Use this toolkit to find out what people want from the Big Society: what makes people want to get involved in local action? What stops them from taking part. How to devolve power and money to communities. How communities can work effectively with local authorities and public agencies. And, what makes people feel like they belong in a place.
Read about the Young Foundation's current work with communities.
Working with communities: a toolkit for action
Localism, devolution and community empowerment are once more centre stage in political and media debates. The coalition government's Decentralisation and Localism Bill and plans for the Big Society propose to transfer new rights and powers to communities and encourage widespread local action, building on a decade of initiatives introduced by the previous government to put deprived and disadvantaged neighbourhoods at the heart of policy.
There are already hundreds of places around the country where local authorities are working to empower and support communities, and where communities are taking the lead on local issues: running community buildings, setting up action groups, delivering local services and championing the need for better public services. However, there are as many places just starting to explore how to engage and empower local people.
This is challenging for many local authorities and public agencies. Devolution and empowerment create new risks for local authorities to manage and demand that agencies change the way they view and work with communities and service users.
Much is already known about how to successfully empower communities. This community action toolkit brings together knowledge, practical tools and stories about community empowerment for organisations who want to shift power and influence to local people and for communities that want to take up those opportunities. It is based on five years' work the Young Foundation has undertaken with communities, local groups, councillors, local authorities, housing associations, public agencies and central government.
Read a collection of stories, reports, research, guidance and case studies about how to understand, engage and empower communities:
What is a community?
Community means different things to different people at different times. It can mean a group of friends or family, a local neighbourhood, a virtual network, a school group, a place of worship, a community association, or a cultural network that is spread across the world.
Understanding how communities and neighbourhoods can be defined is a crucial first step in thinking about organising local action or engaging with a particular place or group of people.
Getting people involved
What makes people get involved in local action and what are the barriers to engaging and empowering people?
Tools for local action
In this section read about practical tools and methods for involving communities in decision making and local action.
Every community has its own challenges and needs. What works in one community might fail in a neighbouring area because the combination of people, needs, skills, assets, time and funding is different. A whole range of approaches to involving and working with communities have been tried and tested around the UK and internationally. Here is a selection of ideas for different situations.
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Helping people feel they belong
Creating strong cohesive communities where people feel like they belong matters. Where we live and who we know play a fundamental role in our sense of belonging, identity and local wellbeing. Understanding why belonging matters and how to help people feel like they belong, get along with (or at least tolerate) their neighbours and make the most of local social networks, is an important part of creating successful places.
Engaging everyone
Public agencies are often criticised for failing to involve and engage the many different groups and interests that exist in communities. Often this is because traditional approaches to community engagement rely on people coming to meetings or taking part in formal consultations. It is widely acknowledged that these approaches exclude a whole range of people from engaging in decision making because work or family commitments, language barriers or lack of confidence stop people taking part in meetings, or practical obstacles get in the way like mobility problems for elderly people.
There are a whole range of creative approaches to engagement from action planning to participatory budgeting, online debates to street walkabouts and community games, that provide opportunities to engage a wide range of people in ways that are most appropriate to them.
Devolving money and power to communities
There are many different approaches used by councils and public agencies to give communities voice, influence and control over decisions and budgets. No single approach works in every community.
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What makes community involvement work?
Much is known about how local authorities and public agencies can successfully involve communities and give them real opportunities to influence or control local decision making.
What can local government do?
Local authorities have a crucial role to play in community empowerment. Strategies and approaches to community empowerment, organisational culture and attitudes to risk and innovation all shape how effective and successful community empowerment can be.
In this section read about what local authorities can do to make community empowerment work
Councillors and communities
Councillors have an important role to play in helping residents and local groups take an active role in their community. Councillors' roles are changing as more emphasis is placed on empowering communities to do more for themselves and as new forms of engagement and online networking become more widespread. Much has been written and debated about the skills and capabilities councillors need to work with empowered communities and the challenges of recruiting councillors from a wide range of backgrounds.
Local stories
Read a collection of stories about the experiences of people, community organisations, local authorities and other public agencies, all working in different ways to empower the neighbourhoods they live in or work with.
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