Community Cohesion workshop
From Future of Local Services to the Public
As part of the greater LGA project four workshops were held with those working in the design and provision of local services to the public. The Community Cohesion workshop met in London in June 2008 and discussed the factors that had shaped local communities to this point in time, those that the participants are grappling with at the moment, and those that they are thinking about for the future.
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Reflecting on the current context
The participants agreed that although the current emphasis from central government on place and locality is good for local areas, it is not particularly new. This was reinforced in one of our depth interviews with a Chief Executive who had been 'place-shaping' since 2000. The group felt that the current focus on community cohesion in local areas placed too great an emphasis on racial and faith orientated aspects of cohesion and that it was important for future planning to address social and economic inequalities.
The participants felt that the current democratic representation in local areas often fails to reflect the make-up of their communities, and that this is a barrier for successful cohesion. Smaller organisations in local areas, such as the third sector, are often more reflective of those they represent, placing even greater importance on the need for successful partnership working.
Those currently representing their communities are often unwilling to accept that the context in which local services are provided is changing and that local government in particular cannot go back to a previous time. Economics and the future of the global market has big implications for cohesion, specifically in relation to the expansion of the EU and the current A8 accession states.
The current focus on the provision of education to aid community cohesion is positive, however participants felt that there is too great a focus on the provision of higher education and not enough support for local authorities to enable their residents to retrain or obtain new skills.
The advent of global terrorism was identified as a watershed moment that has shaped the approach to community cohesion from central and often local government, and has led to the focus on race and faith, rather than a broader platform of social and economic inequality. The impact of the internet on the the jobs market has also created a new environment that when planning for future local employment needs to be fully recognised, in terms of the ability of particular groups in society to adapt and meet the needs of business.
What is the relevance for the future of the provision of local services?
The changing nature of local communities means that policy makers and local service providers need to change the way they charactierise groups of people, and alter the current stereotypes. Residents can often simultaneously belong to different communities and hold different identities and cannot be classified in a single category. The services available must be flexible enough to deal with this reality. This also creates demands for personalisation of choice.
In the future, the participants suggested, it would be a positive step if local service providers were to stop thinking that customers should come to service providers, and frontline staff were to go out to deliver and provide services - acting as the access channel to the full range of services not just a narrow range based on their specific job title. This would require multidiscipline teams on the ground in local neighbourhoods.
Priorities for the future
The 20 issues are listed in the key below:
Innovations
Rather than specific examples of innovation the participants suggested that; "Building capacity at a local level to enable people to do things for themselves rather than the state having to do things for them", should be key.
