Social Inclusion (Community Engagement)
Welcome to this meeting of the Social Justice Committee. I trust that everyone had a productive recess.
Item 1 on the agenda concerns community engagement in the social inclusion process. I welcome Brian Henderson of Reid Howie Associates Ltd. The committee will recall that at our away day in February we agreed to seek further clarification of some areas of research—setting priorities and effective community engagement in the social inclusion process. We are grateful to Brian Henderson for coming to today's meeting so that we can pursue those issues.
Members will be aware that the work concentrated only on providing an overview of the extent to which social inclusion partnerships have been able to engage with communities of interest. It did not consider the effectiveness and impact of SIPs. Once Brian Henderson has made an introductory statement, I will open the floor to questions from members.
Brian Henderson (Reid Howie Associates Ltd):
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to the committee. I apologise for not being able to attend the away day at New Lanark—I was on my way back from Tenerife at the time.
It is always a struggle, isn't it?
Aye. I am not sure that the public purse could have stretched to bringing members out to Tenerife, which would perhaps have been a better option.
As a prelude to our discussion, it would be worth while for me to set out one or two issues. I know that the committee has a long agenda, so I will try to be as brief as I can. I do not intend to go over the background to the work or the wider policy issues. Those are detailed in the report and we can return to them later if members wish.
I want to record my thanks to the many people in the SIPs who contributed to the research. We were overwhelmed by the volume of information that they provided. The committee should be aware that there was a high level of co-operation.
I want to set out three things. First, I will set out what we were asked to do and, by extension, what we were not asked to do. The convener has already touched on that. Secondly, I will describe how we carried out the research. Finally, I will discuss some of the key issues that we identified and which may be of interest to the committee.
I will not go through the objectives of the work, because those are listed in the briefing paper. The exercise was never intended to be an audit of SIP practice. Rather, it was a piece of exploratory and analytical research. We are not Audit Scotland, but a research company.
Although we agree that community participation is good, that does not necessarily equate to effective delivery. It is perfectly possible that SIPs that have limited engagement with the community deliver services effectively. They may lack something in democratic legitimacy, but they may be effective. As the convener said, the research dealt with one aspect—community participation. It did not deal with effectiveness. That is for someone else on another day. At the end of the work, we said that a full evaluation of SIPs was required, but I suspect that that is a matter for the Executive.
I will flesh out how we approached the work. We took a range of approaches. As members would expect, we gathered a vast amount of material on the history and theoretical basis of community participation. We also undertook an assessment of the current social justice strategy and its impact on participation.
We contacted all 48 SIPs and gathered almost a roomful of information. We gathered so much information that one of our offices was more or less given over to storing it. We gathered annual reports, strategies, operating plans, publicity brochures, evaluations and even a videotape of a vox pop that one SIP had undertaken in a street in its area. We followed that up by telephoning the SIPs to fill any gaps and to explore certain issues in further detail. Several of those issues ended up as the many case studies that are at the back of the report.
We identified five SIPs case studies, visited them and spoke to staff and community representatives. Community views were identified in several ways. First, as members know, we spoke to members of the communities covered by the five SIPs. Evaluations, annual plans and other documents also contained quite a lot of material on community views. To an extent, that is second-hand information, but there was no reason to suspect that it was anything other than a fair reflection, so we used it. We also gathered additional second-hand views from the workers and others who are involved in SIP administration. We gathered a wealth of information. When I reread the report, I was struck by the number of examples that we unearthed.
I will share with members some of what we found. It is worth reflecting briefly on where SIPs fit into the scheme of things. Social justice is central to the Government's agenda and builds on much work that has been done before, much of which is detailed in annexe 1. The Governments here and at Westminster make a considerable number of interventions in relation to social justice. I do not doubt that, by quarter to 5 this afternoon, a whole lot more will have been made.
SIPs are a small part of that overall context. They are a pin-prick in the overall UK and Scottish budgets to address social inclusion. Although £50 million is a significant sum in anybody's terms, it is proportionately a relatively small intervention. However, that can underestimate the importance of SIPs. Locally, SIPs are the most important intervention. They are the means by which the community can have a direct say in what happens in its area, which it does.
SIPs are not the only vehicle for regeneration. Members are well aware that local authorities, local enterprise companies, Communities Scotland and the private sector are engaged in social inclusion work and regeneration generally. SIPs often have limited involvement. The concept of SIPs raises one or two issues. Area-based SIPs cover only a small proportion of the Scottish population and perhaps half to two thirds of those who face exclusion. That has raised the often-asked question whether an area-based approach is the best means of addressing exclusion, although that was not a question for our research.
Thematic SIPs are interesting and innovative, but in many respects they are extended demonstration projects. In Aberdeen, no SIP covers children who leave care, whereas a SIP does so in Perth and Kinross. No one suggests that the issues that face young people in Aberdeen are different from the issues in Perth and Kinross, so how good practice is spread is an issue.
Thematic SIPs also miss a large number of groups, such as ex-offenders, asylum seekers, refugees, Gypsies/Travellers and disabled people. Again, there is no suggestion that the issues that those groups face are less important. Some SIPs are undertaking good work with such groups, but the work is not necessarily consistent.
Most SIPs have tried extremely hard to engage their communities of interest and have shown a lot of innovation, imagination and perseverance. There is wide acceptance among SIPs and by the Executive that community participation is a reality.
We identified community involvement in a number of ways—for example, in strategy development and policy development. Often, community members participate directly in board structures and management structures. There is also indirect involvement through, for example, local fora, which we identified in a number of areas, and through monitoring and evaluation. It is worth remembering that many community members are beneficiaries of SIP resources through work that is designed to develop community capacity and through small capital and revenue investments.
We drew a number of conclusions, which I will briefly go over. As I said, there is a strong commitment in SIPs to community involvement, which, in many cases, is embedded in their aims and objectives. A number of SIPs faced early difficulties in consulting, largely because of time scales. It is difficult to be critical of SIPs that were more concerned about getting their bids together and securing funding. In virtually all cases, community participation has come as the SIPs have matured.
There is evidence of innovation of approach and clear evidence from some SIPs that community involvement has made a difference to their strategic direction and operation. That is not always good. I suspect that the fact that some SIPs have 10, 11 or 12 strategic objectives is an unmanageable burden. However, that is an example of democracy at work. The community will have made it clear that it wished the SIP to cover certain issues and it is up to the SIP to decide how to do so.
Perhaps SIPs have enjoyed some legitimacy within their local communities for three reasons. First, they are locally controlled. That is not necessarily usual. Secondly, their management and operation is largely open. In that sense, they are not unusual, but openness is an important part of their work. Thirdly, in many cases, there are direct elections or free nominations to the SIPs. That is an important part of legitimacy.
A considerable number of people have been involved in SIPs, including 700 people in Drumchapel—I think—who took part in community events, the vast majority of whom had never engaged in community participation events before, and a couple of young people in Tranent who took part in a board. There is evidence of a lot of support among young people and adults.
There have been some difficulties. I mentioned lead times and could dwell at great length on the illogicality of some areas, but I will not. Some SIPs have failed to engage closely with equalities groups and some struggle with the bureaucracy that they face. One SIP manager said that his volunteers were bewildered by the bureaucracy. It is worth bearing in mind the fact that unpaid volunteers might spend 25 or 30 hours a week working on SIP business. Several volunteers told me that it often takes an unconscionable time for their expenses to reach them.
Success factors include lengthening lead times and improving inclusivity. It is easy to assume what the community wants to be involved in and why, but some of the best SIPs that we found went out and asked the community what it wanted to be involved in. It is beneficial for a SIP to make clear the community's role and what is and is not within the community's sphere of influence. There is a lot of good practice in respect of what to consult on, who the audience is, providing feedback and giving adequate time.
It is important to be transparent, full stop. Some of the good examples that we found were of transparent decision-making processes, transparent election processes and a great deal of feedback being provided to communities, not only on what has been done but why it has been done and why things have not been done. Perhaps the most important point is to value and support the participation of community members.
I will leave you with one quote from the research. An elected member, who was interviewed about North Edinburgh Area Renewal in 1984, said:
"Community participation in NEAR is not necessary. I have my finger on the pulse."
That shows how far we have come in a relatively short time.
That is all that I want to say about the research. I apologise if I have gone on a little longer than you hoped I would. I hope that I have covered most of the areas that you wanted me to cover. If I have missed any, I am sure that they will come up in questioning.
Thank you for your presentation. We thank you for the research, which I found interesting. If we do not manage to cover all the points that we want to cover and you feel that there are points that you want to address further, we will welcome anything that you want to add in written form.
You suggested in your research that there are difficulties in identifying communities of interest within some SIPs, particularly in archipelago SIPs. You also suggested that previous research indicated that the Executive should reconsider whether archipelago SIPs are an effective means of delivering social inclusion work. Will you provide us with details of the apparent difficulties with archipelago SIPs?
In fairness to the Executive, the previous research was published some time after the establishment of the SIPs. It related to regeneration areas. Hindsight may play a part in that comment.
Archipelago SIPs are a difficult concept. The intention was to ensure that small areas of what, at the time, would have been called deprivation were provided with as much support as large, concentrated areas. There is nothing new in that. I remember that, in Fife in the 1980s, the concept of Benarty was invented simply to get four villages urban programme status. The four villages themselves were too small, so they were welded together and a unit was created.
The difficulty with archipelago SIPs is that they do not form a coherent unit. I think that the Edinburgh strategic programme consists of seven small parts of Edinburgh. The Fife SIP consists of about 11 areas, one of which is as small as about four streets in Kirkcaldy. The nature of such SIPs causes two difficulties. There is an administrative issue, in that SIPs can cross, not local authority boundaries, but functional boundaries related to the way in which local authorities manage their business. It is also difficult to identify community groups to consult in small areas and common strands. The SIPs that are concentrated in defined, contiguous areas have perhaps found it easier to identify the issues that face their communities. In areas such as Fife or North Lanarkshire, to take Karen Whitefield's constituency, that is more difficult.
Although the Great Northern social inclusion partnership is an archipelago SIP, it is more or less bounded by various roads in the north of Aberdeen. It has approached the matter by identifying four or five key themes that cover all its areas. It has not organised itself on an area basis; it has organised thematically. Other areas—such as West Dunbartonshire, which has 20-something individual communities—have had no choice but to create massive representational structures based on area. The complexities mean that it has been difficult for the SIP to develop a coherent strategy. However, that comment strays into the areas of effectiveness and delivery, which, I stress, we were not asked to consider.
You mentioned community involvement in SIPs. I have knowledge of the North Lanarkshire archipelago SIP. During your research, you appear to have learned that there are different levels of community involvement. Were there examples of good practice that made it easier for people to be involved? I accept, as you rightly say, that community participation does not always mean that the SIPs are delivering less effectively than they would if they were controlled more centrally.
There are many examples of good practice, which have key factors in common. The first is that SIPs have developed from the inside out. It is recognised that community participation is not a bolt-on, optional extra. The then Scottish Office made clear at the outset that community participation should be an integral part of the partnerships' work. Some SIPs have gone to great lengths to ensure that that is the case.
The report has examples of a range of events in which people were allowed to have their say in an unstructured way and comment on matters. There has also been significant use of telephone surveys, although there are inclusiveness issues with such surveys. There are examples of door-to-door surveys, and of secondary consultation through the community consultation strategy, disability fora and so on.
There are two key messages. The first is that there must be an expressed willingness to consult and an expressed commitment to participation. That needs to be endemic in everything that the SIP does. The second message is that there is no single way to consult the community. SIPs who have consulted impressively have used five to eight different methods. As I mentioned in my presentation, they started by asking the community which issues it wanted to be consulted on and how it wanted that done.
There is concern that many SIPs have not engaged greatly with equalities groups. Do you have examples of SIPs that are proactively engaging with equalities groups?
Yes. There are examples in the report. It is worth mentioning at the outset that some SIPs are geared towards providing support to equalities groups. There are obvious examples, such as the Glasgow Anti-Racist Alliance, which provides support for young people from the minority ethnic community. There is also the example of FRAE Fife. I cannot remember what FRAE stands for; it is fairness, racial equality and something or another. There is also the Routes out of Prostitution SIP in Glasgow, which, again, is directed at support through equalities groups.
Some SIPs have gone about things slightly differently, such as the Craigmillar Partnership. If my memory serves me correctly, a secondee from the City of Edinburgh Council worked with the community and the SIP workers to develop an equalities strategy that guides the partnership's work in that area. There are also examples of Glasgow SIPs that engage with local disability fora and so on.
It is fair to say that there are two issues. The first is that equalities groups are excluded from participation in thematic SIPs. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why some groups were chosen and some groups were not. The second issue is that although some SIPs are working directly with those groups, in a lot of cases they have not necessarily been proactive in their consultation or have had second-hand consultation. A number of the SIPs to which we spoke were very clear that they wanted to develop that area of work further and acknowledged that they were not as far advanced with it as they were with other aspects of their work.
There is an issue around the ability to promote SIPs to the public in the communities that they serve. You said that most SIPs have done a good job of making people aware of their existence. What kind of strategies have SIPs employed successfully to do that?
The starting point is that social inclusion partnerships are a fairly difficult concept. It is not necessarily easy to describe what SIPs do. That is particularly true of thematic SIPs, but that is a slightly different issue.
SIPs have been promoted on two levels. First, a number of SIPs have promoted participation very well through working with local voluntary organisations and community forums and establishing community forums. A good way of promoting the work of the SIP is to establish a body to do it for you and to engage with the community.
There are examples of close working between SIPs and existing community forums. The North Edinburgh SIP and North Edinburgh Area Renewal are co-located and work closely together. NEAR does a great deal of work, as does the Greater Pilton Community Alliance, in engaging the community and bringing its views into the partnership. A number of SIPs have acknowledged that that kind of organisational approach will not necessarily bring the work of the SIP to everyone.
A SIP in Glasgow undertook what was in effect a community planning process, which involved—if my memory serves me correctly—every house being leafleted and everybody being provided with information about the SIP. Everyone was given the opportunity to come to a series of events to help to develop a local community plan. That is one aspect.
Another aspect is that some SIPs have gone to considerable lengths to make available publicly information such as annual reports. A number of them have gone down obvious routes, such as providing tape copies and EasyRead and so on. If I recall correctly, one SIP takes a page in the community newspaper to provide information about the ways in which it is working and the ways in which people can interact with it.
A number of SIPs have become proactive in commenting on local issues, making their community representatives, volunteers and staff available for radio interviews and courting newspaper features. Much of that is basic public relations of the kind that one would find in a public authority or larger voluntary organisation, but a lot of it seems to have been quite effective.
Clearly, we did not have the budget or the opportunity to conduct primary research on recognition within SIP areas. A lot of the materials that we looked at indicated a good level of awareness and knowledge of what the SIPs are doing.
I ask members to be brief with their questions.
Thank you for coming, Mr Henderson. Your original report was very full and you have expanded on it. I have three short points. To what extent do SIPs engage with young people? How do they bring young people on board? You state that the Scottish Executive could consider documenting good practice on community consultation. Do you have any examples in mind? You also say that community representatives should be remunerated for the work that they put in. Have you given further thought to how that would operate?
I will deal with your questions one at a time.
Most SIPs have engaged with young people. Several SIPs are directed specifically at young people and their involvement has been greatest. Tranent Social Inclusion Office is included as a case study and the Big Step SIP has mini-case studies, so I will not go through them. As a result of a more general recognition among SIPs that it is difficult to reach certain groups through traditional means, some SIPs have used community events with graffiti walls and drama, as well as approaches that are common in the primary school system and open-space events of the kind that the Social Justice Committee held a year ago. SIPs have gone out of their way to hold such events because they recognise that local community forums are not necessarily likely to represent young people's views. The issue has been acknowledged. It would be better to ask young people to determine to what extent the SIPs have succeeded in their aims.
Each of the case studies provides a wealth of good practice examples. The mini-case studies were extracted from our research to demonstrate good practice. Yesterday, I discovered that the Executive has published a piece of research that examines good practice and community consultation in the working for communities pathfinder projects. I skimmed through that research, which contains a raft of innovative ways in which people are being supported and money is being used. A small example is ensuring that all representatives are able to use e-mail. Many SIPs have spent money on providing computers and e-mail links so that everyone works on an equal footing.
Remuneration is a difficult issue. If one is remunerated, by definition one is not a volunteer. That might have an impact on other financial circumstances. However, a sufficient number of people—workers and volunteers—raised the subject of remuneration to make it worth reflecting on. I am not sure how that would work. A daily allowance—an attendance allowance—could be paid to volunteers. That is how elected members in local authorities used to be remunerated. A range of out-of-pocket expenses is available, but those expenses are sometimes not paid in a timely fashion. As I suggested in the report, it would be ironic if people were to be excluded from the work of the partnership simply because their expenses were paid six weeks in arrears. I am not sure how remuneration would work. The fact that so many volunteers and workers raised the issue made it beholden on me to draw attention to it. The Executive would have to discuss with the SIPs how remuneration would work.
I was struck by your favourable comments about SIPs being among the most open quasi-public sector organisations. That seems to clash with the information that the committee received from Communities Against Poverty, which revealed serious concerns about the need for real participation in SIP decision making, the apparent lack of accountability and transparency, and the perception of the extension of control by local authorities.
I have some questions that are set against that background. First, the information in your report is based on people who are engaged with SIPs, but not really on people in the wider community, although, no doubt, there are resource reasons for that. Is that correct?
Yes.
Secondly, does the size of the SIPs—either in geographical terms or in terms of the number of roles that they fulfil—affect their transparency and effectiveness? Your report touched on that issue. Thirdly, to whom are SIPs accountable? Fourthly, will you comment on the issue of artificial boundaries? I have come across that issue in Glasgow, where, because of the boundaries, voluntary sector bodies that are on the wrong side of the road cannot be involved in the SIP, even though their services have an impact in the SIP area.
The clash that you mentioned is not really a clash; it is a matter of different views. The empowering communities events that the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations ran last summer identified a number of people who were concerned about the transparency of SIPs. We have highlighted that, for the most part, SIPs are transparent and that most of them provide the opportunity for community participation. We were not in a position to audit SIP practice. It is perfectly possible that board meetings are conducted in a non-inclusive manner and that local authorities exercise control behind the scenes. However, the community representatives to whom we spoke and the published material that we examined were, by and large, positive about openness.
If we had audited SIP practice, the report would have been a different piece of work. We would probably have done detailed work on one or two SIPs by more or less setting up camp in them to follow through individual issues, such as funding applications. However, I can report only on what we found. I reflected in the report that it does not necessarily represent everyone's views. It is important to recognise that.
On your second question, I do not think that size matters. What is important is the approach or the attitude. Size can make matters more complicated, but some of the most participative, open and welcoming organisations are also some of the largest. The North Edinburgh SIP, which involves North Edinburgh Area Renewal, the Greater Pilton Community Alliance and so on, is one of the largest SIPs, with around 30,000 people involved, but it is open, transparent and democratic. It has popular elections. Attitude and approach are more important than size.
The question of to whom the SIPs are accountable is a good one. Technically, they are accountable to the Scottish Executive and to Parliament, given that that is where the funding comes from. There are complexities because individual authorities and organisations that might be accountable in different ways are represented on the partnerships. For example, a local authority is accountable in a different way to the fire service or the police. I suppose that the SIPs' view would be that that does not really matter because they are accountable to their communities. A number of SIPs said that they were less concerned about technical accountability than functional accountability, which they saw as being to members of their community.
I want to—
I am sorry to interrupt, Robert, but we must move on. We are already well behind time.
The time that we have been allocated for this item is quite ridiculously short.
Well, you were aware of the time allocation at the beginning of the meeting. We have a problem, but we have a responsibility to deal with the other items on the agenda too. Let us move on. If you wish to pursue other issues, Robert, you are obviously capable of doing that.
I will be as brief as I possibly can. You spoke earlier about the difficulties that people experience with communications, particularly in rural areas. This is a central belt-dominated committee—purely by accident. When there are geographical difficulties, does that present unique problems?
Secondly, I wish to ask about community capacity building. Investing in the skills and knowledge of community members plays a part in empowering communities. Did you gather any data displaying the extent of community involvement in the various programmes that exist to facilitate it?
The bulk of SIPs are urban. It is remarkable that there are SIPs in rural areas, which marks the first public acknowledgement that deprivation is not just an urban issue. There have been considerable difficulties in some rural areas. The Argyll and Bute SIP covers five small communities and about 4,500 or 5,000 people scattered over a wide area. It is difficult for them to hold meetings and it is difficult for the SIP's workers to liaise and form a coherent and consistent view.
I was interested to hear about the extent to which methods such as e-mail are used.
Yes, that has been the approach in that area. As far as I am aware, no one has yet gone down the videoconferencing route, but I am sure that it is only a matter of time. In areas such as Moray, SIPs have gone to great lengths to provide transport to central events, and they have recognised that rurality can pose a range of difficulties. The rural SIPs that we consulted—the Argyll and Bute SIP, Moray Youthstart SIP and Tranent Social Inclusion Office are the three that spring to mind—were well aware of those issues, and had gone to what we considered great lengths to ensure either that people could be brought to the SIP or that the SIP could go to them on an outreach basis.
We collected some information about community capacity building more or less as a by-product of our research, and some of that has been detailed in our report. We gathered that information in the context of asking how community capacity building had impacted on participation in the SIP, not in the context of community capacity building per se. Our research would have turned out to be different had we specifically identified the kind of information that you are seeking.
I am aware, Robert, that your remit—
It is Brian.
Sorry, Brian. I wonder who Robert is.
You can call me Robert if you prefer.
Okay, Bob. Your remit was not to look into the effectiveness of SIPs as such, as you have stated. You have also said that you feel that a fuller evaluation of the SIPs' effectiveness was required. We have recently learned—including by means of answers to parliamentary questions—that money has been held back from many SIPs pending investigations, and that there have been underspends. Is that a measure of effectiveness that you picked up on in your investigations and that you feel should be further examined?
The points that I raised in relation to effectiveness were purely in the context of identifying the fact that we were not asked to consider effectiveness. My point was that if the committee wished to consider the effectiveness of SIPs, it would have to do so in another way and at another time.
Although we read much in the way of evaluations and other materials that related to effectiveness, I do not think that it is right and proper that we comment on it. We were not asked to examine effectiveness. Had we done the research differently, perhaps we could have done so. I am not aware of the specific matters to which you have referred, and I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to comment. We were asked to examine community participation, which we did, and I think that it is important to separate that from effectiveness, which I do not feel that I have specific knowledge about.
I thank you again for attending today and for the research that you did on our behalf. The committee will agree that we have found it productive and helpful. As I said before, if on reflection you feel that you want to expand on any points, we will be more than happy to hear from you again.
I now seek the committee's agreement on further action in relation to the social inclusion agenda. It has been suggested that we may wish consider an issues paper that will be drawn up for the next meeting, summarising the key areas of concern that we have identified today. I am sure that the clerks will accept contributions to the paper from members if they are submitted in reasonable time. Are members agreed?
Members indicated agreement.