Embedding engagement
Partnership working: advantages
Working with partner agencies from the statutory, community, voluntary and business sectors can be extremely beneficial to community engagement activity around policing issues. However, successful partnership working on community engagement requires planning, co-ordination and communication. Partners often have existing mechanisms set up to engage with their service users/ the general public. Partners may allow Forces and Authorities to tap into these mechanisms, especially on policing and safety issues which tend to be a high priority for many stakeholder groups. You might also be able to share data with partners which has already been collected.
Greater Manchester Community Cohesion Programme 2002-2004In April 2003 Greater Manchester Police Authority ran a number of Community Cohesion Projects in five local authority areas in Greater Manchester: Oldham. Rochdale; Bolton, Tameside and Manchester (Moss Side). The events brought young people together from across the Borough and from a range of different backgrounds. Local multi-agency steering groups designed programmes to meet local needs. The events mixed group activities with workshops tackling some of the issues of concern to young people, such as the police attitude towards young people, stop and search, and drugs. In addition, there were a range of relationship-building and celebratory activities involving young people, police officers and staff from other key agencies. The aim of the projects was to bring together young people aged 14-19 from different backgrounds to build positive relationships, share a sense of belonging and value each individual's culture/ethnicity. Consultation with young people following the civil disturbances in Oldham in 2001 highlighted the need for young people to share their perceptions of the challenges facing the area and possible solutions. Key activities
Who is involved? Police, Race Equality Councils, Youth Services, faith organisations, fire services, armed services, and sports development agencies. How is it funded? Greater Manchester Police Authority received £65,000 through the Government Office North West Community Facilitation Programme. The funding was awarded due to the success of the Oldham Youth Together Project in 2002, which was a response to the civil disturbances that had occurred in 2001. What progress has been made? Young people were brought together from different backgrounds and were able to explore key community cohesion issues of interest to them. Immediate evaluation of the projects provided very positive feedback from both young people and the agencies that attended various events. However, it is very difficult to effectively measure the impact on community cohesion on any wider basis. Relationships between agencies were strengthened through this initiative. Further work is planned in some areas to build on the success of these projects and to mainstream some of this work. Critical success factors for this project The commitment and active participation of key local agencies and the buy-in to the activities from young people. What challenges were faced or lessons learned? Establishing effective joined up partnership working between diverse agencies within tight delivery timescales proved difficult in some areas. Success was mixed. Where partner agencies demonstrated a real commitment to seize the opportunity to springboard community cohesion work with young people - e.g. Oldham, Rochdale and Manchester - the work has been mainstreamed. In other areas, there was little demonstrated commitment to partnership working. In these cases the activities themselves provided a one off opportunity for young people to meet young people from diverse backgrounds but probably had little impact on community cohesion. Feeding back and evaluating A report was produced for GONW and copies of these were presented to local steering groups, CDRPS and LSPs. Each steering group completed project evaluations. All young people that participated in activities also completed evaluations Contact: Irene Glynn, Projects Co-ordinator, GMPA; tel: 0161 793 3207; e-mail: Irene.glynn@gmpa.gov.uk |
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