Mae Joe Champion, Swyddog Cyfathrebu a Chyfranogaeth gyda Cymunedau yn Gyntaf Dwyrain Caerdydd, Llanedeyrn a Phentwyn (ECLP), yn ystyried rôl grwpiau ffocws i estyn at rannau o’r gymuned

Mae Cymunedau yn Gyntaf Dwyrain Caerdydd, Llanedeyrn a Phentwyn (ECLP) yn benderfynol o sicrhau bod y prosiectau mae’n eu cynnal wedi’u teilwra i anghenion y cymunedau mae’n eu cynrychioli. Mae hyn yn digwydd yn gyson wrth i staff siarad drwy’r adeg ag aelodau o’r gymuned ynglŷn â’r hyn mae arnynt ei eisiau a’i angen, yn ogystal â thrwy werthuso ei weithgareddau i gyd. Ond roeddem yn teimlo’r awydd i fynd cam ymhellach ac estyn at y rheini a ystyrir yn draddodiadol yn anos eu cyrraedd, ac yn enwedig y rheini sy’n disgyn i’r categorïau hynny sydd heb ymwneud â ni o gwbl dros y ddwy flynedd diwethaf.

New Post has been published on http://www.g2gcommunities.org/news/lego/g2g-communities-delivered-five-one-hour-lego-education-taster-sessions-56-pupils/

G2G Communities delivered five one hour LEGO Education taster sessions to 56 pupils

G2G Communities CIC in partnership with Communities First North Denbighshire Cluster and Ysgol Emmanuel today delivered five one hour LEGO Education taster sessions to 56 pupils. The feedback was fantastic and we would like to thank the pupils for making the day so exciting and fun. Here are just a few photographs of pupils working on some LEGO problem solving tasks. The new G2G Communities CIC curriculum related sessions are coming soon so keep an eye on our web site and sign up for the news letter.

In this blog, Russell Todd, Communities First Advice Co-ordinator, examines some examples of peer learning and reflects on his experiences.

Last July I blogged about the experience of researching examples of peer learning and support that has informed plans for a similar framework in Wales’s Communities First (CF) programme.

I had found some interesting examples of it operating in other sectors, programmes and organisations such as the Families First and former Mentro Allan programmes in Wales, the Big Local programme in England, in community renewal in Northern Ireland and the Our Place initiative in Scotland.

Russell Todd, WCVA Communities First Advice Co-ordinator, takes a look at a new Welsh Government programme which aims to reduce the number of workless households in Wales.

On Monday 24 March the Welsh Government launched the Lift Programme which aims to reduce the number of households in Wales where no-one is in work long term.

Lift will place two brokers in each of the following Communities First (CF) Clusters, where it is being piloted:

Mike Hedges, Assembly Member for Swansea East/Dwyrain Abertawe blogged at the Bevan Foundation on how a greater flexibility in interpretation and design of data should be used to enhance the identification of people in need. My response to it is available to view on the above link. It is expanded upon here in order to articulate the value that community development brings to this process.

I'm not sure using units smaller than LSOAs necessarily leads to more accurate identification. LSOAs are already small and have been used in the most recent editions of the WIMD precisely because they allow for a more nuanced sub-ward analysis of deprivation at community level. They are constrained by the arrangement of electoral wards above them, which would presumably be costly to rearrange. With such rapid growth in housing in some wards (Butetown springs to mind) the LSOAs need to evolve to reflect the new communities that spring up; this is not necessarily about the size of LSOAs, but the cohesion and sensitivity with which a ward is carved up into them. At a macro level it is less about the size of the LSOAs and, rightly as Mike Hedges points out, about how flexibly they are interpreted by the programmes that use such data and whether other data is eligible to complement WIMD and census data. The experience of Communities First (CF) is salient here.

CF, through its use of Results Based Accountability, requires a story behind the baseline. In essence 'what else does one know about a community beyond what the statistics suggest'. This is welcome. I recall CF community development workers (CDWs) in the Dulais Valley citing broadband connectivity data that suggested it was among the most 2-3% ‘dis-connected’ communities in the whole UK. Data related to digital connectivity, whether it is use or availability thereof, is not an indicator that WIMD draws upon; though arguably with the increased shift towards online access to job searches and availability of financial products and transactions it is a key indicator that shapes deprivation. CF allowed for additional data and research to shape the argument for resources towards particular tackling poverty activities. CDWs do not merely raise awareness of such a statistic but are well-placed to interrogate the assumptions that it informs, such as the extent to which it affects accessibility to employment advice and job adverts, and the effect on morale, confidence and preparation for the recruitment process. In such an instance the story behind the baseline does not narrate itself, and certainly not on a collective basis.

The emphasis on the size of LSOAs potentially draws attention away from the underlying indicators that the WIMD draw on. Mike Hedges focuses on two housing related indicators: tenure and council tax band. This is particularly interesting for two reasons. Firstly, that the last WIMD in 2011 deliberately reduced the weighting in the calculation of the overall WIMD of the housing domain from 10% to 5% because it drew on census data from 2001 and this was felt to be less robust than it might have been. Thus, irrespective of which indicators are used, the key issue is that the weighting of the different domains reflects the proportionality to which different indicators cause, aggregate or reflect poverty. Secondly, tenure and council tax seem reasonable indicators to accompany the current housing domain indicators of overcrowding and presence of central heating. One might argue however that data related to affordability of housing might be more pertinent again; or even availability of housing. In respect of tenure, is the status of tenure or security of tenure that is a more pertinent indicator to levels of deprivation within a community? This reveals how politically-laden the identification of indicators actually is. Why is there no business start-up related indicator? Or self-employment related indicator? Whatever the indicator, the data has to be available consistently at whatever unit level is employed because the more gaps there are the harder it is to be flexible in the interpretation of data for which Mike Hedges calls. Again CF’s experience is helpful.

The gaps in ‘NEET’ data at LSOA level made for a very patchy understanding of even the statistical extent of the problem and provided for a muddled picture among CF clusters. If the extent of a problem is not accurately known, how can progress be accurately measured? Perhaps this is why WIMD does not use ‘NEETs’ as an underlying indicator.

Community development is crucial in advocating on behalf of less vocal and/or visible interests. In this way it is able to draw attention to other indicators that can inform the analysis and measurement of disadvantage. Issues about statistical rigor remain, such that there may be legitimate technical reasons why something cannot be used. But the advocacy role is two-way and CDWs can help explain to communities why indicators are not adopted. I recall working in a Gwent valleys community where there were concerns about the mortality rate from breast cancer in that sub-ward community. The data, the Local Health Board told us, was available at sub-ward level (this was in the pre-LSOA days) but to circulate it would risk revealing the identities of the individuals who comprised the statistics, which might be insensitive and distressing, as well as breaching data protection legislation and confidentiality protocols. My and others' roles were to facilitate that dialogue. Did the unavailability of that data affect project planning? Or our understanding of the experience and psychology of, and services for, breast cancer? Possibly. But it was a reminder that there is always a human face behind statistics; human faces that can articulate the experience and knowledge that shapes the stories behind the baseline...if they are given a suitable, safe opportunity to do so. Community development helps create such opportunities and allows them to enter the political nexus that exists around debates related to disadvantage in a way that limits the extent to which that experience can be exploited for political gain.

I have spent the last few days preparing a discussion paper on options for peer support in the Communities First programme.

I have found some interesting examples of it operating in other sectors, programmes and organisations e.g., the Families First and the former Mentro Allan programmes in Wales, the Big Local programme and between rural communities in England, and in community renewal in Northern Ireland.

There are instances where the peer support occurs within a workforce; others where it focuses on brokering support and exchange of ideas and experiences between volunteers and community activists. In some cases it is entirely peer-led; in others there is a permanent role for external agents (either as facilitators, organisers or curriculum designers).

Some have a pastoral element to them, meaning that the development of solidarity, appreciation and camaraderie is encouraged. Others are geared more clinically to outcomes and effectiveness of delivery.

All require the peers, to at least some degree, to consider themselves: their values, their practice, their method.

In one programme the peer support and learning occurs in Action Learning Sets (ALSs). This is not novel as they are an established method for tackling important organisational issues or problems and learning from the attempt(s) to change thing. However, contrary to my understanding and experience of ALSs they are compulsory for practitioners and topics for discussion are externally prescribed to the sets. I am keen to ascertain to what extent ownership of this process occurs. Questions arise in my mind about confidentiality, trust and the extent to which set members/contributors internalise their learning. This is something I intend to probe further.

Another key element of the inquiry is the use of digital and online media to facilitate contact and discourse between peers. Big Local is presently developing these to complement thematic events. Others use platforms such as LinkedIn or Basecamp which are externally moderated and allow for a relatively cheap (even free) means of hosting a forum, either permanent or temporary, in which peer discussion can occur. Communities First has not had a programme-wide moderated forum for almost five years, and its use when it did exist was, at best, modest.

One of the guiding principles of the general inquiry, not just the paper, is a presumption that peer support already occurs in Communities First, no matter how informally. Furthermore, that any framework to develop and enhance it must wherever possible complement such relationships and processes.

As usual, I awoke recently to the daily morning show on Radio Wales and an interview with a fire officer whose recent shifts had comprised exclusively of fighting deliberately-set hill fires at various locations around the south Wales valleys during the first extended warm spell of the spring.

It was not so much his straight-from-the-textbook condemnation aimed at the unknown perpetrators, or his very obvious frustration that struck me. Rather it was the weary, resigned expectation of a man, and service, that faces the same challenges year in, year out.

The interviewer enquired as to what preventative and engagement work takes place with young people (though the perpetrators are hardly ever caught, they are nonetheless assumed to be young....) and he spoke of "going into schools" and having done so for several years, following an established curriculum of outlining the risks, consequences and costs, both financial and potentially human.

The article caused me to recall visiting a community in the north of Abergavenny/Y Fenni in 2010 and on arrival noticing a large smiley face mowed into the hillside  that looms over that community, the Deri (see Ted Pearsell's Flickr account for the image). A Community Development Worker (CDW) mentioned that the face had become the talk of the community of late, its creator(s) unknown and that whereas the hillside had in previous years been the location for malicious grass fires, during that summer none had been started because, the CDW felt, the smiley face had been adopted by the community. The community development sector will frequently refer to the importance of ownership by communities, and often it is ownership in an emotional sense rather in any material, legal or financial sense. At a, presumably, modest cost the smiley face had become the means by which the surrounding landscape had become of more value to the community. And even if this was not shared by everyone in that community, the sense of ownership and enhanced value might well have been sufficiently palpable to the perpetrators of previous hill fires that they were disinclined to repeat the arson.

In its adoption of Results Based Accountability* (RBA) (Friedman, 2005) Wales's Communities First programme requires of local plans to consider seven Performance Accountability questions.

(Friedman, 2005, page 83)

Abergavenny/Y Fenni's smiley face strikes me as the perfect example of a low-cost idea that brings about an improvement in a social ill. It is not, however, enough to replicate it in every community where hill fires are problem. RBA requires of us to question 'What works?' and to examine apparent solutions for the underlying reasons why.

(Friedman, 2005, page 82)

Back in Abergavenny/Y Fenni' it would be interesting to know whether the statistical cliff off which hill fire incidences fell that summer was acknowledged by the local fire service. Even if they did it is to the CDW's credit that he had sought to tune-in to the community's wavelength on the matter, and without necessarily being conscious of it was informally recording information as part of a research agenda.

This is not to say that the educational approach is without merit but doing it because it is what we've done previously is an insufficiently evidence-based justification. And seems odd given the example of an alternative solution on the Fire Service's doorstep.

_________________________________________