The housing event has been exploring a range of approaches to children and young people's participation and how an effective engagement strategy will blend many of these together. Some of our thinking is put together in this short briefing which may be of use.
We're off! Back in Birmingham for a two day residential with housing managers from across the country, looking to build sustainable community based responses to young people.
We will be putting the case to the Board, developing a participation strategy, working up a bid and creating a neighbourhood action plan. Much of what we do will be posted here for sharing. Any questions or further thoughts use our twitter hashtag #ypfn or email me, Bill Badham at bill@practicalparticipation.co.uk.
A few slides highlighting the rapidly changing policy and funding context affecting young people and the provision of youth work.
This reports from the NCB give a powerful overview of the impact of cuts on voluntary sector organisaitons primarily working with children and young people. You can find out more here: http://www.ncb.org.uk/news/cuts-leave-charities-fearing-closure-within-a-year-says-ncb-report
Emma Sneyd shared stories of success, focusing on over eight years of partnership working on Bromley Farm in Congleton, Cheshire. There is more from Plus Dane and their neighbourhood investor approach at http://www.neighbourhoodinvestor.com/.
Emma’s presentation is accompanied by a booklet called Bromley farm: partnership working toolkit. You can contact Emma at Emma.Sneyd@neighbourhoodinvestor.com
Here are three short papers that summarise some important aspects of community development, developed by Annette Goldband:
· History
· Principles
· Pitfalls
As part of the continuing support offered by the FPM team to the local YPFN partnerships, the second of three national seminars was held on Community Development. You can follow the action in pictures here:
The Objectives of the day were:
- Share good practice to date in community development toward building sustainable local partnerships for YPFN
- Explore and agree key principles and practices to ensure community engagement and ownership is at the heart of developing the business case
- Develop and agree to implement a further process of community development to build the local partnership for sustainable youth provision
The Outline of the day was:
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Community mapping Objectives: • Share practice • Gain common understanding of community and networks Task: • Community mapping – – Place own colour sticky dots to map people and places – Add traffic light postits to reflect levels of influence • Each comment and reflect on the action plan from last time and recent developments
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Stories of success Objectives: • Share and learn from practice • Explore and understand key principles of community development Task • Stories from the ‘hood: Bromley Farm • Adding to the learning – partnership reflections • Barriers and opportunities
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Community development thinking Principles and practice: some key points – History – Process and product – Traps and pitfalls – Community development – who for and by whom – Measuring success
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Circles of connection Objectives: • Map the local context • Explore and understanding influence and power Task: • Take own postits from earlier and then mark them on the circles of connection • Who’s missing? Who do you need to move inward or outward and how will we do it?
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Community development thinking Influence and power: some key points: • Influence and Power • Developing Groupwork – Life Space
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Community Development Skills Objectives: • Explore approaches to community development • Agree actions to take forward through YPFN Task • Map range of approaches and identify pattern • Plan approaches to build on and introduce • Explore merits and application of some approaches
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Community development thinking Community development risks and opportunities • Rights and citizenship • Arnstein’s ladder - Remember the window cleaner • The Matrix – thanks to Caitlin • Outcomes Based Accountability
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Next steps in community development • Agree next steps using action plan tool • Conclusions • Review and evaluation • Thank yous and plans for next time
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In this edition some exciting news and updates on young people’s involvement in building toward a youth or community mutual to best establish and maintain youth provision in the area.
We held three national seminars in Leeds, London and Birmingham in March, involving about 60 social housing leaders with the three aims:
§ To explore learning from Young People Friendly Neighbourhoods for sustainable youth support in neighbourhoods and communities;
§ To consider organisational models for securing long term solutions and the role and place of housing associations and RSLs;
§ To determine the elements of strategic leadership required to build the case internally and the partnerships externally.
Housing leaders were keen to build momentum, including through a May residential for managers, sharing messages within government, promoting a community of practice through the National Housing Federation, collaborating with Chartered Institute of Housing on professional development and sharing learning more widely from the YPFN programme.
This is short report summarises findings from each event. Further information is available from www.ypfn.posterous.com and on Twitter at #ypfn. To keep in touch and for further information contact Bill Badham: bill@practicalparticipation.co.uk
As part of the national Young People Friendly Neighbourhoods programme, we have created a community activism resource to support local communities to indentify concerns and take action to achieve change.
The resource was written by Bill Badham, based on Act by Right (www.actbyright.org.uk). Residents and workers from Torbay helped create the outline and trialled it in April 2012.
This short video describes this new Community Activism resource.
The video tells the story of the journey that residents and workers went on in exploring a simple 5 stage process:
- Getting to know each other and representing others
- Getting to know the community
- Getting ready for action
- Campaigning for change
- Finding out what's changed.
The resource is being tweaked to draw on the learning from this first outing and will soon be available free for wider use.
Photos of the two day event are at