Building Strong Communities
Building Strong Communities
Guidelines on empowering the grass roots
STEVE SKINNER
Steve Skinner, under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2020
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First published 2020 by
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ISBN 9781352007855 paperback
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For Sandra
Contents
Chapter 1 introduces some key themes of the book, including a definition of strong communities. It explores the meaning of the term community and looks at different ways to understand the concept of community empowerment.
Chapter 2 looks at the skills, knowledge and abilities needed by members of community groups to be effective in achieving their aims, starting from identifying and valuing existing skills and talents. A range of forms of community-based learning are explored and compared. The nature of community leadership is also examined.
Chapter 3 describes different approaches to supporting community groups, focusing on facilitation-based methods to help them achieve their aims. Chapter Three also explores a method for assessing community strengths.
Chapter 4 discusses how people can get more involved in their communities, and how communities can be influential in local decision-making. It explores a new framework called the Wheel of Participation that has six pathways for community involvement.
Chapter 5 reviews how strengthening communities can be organised in ways that address issues of equality, inclusion and diversity. It discusses barriers to participation and how to widen the involvement of marginalised groups.
Chapter 6 looks at the roles public sector organisations can play to work in partnership with the community and voluntary sectors in strengthening communities. It describes the key elements of a strategic approach to strengthening communities.
This book introduces a definition of the term strong communities with seven key features: Active, Organised, Participative, Resourceful, Accepting, Connected and Fair. The material focuses on the first three of these seven features, because the authors experience is mostly in these areas and because to address all seven features would need at least two publications. It draws on a community development approach, but places this in the current climate and the context of building stronger communities.
Preface
This book is a resource for strengthening communities. It contains guidelines, frameworks and a range of approaches to help plan and implement effective community support.
The book is written by a practitioner for other practitioners, combining both theory and practice. It draws on recent research and uses many practical examples from around the UK, as well as several from Yorkshire, where the author is based. A key focus of this book is on empowering the grass roots. The term grass roots is used broadly to mean the voluntary and community sectors, with an emphasis on the community sector, as explained below. Resource One at the end of the book gives definitions of key terms used.
The art of strengthening communities is explored around four themes: Building People, Building Organisations, Building Involvement and Building Equality. These themes are examined in turn in the next four chapters. Used in combination, these themes can provide a useful, comprehensive framework for understanding the practical aspects of strengthening communities.
Through discussing these themes, the book describes a wide range of approaches, methods and tools to use with communities, with references and links, wherever possible, for you to find out more..
The book has been written for people based in a broad range of settings, such as members of community groups, active residents and local leaders. It will also be helpful for staff and managers based in the public sector who are running front-line services or responsible for area management. In addition, it hopefully will be valuable for community workers, consultants and campaigners, and staff in private sector organisations involved in corporate social responsibility. Trustees, volunteers and staff in voluntary organisations and elected members in district, borough, county, town and parish councils will also find the book useful.
The material will also be a resource for participants of professional training programmes and students in higher education in a range of disciplines, including social work, housing management, community health, adult education, community development, social enterprise and local government studies.
For the sake of brevity, the term community practitioner is used in this book for people in all these different roles, whether paid or unpaid, full time or part time, where the person is committed to strengthening communities. Obviously, each context will have its own challenges and opportunities. Finally, it will also be useful for policy-makers in the voluntary and public sectors, and in both central and local government, to inform strategic planning for strengthening communities.
The book contains examples of practical methods, though it is mainly not intended as a training manual or a handbook. It acts as an introduction to a range of approaches, where the main aim is to build stronger communities through supporting conscious, skilful practice in and with communities, based on a clear set of values. Each chapter finishes with some questions that you might find useful to consider when working with communities.
It is appreciated that your response to this book and the issues you need to consider will vary depending on your role: whether you are an officer in a local authority, the leader of a community group, a student on a course or a voluntary sector-based project organiser. In using the material in this book with communities, please bear in mind that, as practitioners, we cannot force changes on individuals, groups and networks; the interest in development and change needs to come from communities themselves. Whatever the setting of the practitioner, the work of strengthening communities also needs to be informed by particular values. Consequently, at various points in this publication, several of the values underlying the work, and the challenges they pose, are discussed.
