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CAPACITY BUILDING FOR COMMUNITY PLANNING
CHAPTER TWO CONTEXT TO THE PROJECT: KEY ISSUES CURRENTLY ENGAGING PARTICIPANTS
2.1 This project was specifically established to review the training and development needs of officers engaged in CP. However, from the outset and particularly in the focus groups and interviews, it became clear that wider concerns about the current CP arrangements and processes were influencing practitioners' perceptions of training and learning needs. These findings are set out here, in order to understand more clearly the key concerns and constraints that could limit the impact of any training and development activities which might be taken forward. The issues discussed below are not new and are perhaps inevitable in any new process like CP, but it is considered by the consultees that they need to be addressed if a concerted programme of capacity building for officers is to be taken forward
AMBIGUITY AND LACK OF DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY PLANNING
2.2 There was widespread agreement amongst consultees that the term "Community Planning" has been largely unhelpful in assisting practitioners in progressing the concept. Many felt that the term has perpetuated the 'planning' stage of the process, to the detriment of either integrating effectively with the work on the ground or understanding what this should mean for service delivery.
2.3 The consultees were invited to state what "Community Planning" meant to them. The results were interesting in that they threw up a wide range of answers and then generated some lively debate. Concepts such as "a process", "a vision", "about empowering communities", "a means of prioritising", "streamlining plans and strategies", "joined-up delivery", "sharing information", "client at the centre", "involving communities", "leadership" all featured regularly. Some consultees moved directly to outcomes such as "improved health and well-being" or "improved service delivery".
2.4 Despite a strong consensus that CP delivery in local areas will be largely dependent on local needs, there was an equally strong feeling that a lack of a clear, coherent and widely accepted definition of what CP is really about presents real dangers in ensuring consistency and quality in service delivery. In the face of ambiguous definition and wide-ranging local interpretation, the learning and development context of each CPP has the potential to be equally ambiguous, as well as bearing little relation to the learning and development contexts of the other CPPs.
COMMUNITY PLANNING AT AN EARLY DEVELOPMENT STAGE
2.5 CP, as a tool to deliver more effective, community-focused and joined-up services, is still at an early stage of development. Despite the significant headway already made in defining CP as a key policy instrument, the processes and knowledge which underpin it are still being developed and tested. It is therefore not surprising that the national infrastructure is not yet wholly compatible with a "joined-up" CP vision. This national infrastructure - or 'hardware'- is gradually developing to accommodate and guide the CP approach, but this will take time to embed. In the meantime consultees expressed concerns that the current position causes difficulties in collaborative service delivery. An example would be where 'thematic-based' national policy initiatives or guidance from the Scottish Executive do not appear to be immediately compatible with joined-up delivery processes at local levels.
2.6 Additionally, some interviewees expressed concerns that national delivery targets for each of the individual partner organisations involved in CP provide insufficient incentives for the partners to consider how to address these within a collaborative CP context. Indeed, many felt that addressing their own targets in isolation would be the least complex and lowest-risk course of action, especially where the targets and objectives of different partners appeared to be incompatible. The incentives may in fact be perverse.
2.7 This issue is important for this capacity building study since a perceived constraint to partnership working was felt to emanate from the nature of the infrastructural 'hardware'. There are probably longer-term issues here to be resolved if the high-level visioning involved in CP is to be translated effectively into commonly agreed targets for the key partners.
THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE COMMUNITY PLANNING PARTNERS
2.8 As well as the national infrastructure within which CP operates being relatively under-developed to address the broad CP agenda, the individual members of each CPP come from organisations and agencies which have been moulded by this national context. As such, the organisational structures, cultures and career paths (i.e. the 'software') still tend towards service delivery and professionalism which is independent of the work of the other key partnership players. The career path incentives for officers and managers tend to be based on mainstream delivery, tight management of budgets and delivery of in-house targets.
2.9 Again, due to the relative infancy of the CP agenda, practitioners often feel constrained in delivering wider CP objectives by the inherent processes and embedded cultures - both within partner organisations and within their own agencies. Individual officers charged with developing CP are often experiencing difficulties in finding common ground and consensus between the overarching objectives of the CP process and the ways of working within individual partner organisations. The concept of "institutional capacity" - the quality of the collection of relational networks in a place, formal and informal - is important in setting the scene for individuals and organisations to adapt to changing circumstances, act collaboratively and establish as basis for consensus 1.
THE DIFFERING PACE AND NATURE OF COMMUNITY PLANNING DEVELOPMENT
2.10 The CP process has evolved and developed at a different pace and in different ways across the country. This may relate to commitment and it may relate to how well connected the partners were before CP. Some partners, such as those in Lanarkshire, maintain that their evidence of progress in addressing the institutional issues reflects their progress in responding to the Ravenscraig issue throughout the 1990s. Others have not had such a strong imperative for collaborative efforts in the past.
2.11 Consultees referred to the institutional and organisational changes that some partners had been dealing with throughout the CP development period, and this has perhaps constrained their capacity to drive forward CP nationally or locally. Examples such as the establishment of Communities Scotland and the Business Transformation programme within the Scottish Enterprise Network were cited.
2.12 For whatever reasons, some CPPs are much further advanced than others, which in turn means that different CPPs will potentially have different capacity building requirements. The starting points may vary. For example, one relatively under-developed CPP may require facilitated support to work towards a vision, whilst another CPP which is further down the line may be more concerned with training and development to allow them to integrate the partners' project appraisal systems or delivery mechanisms.
THE INCENTIVES AND DUTIES TO ADDRESS COMMUNITY PLANNING
2.13 By better understanding the infrastructural 'hardware', the organisational 'software' and the different developmental stages of the individual CPPs, we can better appreciate the relative motivations and incentives of the individual partners to progress to a collaborative CP style of working. Senior managers and strategists in partner organisations will need to consider the degree to which they need to progress in that direction and understand the levers and incentives (carrots and sticks?) they have at their disposal to achieve such a change.
2.14 The Local Government in Scotland Bill proposes placing a duty on local authorities to facilitate CP, through working with their partner agencies. Key concerns were expressed by many of the consultees concerning how such a 'duty' might be counter-productive to the wider ethos and spirit of CP, which focuses on fostering an environment of spontaneous partnership working within a voluntary context. These issues of incentives and duties will be important in determining the wider learning and development needs of CPPs, and in identifying the most effective methods of achieving successful capacity building potential for CP.
THE ABSENCE OF A LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT EVIDENCE BASE
2.15 Unsurprisingly, given that CP is at an early developmental stage, there has so far been little opportunity yet to learn from the direct CP experiences of others within Scotland, or indeed from England and Wales, where the similar Local Strategic Partnerships and Communities First initiatives are also at an early stage of development. The lessons learned from the evaluation of "Working Together, Learning Together" programme for Social Inclusion Partnerships and Working for Communities Pathfinders (see appendix 2 for details) are still awaited.
2.16 In the absence of such evidence, it is not surprising that many practitioners within CPPs are unsure where to go to find out about the experiences of others and to source capacity building activities. This often leads to an ad-hoc process of individual CPPs identifying particular development needs and then seeking the services of providers. There was strong recognition during the interviews and focus groups that this situation produces duplication and inefficient capture of learning. As such, the unsophisticated nature of the CP-specific learning and development market has done little to motivate or direct CPPs to identify and address their learning and development needs.
2.17 The issues above explain how the current operating environment for CP has significant implications for the generation of effective and sustainable capacity building. Indeed, many of the consultees expressed concerns that capacity building would be effective and sustainable only when the wider issues of infrastructure, institutional cultures and more widespread commitment to CP are fully addressed.
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