Centre for Social ActionCurrent WorkRegional Evaluation of the Pacesetters Programme (PACEVAL)
Jennie Fleming is part of a team lead by Mark Johnson (Mary Seacole Research Centre) who have won a contract to evaluate the NHS Pacesetters programme for the East Midlands region.The Pacesetters Programme is a partnership between local communities who experience health inequalities, the NHS and the Department of Health. The overall aim of the programme is to deliver equality and diversity improvements and innovations resulting in: · Patient and user involvement in the design and delivery of services; · Reduced health inequalities for patients and service users; · Working environments that are fair and free of discrimination. The evaluation is being carried out by Mark Johnson, Lorraine Culley, Jennie Fleming, Nicky Hudson and Fenglin Guoand will run until October 2009.
Community Cohesion in Leicester
The Centre is working with Leicester City Council (LCC) and Voluntary Action Network (VAL) in exploring and measuring community cohesion inLeicester. This project uses the Community Cohesion Assessment Instrument developed by LCC and the Centre for Social Action to inform and support the implementation and development of the council’s community cohesion strategy and to embed community cohesion across the four themes of the Local Area Agreement blocks. It consists of a research project focusing on different areas of Leicester and another one with young people across the city.
The project is providing opportunities for enhancing community cohesion through a high level of local engagement with local people who are being trained by the Centre to administer the questionnaire. The Cabinet of LCC at its meeting on 12th March 2007 agreed to this approach and advised that the programme be carried out across the city based on 10 ‘Super Output Areas’ (SOA’s) of varying mix i.e. affluent areas, deprived areas, average areas, etc to give good comparative data. A survey is being carried out on 10% of the population of each SOA and several focus groups will gather local knowledge about cohesion within the city of Leicester.
Critical review of structures for young people’s participation in decision-making within local authorities
The Centre is currently working in partnership with The NYA and their trainers who are themselves young people on a critical review of the Beacon authorities’ youth engagement structures commissioned by IDeA. The purpose of the review is to consider what structures are working well in enabling youth participation and what real outcomes there have been in the lives of children and young people, the sustainability of their approaches to participation and the impact these strategies have had on the delivery of council objectives and hence how effective the involvement of young people in shaping services has been.
We are currently reviewing documents from the authorities and alongside trainers from The NYA, will be facilitating focus groups with young people from all 8 Beacon authorities, as well as carrying out interviews with key adults. We will hold a day with the young trainers to review the findings and agree the key findings before writing a report. Executive Summary
The Centre for Social Action, in partnership with Youth Action Network, has been awarded a grant of £283,000 by the Big Lottery Fund to investigate the impact of volunteering by young people on themselves and their communities, over a three year period. The research is investigating how young people’s community volunteering contributes to the enhancement of their own social capital and to the well-being of the community as a whole. A core group of young people -the project steering group- and young volunteer researchers are participating in the project design, research, reporting and dissemination processes as equal partners with the research personnel from Youth Action Network and De Montfort University. The research will define the factors which contribute to successful engagement with young people; showing the organisational structures which best promote the empowerment of young people to take on responsibility and exercise authority within organisations and draw conclusions on the nature of the community benefit this produces. (2005-8)
The aim of the Standards We Expect Project is to encourage and guide the development in eight local areas of systems and processes to support social care service users to determine how their rights/needs are met through a process of involvement and negotiation among key stakeholders, sharing and exchanging with a wider network. Particular attention will be paid to supporting the involvement of service users and face to face practitioners, groups which continue to experience particular exclusions in this context. The approach to this project is based on enabling stakeholders to engage in the process of change through identifying existing forums and developing a range of new ones. This is particularly designed to ensure the involvement of practitioners and service users, enabling stakeholders to develop, share and negotiate their perspectives and contribute on as equal terms as possible to the change process. This will involve the provision of support, information and training by the project team. (www.standardsweexpect.org)
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