226 236; Fax: 0870 1226 237; Textphone: 0870 120 7405, or email: odpm@twoten.press.net

4. The study was commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, working with Local Government and Social Exclusion Unit colleagues, the Home Office's Civil Renewal Unit, and the Cabinet Office's Office of Public Services Reform. The research was undertaken by a consortium including SQW Ltd, University of the West of England, LSE and Whole Systems Development.

5. The current SEU work programme 'Improving Services, Improving Lives' is looking at improving service delivery for the most disadvantaged. Further reports will be published in coming months with agreed policy actions to improve services and promote social justice for all.

6. The Home Office has led the creation of the 'Together We Can' Action plan which sets out the government's commitment to empower citizens to work with public bodies to set and achieve common goals. By having this shared plan of action we can ensure the key initiatives from all relevant government departments are carried out so they make a real difference to people's lives. 'Together We Can' sets out eight key public policy areas for strengthening citizen's engagement in delivering success across those policies.

7. CASE STUDIES: extracts from the report

BIRMINGHAM

Birmingham devolving a range of services to District Committees advised by District Strategic Partnerships

Birmingham City Council has been experimenting with ways of devolving services since they introduced LILA (Local Involvement, Local Action) in 1997. The learning from this has been fed into their current proposals for devolution to 11 districts, where service management and delivery will be devolved to District Committees (of councillors) advised by District Strategic Partnerships. These are currently working up their plans which will be fed into the Council's budgetary process in late 2004/early 2005. District officers have been charged with developing plans for involving communities, and the district planning process will involve participatory budgeting processes. The services covered are: housing, community services (including leisure) and environmental services - the police are also configuring their basic command units to match the districts.

The decentralisation being planned is to the district/area level, not neighbourhood level, although neighbourhood structures exist in many places and there will be links between the two levels.

In Castle Vale and Balsall Heath where the greatest investment has been made in community activity and involvement, 30% of residents thought conditions had improved compared with 6% in Birmingham as a whole. In Castle Vale, life expectancy was reported to have increased by 5 years over just 7 years of the programme. It is one of only two areas in the city where fear of crime has reduced over the past two years.

SHEFFIELD - WORKLESSNESS

Manor and Castle Training and Resource Centre owned and staffed by local people offering training and education services. The Manor and Castle Development Trust was set up in 1997, covering a population of 70,000, some 10 neighbourhoods, in south Sheffield. MCDT is now a large community organisation delivering a range of activities, with an asset base of its own. It has delivered a number of SRB and other regeneration programmes, and has sought to join these up, and is also working with mainstream partners on activities.

It oversees a diverse range of activities, including neighbourhood regeneration, house building partnerships, environmental work, small business development, the provision of training and business services, and land and property development, some of which have now been spun off into autonomous organisations and are no longer formally part of the MCDT but have been created by it or its predecessor organisations and which can now be said to have become mainstreamed.

BRADFORD

Bradford Vision neighbourhood partnership is involving the neighbourhood in the improvement of a range of mainstream services.

Bradford's LSP (Bradford Vision) has been seeking to develop a way to involve neighbourhoods in discussions about mainstream services. The City has a very ethnically and culturally diverse population. Some 12 Neighbourhood Partnerships have been established, and although they are at a relatively early stage in their development (in their second year at time of the research), engagement with service providers is already underway.

The study is looking at how the process has developed the purpose and operations of the neighbourhood partnerships, and focuses in more detail on two areas in particular - Bradford South and Frizinghall - of differing scale and tenure mixes. A range of services is looked at in each case.

LONDON, TOWER HAMLETS

Engaging the third sector in delivery of services such as youth services, services for children with disabilities and community recycling.

In response to its pursuit of better public services, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has developed a third sector strategy, launched in early 2002, to create a bigger role for local community-led organisations, particularly those led by minority ethnic groups. Several significant contracts for mainstream services have been awarded to local groups for such services as youth services, services for children with disabilities and community recycling (£5.5m). The council are seeking excellence in services as well as strong engagement of local people. Tower Hamlets has a very diverse population and significant deprivation. They see community organisations as better placed to recruit local people and more responsive in their delivery of services. Drawing on experience gained, the council has drawn up a new Commissioning Framework for its services, to assist use of the third sector.

The cost of delivering Youth Services has remained the same but the quality of the service has increased (through improved staffing structures, recruitment of more qualified staff and increased training provision) with better responsiveness to local needs and a resultant increase in take-up of the service - e.g. Poplar HARCA reporting attendance rates increasing by 23% between 2003-03 and 2003-04.

A new community recycling service has been introduced designed to bring about increased recycling rates. This has been achieved - the average participation rate in door step recycling schemes is 25% but the community recycling scheme is achieving 65% across the high rise properties it serves. In addition, the scheme has provided new employment opportunities for local people - 95% of the 60 new jobs created were taken by local people.

LIVERPOOL

Community providers & enterprises taking on area management responsibility for a number of council services and a broader role in regeneration.

INclude is a well known local organisation (a Housing Corporation supported housing regeneration company) based in Liverpool 8 that has taken on area management responsibility for a number of council services, initially environmental services, as well as taking a broader role in regeneration. This study focuses on the community engagement activities by INclude and the influence this has on decision-making, and is focusing in more detail on a 3 key services, including review of service performance data.

During the first year of the recycling work, take up of services was impressive with 28.6 tonnes of paper., 6.5 tonnes of glass and 0.5 tonnes of aluminium being collected and recycled - prior to INclude there was very little recycling activity in the area. Housing void rates dropped from 28% to zero and there was a 50-80% reduction in rates across four key crime indicators over the period that INclude had been active in the area.

NORFOLK - CRIME

Norfolk Constabulary's minority ethnic liaison officers, building trusting relationships with local BME communities through information and consultation.

Norfolk Constabulary has employed 3 minority ethnic liaison officers whose job it is to build up trust and develop good relationships between the police and local BME communities across Norfolk. They have had particular success with the Portuguese community, where members of the community are now running language classes for local police officers and provide free translation of police posters. The related 'hate crime' unit are also involving local people in multi-agency case conferencing.

STOKE ON TRENT - CRIME

The Policing Priority Area in Stoke on Trent is one of the first 5 PPA pilots introduced by the Policing Standards Unit to improve services in crime 'hotspots'. It has a neighbourhood management approach, with a project manager employed to facilitate communication between residents and service providers through a steering group and other community engagement strategies.

The case study is about improving service delivery through improving inter-agency communication at the ground level, via a weekly 'delivery group' meeting, as well as community engagement.

Phase One of the PPA covered 1,000 residents, but a six month extension seeks to expand the area to 6,000 residents. Representatives of local community groups were members of the steering group alongside a range of partners from the police and the local authority, whose meetings were also open to the public. The project is also linked to the Stoke-on-Trent Community Facilitation Programme.

Crime rates dropped by 50% in the first year of the PPA attributable to a large extent to a separate initiative - Operation Duplex - but also to the work of the PPA as demonstrated by the fall in crime rates in the other areas to which the PPA was later extended. At the beginning of the PPA there were 19 void properties on the Grange estate - there is now a waiting list.

DWP WORKING NEIGHBOURHOODS PILOT - WORKLESSNESS

Testing intensive support for individuals and neighbourhoods.

The Working Neighbourhoods Pilot is a Department of Works and Pensions initiative which went into action in April 2004. It has been set up to test the effects of intensive work focused support for individuals and neighbourhoods and aspires to reduce worklessness rates in twelve neighbourhoods to as near as possible to the rates in their surrounding area.

The neighbourhoods are small and have been selected from the thirty most deprived wards in the country. The pilot is centrally designed and administered but there is considerable autonomy of action at a local level. The pilot is in its early stages but the emerging findings are positive.

SEDGEFIELD - WORKLESSNESS

Sedgefield Job Centre Plus Outreach exploring the costs and benefits of outreach advisers for service delivery.

The Sedgefield Jobcentre Plus Outreach project has established an outreach service in five community locations in the poorest wards and neighbourhoods in the Borough of Sedgefield. It was developed during 2002 and came into effect from January 2003 when it was established in Shildon and Cornforth. Since then it has been rolled out to Newton Aycliffe (West Ward) and Trimdon, starting January 2004, and to Ferryhill Station in April 2004.

The project seeks to enable people to come off benefits of all kinds and enter into employment. The case study explores the costs and benefits of the outreach advisers and the difference it has made to the service.

DERBY HOMES ALMO / DERBY ASSOC CUSTOMER PANELS - HOUSING

Housing association involving tenants and leaseholders in reviewing services eg through a service user review group.

Service users of this housing organisation are actively encouraged to monitor satisfaction with customer care and service delivery. This is demonstrated through the involvement of tenants and leaseholders in undertaking their own reality checks. An example of this is the work carried out by tenants who formed the Service User Review Group (SURG) which included surveys with tenants on caretaking services and checks on the facilities and services offered at area housing offices.

HASTINGS - HOUSING & ENVIRONMENT

Ore Valley Resident Service Organisation delivering a range of services for a housing association.

This study considers a pilot Resident Service Organisation, delivering a range of services for a housing association, including grounds maintenance and recycling, playground inspections, painting & decorating and others. Local people are recruited and trained to undertake these tasks.

Procurement through the RSO has reduced the unit costs of the service (by about one third to a half) - primarily through the use of trainee labour which has added to the time taken to get the work done but with no adverse effects on quality. The use of the service saved £37,000 for one job involving the redecoration of 59 flats - a saving of about one half compared with the use of private contractors.

Similar savings - of the order of about one third - have been achieved in the Environment Team's work on landscaping and related projects. Also, 3 out of the 4 RSO core services are additional - providing a higher volume of services for some tenants (those that are frail, elderly or vulnerable tenants) who previously could not afford the services from private contractors. All 16 new jobs created were taken by local unemployed people. "I was down the Job Centre every day but there was nothing for me. Now, if I have a day off, or even at the weekend, I can't wait to get back to work . . . When you're out of work for ages you develop bad habits" (19 year old with dyslexia).

READING - HEALTH

Involving patents and public in ways that are now recognised as good practice by PatPaCT.

Reading Primary Care Trust (PCT) developed a patient and public involvement strategy, now recognised as a model of good practice by PatPaCT. The PCT funds a partnership development worker to work with the local voluntary sector to find ways to improve the engagement of local people in decision-making. A range of activities have been undertaken.

WESTON SUPER MARE - HEALTH,

Provider-community engagement securing a healthy living centre to improve access to medical services by local people.

In the Bourneville estate in Weston super Mare, a local community health worker brought together a 'Professional Residents Committee' to examine ways of reducing health inequalities. 15 residents meet together with professionals from the council, PCT and Sure Start. They have jointly helped to secure GPs for the estate, helped to secure funding for a Healthy Living Centre and sought to improve access to, and take up of, local medical services including dentistry by local people including developing interpretation services for non-English speakers.

The GP surgery has three full-time GPs as well as nurses and a health visitor . . . there was previously a part-time surgery only. Greater numbers of asthma and diabetes cases in children have been diagnosed because they now receive full medicals.

DURHAM - EDUCATION

The Cornforth Partnership an independent development Trust delivering health, education and environmental activities.

The Cornforth Partnership is a village regeneration agency founded in 1993, now constituted as an independent development trust. Cornforth is a deprived village near Durham. They deliver a range of health, education and environmental activities, using a variety of funding sources. Previous evaluation studies have been done of some activities. This study is focusing on their education activities.

Significant changes have happened as a result of engagement between service providers, and both their users and the Cornforth Partnership. As one service provider put it, 'I don't think I could return to my old way of working now that that I have experienced working directly in the community like this.'

LEICESTER

St. Matthew's Estate: a multi agency centre proving a range of services.

St. Matthew's Estate is a deprived council estate in Leicester. Through local initiative a multi-agency centre was established, where a range of services are delivered together. The priorities of public services are informed and influenced by a local Area Forum involving residents and providers working together to improve services. The research case study focuses on user engagement with the primary school, Sure Start and the local library.

The outcomes of effective engagement included: service provision more closely aligned to local needs; an increase in the provision and take up of learning and development opportunities, and greater community. notas_de_prensa_archivo