Empowerment and civic participation

A long conversation this afternoon with my old buddy Gabriel Chanan in which we touched on the puzzle of whether policy on 'empowerment' is starting to get elided with job creation (see Unlocking the talent of our communities). If we're going to have disempowerment confused with worklessness, it will just serve to further marginalise older people, most of whom are outside the labour market and quite disempowered enough already thanks.

In the national indicator set, the key indicator for empowerment is NI4:

'The proportion of the adult population who agree that they feel able to influence decisions affecting their local area.'

More description and explanation here.

I think the indicators in themselves look very progressive. Of course, there's always concern about how they will be used, and we'll all take some convincing that they won't be turned into irritating and counter-productive league tables. And there are other questions.

The way the indicators will work, as I understand it, is that local authorities and their partners will establish a baseline and seek (be expected) to improve by 4 per cent subsequently.

Well let's see now, if you've got a given percentage of people in your area who have not said that they feel able to influence decisions, who do you target in order to increase the proportion by 4 per cent?

You're going to start with people who are indifferent but relatively empowered, and maybe persuade them so that they do feel they can influence things. You're less likely to start with people who are relatively disempowered and certainly not with the most profoundly disempowered. So what are we trying to do here - to equalise empowerment or just come up with an acceptable proportion of people who can influence processes?

Well, there's plenty in the empowerment action plan to bring about change, and hopefully a lot of that funding will be used for community development to promote lasting, collective empowerment where most needed. Meanwhile, in a post on the Guardian blog, Richard Wilson observes:

We have seen the emergence of an empowerment gap. Since 1997, the subjectively empowered have become yet more empowered and those with the least personal empowerment more disempowered.

Much to be done.