Summary

The community of a report

development
challenge
How can people rise to the challenges and opportunities presented by governments
increasing emphasis on community engagement? This is a huge task which needs politicians,
managers of public services and people who work in communities to think and do things
in new ways. Government recognises that power should be more widely shared and yet
community development, the occupation that enables this to happen, is partially and
unevenly supported. At the same time, community development practice needs to
become more effective.This report addresses these issues and suggests that:

Many of the current reforms in local government and other major public services
which depend on community engagement are unlikely to achieve their objectives,
particularly in disadvantaged communities, without community development.

There is not yet a clear national strategy for community development to match
the growing requirements for community engagement in governance and public
services. Instead, community development is often a late add-on to other policies.
As a result, community development funding and implementation is patchy
and inefficient.

Few local areas have an overall strategic approach to community development, linking
efforts across sectors, agencies and policy areas, as recommended by the 2006 Local
Government White Paper.

Firm Foundations, the governments national community capacity building framework, can provide
a starting point for co-ordinating local strategies and informing other national policies.

There are some 20,000 professional community development workers in the UK, employed
in the voluntary and community sector or in public authorities, but many are not working to
recognised occupational standards, which themselves need to be reviewed. In addition there
are many people carrying out unpaid community development work in their own communities.

Community development practitioners avoid the limelight because their work is about enabling
and empowering others rather than themselves.Thus community development does not have
a high profile and there is little awareness of this specialist occupation devoted to tackling
social exclusion and building community empowerment.

In addition, community development has not been good at systematically collecting and
disseminating evidence of its own impacts. New tools are emerging which can help
address this, including evaluation frameworks and indicators.

A step change is required in levels of recognition, resourcing, support, management
and training to fulfil the potential of community development to contribute to
building active, sustainable and empowered communities. Both government and
the community development occupation itself have roles to play in achieving this.
The policy context
The role of government is changing. Government necessarily remains the central accountable
point for decision-making in society, but it needs to foster greater empowerment in local and
other communities (particularly those most disadvantaged, who are the least engaged with
government) to complement its own role.

Change has to take place largely through empowerment from the bottom up. Society relies on
community development to facilitate this, yet the occupation is not well known. Government
invests in it unevenly through a number of funding streams but has no co-ordinated overview
of it.Yet social policies and programmes repeatedly come back to community development as
they grapple with the problems of overcoming disadvantage, engaging with local residents and
making public services work better.

The community development offer

When it is being done well, community development combines various functions: helping
people set up groups, supporting forums and networks, and organising events and activities
that enable people to work together across organisational and community boundaries.
It actively tackles the divisions, social exclusion and discrimination that deter some people
in communities from participating in activities and decision-making. It also works with
public authorities and agencies to help them understand and engage with the
communities they serve, and facilitates links upwards, downwards and horizontally
across communities and agencies.

At the heart of the practice is a set of values about collective working,

equality and justice, learning and reflecting, participation, political awareness
and sustainable change. It is this combination of roles, values, responsibilities
and spheres of operation that give community development its distinctive
character. But in many places only one or two of these aspects are present,
which weakens the impact and contributes to the confusion about what
community development is.The report recommends that practice
should only be recognised fully as community development if it
meets this comprehensive definition.

If there was no community development

What does a locality look like without an active community development presence?
It is likely that:

there are few community groups, these may be small and exclusive, and many people
do not realise the issues that concern them are shared by others and can be affected
by joint action

the most disadvantaged people receive poor quality public services yet are least
confident and skilled at representing their needs to authorities; sections of the local
population are not able to participate in activities that are intended for the whole
community because prejudices, assumptions and cultural differences are not tackled

community leaders and representatives are not properly selected and held accountable,
and may struggle or be ineffective on partnership boards

public agencies and departments that need to engage with local communities are unaware
of each others efforts, lack insight into how communities work and have few channels for
dialogue with them.
The hidden contribution?
While there are now thousands of examples of successful community initiatives
in disadvantaged areas which owe their existence to community development work,
very little of the community development function is documented. Because the
work is often hidden from the public gaze, it can sometimes appear that community
achievements have occurred spontaneously, when in fact they have been nurtured
over a long period by skilled practitioners.This may mislead policymakers into
an over-optimistic impression of what communities can achieve without support.
At the same time, because evidence of outcomes isnt often analysed, improvement
of practice is held back.

Case study impacts

The report presents case studies which demonstrate the impact of
community development in a range of contexts. Outcomes include:

the turnaround of a whole district in decline, with community groups
doubled and an upturn in the local economy

a run-down housing estate is transformed with residents reclaiming
public spaces and interacting with each other much more

residents are brought together around common concerns and create
improvements in their neighbourhood

dialogue is created between residents and authorities

positive interaction is created between formerly isolated neighbours

people learn new organising skills

groups and organisations negotiate improvements for their members
and other residents.

The full report examines:

the policy context

what community development offers which other forms of work in
communities dont

outcomes of community development

typical examples of community development in action

what we know about the occupation who does community work?

community development in local authorities

community developments invisibility

trends in funding

training, development and support

steps towards a strategy for community development.
The recommendations
The report makes five headline recommendations:

A strategic approach to community development should operate across each local area,
with strengthened regional community development networks and appropriate national links.

Community development funding should be adequate to achieve and maintain a major
step change in the level of community strengths and empowerment across the nation and
especially in disadvantaged areas.

Community development should be managed and delivered to the highest
standards.

Community development should be promoted as a nationally recognised
occupation with a clear basis in values, methods and outcomes.

High-quality community development training should be available in each
region at all levels and in different ways to suit the needs of new and experienced
practitioners, and talented new entrants should be recruited.

Detailed recommendations for local, regional and national policy makers,

community development practitioners and organisations are included in
the full report.

About the report

The Community Empowerment Division of the Department for Communities and
Local Government commissioned the report, and the Community Development Foundation
facilitated its production.The working group producing the report is unique in bringing together
practitioner groups, public bodies and academics to develop a set of strategic recommendations
for community development.The group included local, regional and national perspectives,
and drew on new and existing research as well as practitioner expertise on the ground.
The group met over 11 months.The three lead authors of the report are the key national
community development organisations in England: the Community Development Foundation,
the Community Development Exchange and the Federation for Community Development
Learning.

Further information
The Community Development Challenge by Community Development Foundation, Community
Development Exchange, Federation for Community Development Learning, and the Community
Development Challenge working group is published by DCLG, priced at 15.00 and is available
to buy from CDF, Unit 5, Angel Gate, 320326 City Road, London EC1V 2PT, tel: 020 7833 1772,
email: [email protected] or can be downloaded free of charge at www.communities.gov.uk
and the addresses below.This summary is also available online at the addresses below.

www.cdf.org.uk
www.fcdl.org.uk
www.cdx.org.uk
Published in Great Britain by the Community Development Foundation in December 2007