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Northamptonshire Third Sector Office |
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Providing Third Sector Leadership for the 2014 Change Agenda |
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“Compact Voice gives high priority to aligning Local Compacts with LAAs. This Northamptonshire project is the most trailblazing/innovative/imaginative of any known LAA community engagement initiative in being the first to make a community development approach part of this configuration. It would seem crucial for there to be robust project leadership, management support and effective links in taking this work forward. In particular this could:
(a) include LAA partners agreeing to use our Compact/LAA scorecard, revising the statement of community involvement to include the resourcing of the project, and extending the approach to the sustainable community strategy;
(b) keep under review the effectiveness of the LAA’s two-way communications with sector networks and, beyond this circle, to community and street level;
(c) focus on maximising the impact achieved, with PIs for evaluating outcomes that relate to community skills development, involvement and participation – especially of small, faith and BME groups and informal groups;
(d) encourage LAA partners explicitly develop a Compact way of working and to take a balanced view of voluntary and community activity and public service delivery;
(e) be well positioned by selecting a clear theme, maybe “Real People – Real Engagement;”
[Themes identified elsewhere include: Full Participation (Gloucestershire), the Local Compact as a LAA driver for Partnership Building (Northumbria), LAA Tasking of the Compact Group on Capacity and Involvement (Hampshire), the Local Compact as the LAA’s Golden Thread (Hertfordshire), and Investing in Capacity (Staffordshire).]
(f) prepare an exit strategy including long term arrangements for building on this investment”.
Paul Barasi NCVO |