Feedback: Single Outcome Agreement, Community Planning Partnership and You

Feedback: ‘Single Outcome Agreement, Community Planning Partnership and You’

Please see below for the results from the round table discussions at the Third Sector Forum event held on Tuesday 19 February.

Task one: A ‘tweetable’ statement (140 characters or less) of the critical thing to address for/with vulnerable and ‘at risk’ people.

Focus on empowerment of individuals; facilitating citizen control; providing for not doing to.
Provide support to enable people to have choice and control and participate fully across all areas of life.
Long-term resourcing which reflects and listens to the diversity and ever changing definition of vulnerable and at risk people.
Encourage hope through the continuation of services, alleviation of poverty (not just financial, eg of opportunity), visible change, engaging with people, challenging discrimination and not supporting discrimination.
Prevent people reaching crisis point by early intervention, advocacy, support, mentoring, and advice and working with early years.
People in power need to have big ears to hear lots of local voices about their experiences of inequality, isolation and human rights.
Who determines who is vulnerable and at risk and how do we effectively listen and support in order to meet their needs and transform lives?
Identify the ‘at risk’ and ask what their needs are. Self-worth – support, care etc tailored to need of individual.
Joined up, collaborative working with all people, services, agencies involved with individuals. Accountability, who is responsible?
No leadership, no solutions, no direction = no change.
If you value it, resource it.
Crisis/vulnerability is not 9-5, it’s 24/7.
Lack of control = stress + ill health

Task two: Two specific ways in which you believe the Third Sector can contribute:

(a) to the specific response by the CPP to supporting vulnerable and at risk people in Glasgow

(b) more generally to other aspects of the SOA

Connecting individual’s needs to strategic planning through co-production, hubs at neighbourhood level and with communities of interest.

Accessible information sharing and joining the dots (feedback is two way).
Flexibility in delivery mechanisms.
Deliver more for less – value for money.
More community engagement and use a person centred approach.
Valuing our services would be the transformation.
Continue to collectively use passion and commitment to deliver services and make a difference on the ground.
Building trust with the most marginalised.
Capacity to give community planning access to the people that are vulnerable – letting them have a voice. We have a responsibility to monitor how CPP then use the info we give them.
Third sector contributes by providing services to people in need.
Working in partnership to support the wide spectrum of the needs of ‘vulnerable’ people in their communities.
Info, resilience, knowledge, confidence, cooperation, coproduction, participatory budgeting, capacity building, change.
Link from CP to grassroots more approachable, partnership working, joined up working and a co-production ethos. Practical support – bridging the gaps left by public sector cuts.
Providing services in a unique and individualised way.
Providing a service with a community, not to a community.
[This group wrote a long list and didn’t highlight the two main ones, so here’s the full list] Trusting relationships; access to people; ask what they want/need; identify them; people’s voice – their own concern, opinion etc; first point of contact; listening; assessing; small steps; time; trust; empathy; reassurance that they affect their own solutions; being there and responding appropriately; more care, less jargon; choice, control, empowerment; access to coping and relief mechanisms; talk to people; understand; supporting people to support themselves.

Task three: One specific way in which you believe one or more of the other CPP partners could contribute to the issue of vulnerable and ‘at risk’ people.

Equality of voluntary sector – commitment from ALL partners to accept this and work accordingly.
Consideration of voluntary and community organisations before ALEOs.
Re-evaluate ALEOs’ charity status. Local charities can’t compete with these big organisations and increases competition not collaboration.
Accept the voluntary sector as an equal partner.
The third sector needs to be resourced to do this. Look at independent resource.
People are the priority and how decisions impact on them and their lives must be the prime consideration and driver of services.
Vision to address priorities – including funding/resources.
Recognise the third sector’s value, if you can do it without us-then do it.
Listen – take a wider perspective on day to day issues. Need joined up thinking and good communications between partners – effective collaborative working.
Better community engagement by understanding and using the structures we already have.
Health – look at the methods used for funding/procurement – they are discriminatory to small services and are increasing competition amongst the third sector.
The NHS and police working together more, eg not locking up people with mental health problems.
Adopt the ‘nothing about us without us is for us’ mentality.
Give the third sector access to the good quality information these partners have- the third sector needs accurate, accessible data. Find effective ways to share information.
One group wrote a couple of questions on their sheet:

Where did the final outcomes come from?
Is there a clear plan in place for engaging with communities in relation to the SOA?

Notes from Q and A/comment session.

Community engagement needs to be resourced – such as bus fares, childcare, get rid of jargon, make people feel welcome and not intimidated.

Community engagement needs to be accessible, eg to people who are hard of hearing or blind.

Representation should mean that when you walk into a service you are listened to.

We need to focus on actual work, not endless strategy meetings.

People need a sense of hope. Tangible change needs to happen in our communities in order for that hope to be realised.

People need to be able to live with uncertainty, and also to be a driver in their own life.

Advocacy should be at the heart of services.

It’s not all about money, if some people won the lottery, nothing would really change for them.