Friday, 12 June 2009

Autobiography

I was born in 1955. In Gloucestershire I watched a field change and a hawk settle on nothing above it. Villages were raised by their children, invisibly harnessed. Sometime later I let go.

12 Jun 2009 14:43:19 | Vignettes

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Found difficult and left untried? Perspectives on participation and engagement For me, one of the recurring puzzles in participation and community engagement is how little attention is paid to the benefits experienced by those who participate. I wonder if the widespread uncritical use of the C word has something to do with this: if you go round assuming that 'community=consensus' I suppose you expect the benefits to the individual to be somehow self-evident. But they ain't. We've found that people do have views on the 'wifms' (what's in it for me), you just have to ask them. Bev Carter and I asked young people in Milton Keynes what sort of benefits might ensue to those who were active on the local issues. Among the responses: Power Diserplin Make friends Be popular Have fun Showing off Right decisions Achievements New things Get more respect Feeling happy Helping people Express talent... Among the perceived barriers to participation for these young people: Getting into trubble Age diffrence Bitchieness Bullying Parents get worried Racism... If we are to understand the difficulties in establishing a sustainable culture of participation and involvement, surely we need to have a serious appreciation of the identifiable benefits at the individual level? Over a year ago I noted that community engagement was starting to get some negative press, suggesting a need to distinguish its principles from managerialist practices in the public sector. If nothing else, that might mean that when we speak about engagement, we don't always adopt the service-centric view. I'm revisiting these thoughts because JRF have just published a 'round-up paper' reviewing the evidence on citizen involvement in local governance. It's a clear and useful summary of JRF's work in this area, but guess what, it considers involvement from the perspective of service provision and decision-making. If we always do that, then this kind of conclusion is what we're going to get: 'Community involvement costs public services significant time and money. Communities volunteer their scarce time and limited resources, taking away their energies from other activities in their community. If neither providers nor communities are clear about the objectives nor perceive any impact on decisions, on service quality or on citizen satisfaction, the policy is not sustainable in the face of tightening finances and difficult decisions about resource allocation.' This suggests, to paraphrase G K Chesterton, not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it will have been found difficult and left untried. I can't help wondering if a different perspective might find community involvement economically, socially and morally indispensable.
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Trooble at t'empowerment mill Paul Evans, who set up the Local Democracy blog among various other things, invited me the other day to articulate how unwelcome it is for many people with problems in their lives to be the subject of demands to engage, to participate, and to have their say... Nah, other stuff to do. Then I came across a note I wrote three years ago, quoting none other than David Miliband on empowerment: "The challenge is to spread the sense of power and autonomy citizens feel over their lifestyles and values to other parts of their life, notably their interactions with public services, markets, and the community." Good stuff to hear from a leading politician. But what I've been trying to get at is the point that too many people don't have much sense of power or autonomy over their lifestyles in the first place; so for many, maybe it's not necessarily the right place to start. Will that do Paul?

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