Monday, 23 Jun 2014

By Paul Johnston -Director for Safer Communities, Scottish Government

I'm writing this update immediately after the June meeting of the Building Safer Communities programme board.  We're focussed as a Board on working to reduce crime and victimisation.  This is already being done by the organisations round the Board table - including Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Violence Reduction Unit, and local government and third sector representatives.  Our community safety team is joined by colleagues from health, housing and regeneration and the improvement team from within the SG.   Our expectation is that we can achieve more by working together than we could do alone.

We are in very much in a learning phase.  Today was no exception.

We met on the hottest day of the year so far at the premises of Resonate in Alloa.   Resonate is a social enterprise that offers everything from painting, photography and wood turning classes, to tai chi and a printing and publishing service.  Most of the work is done by volunteers and artists from a wide variety of backgrounds, many of whom have experienced unemployment and other challenges.  In the process, "team Resonate" seek to build community connectedness and confidence.   

The walls are bedecked with some wonderful art.  I purchased a very fine picture of the Kelpies that will soon take pride of place in my meeting room.  The picture was taken by a young man who had been helped to start up his own business through the support of Resonate. 

Beyond the art, we were met by an array of highly motivated people.  Angela presented on the purpose and impact of Resonate.  Keith and May then spoke about their work in Hawkhill, just along the road, which is seeking to build community connectedness and reduce crime in a partnership between the community, Link Up (an Inspiring Scotland project funded by CashBack) and the Violence Reduction Unit.

Both of these initiatives are led by inspirational people who are clearly giving it 100%.  They are taking the work forward in a way that is flexible enough to meet the aspirations of the communities that they seek to support.  They acknowledged that the work can be really tough. It doesn't lend itself to 9 - 5.  Funding challenges are never far away. Setbacks are common.  But they are kept going by the drive and resilience of the people they've been working with.  An example of that was the community garden in Hawkhill which was vandalised a couple of weeks ago. The response of the community was to work together and fix it quickly (though I expect they will also be on the lookout for the perpetrator!). 

The challenges that Board members face are very different to those of the volunteers we met.  However, if we are to see sustained progress across Scotland in building safer communities it will require the sort of energy, wit and creativity that we saw in spades among those leading Resonate and Link Up in Alloa.   But to be more specific,  what role should Government and our partners really be playing in all of this?  That was one of the key issues we wrestled with. 

We don't want to stifle the freshness and creativity that we saw in the initiatives today.   There is massive collective expertise round the board table (members are listed at www.buildingsafercommunities.co.uk/programme-board.html).  That is helping to ensure that we are thoughtful about the way in which we intervene in order to meet the aim.  There is a very clear desire to promote and support assets based work, but also a determination that we learn from the past.  After all, as we're learning from improvement, why would we think that doing the same things as we did in the past would get different results?

I think where we’ve got to as a Board is agreement that we can add something in at least the following areas:

• spreading learning, and supporting sustainability – helping those doing the innovative work to form more of a network and share learning and solutions
• developing the evidence base around what works and how to evaluate effectiveness
• applying the improvement framework to empower community enterprises like these to make a greater impact
• deploying existing public sector resources (police and fire officers, local authority and health staff) in partnership with the third and private sectors and in a way that supports and enables community cohesion.

The tension that we wrestled with was that for us to decide "what we'll do" might fly in the face of what the communities actually want.   We've consulted with the professionals in each area, but the challenge now is to ensure that there is real engagement with a range of people and organisations - the assets - before we provide what we see as helpful input. 

We were reminded a few times of the role that leadership plays, and that behind every successful initiative we’ll find what Martin Johnstone described as  “spectacular individuals”.   His suggestion was that we bring together a range of these individuals for a dinner in the community in which they work.  We say thank you in a context of celebration.   We help them to connect, we learn, and we respond to the asks that might emerge from this positive process.   I’m excited by the possibilities that something like this could lead to, while slightly nervous about stepping out of an assets based approach back into a “we know what you really need” mode.

Finally, some key quotes from those actually doing the work:

"Lead from the back"

"Evaluate on a daily basis"

"The system seems to stop us"

"It's about being listened to".

I’m convinced there is a great potential in developing further our approach to assets, co-production and improvement – with potential gains in terms of community safety, but in a wide range of other areas as well, including health, regeneration and employment.  Congratulations to the community safety team that is taking so much of this forward.

Paul Johnston