Council engagement with the local community

I have just emailed the two councillors and the leader of the council also, really looking forward to their response. I said:

Dear Nigel,

I'm really interested in the online engagement of elected members and council officers with the residents of North Somerset, with a particular interest in Weston-super-Mare Central. I have been reading research which can be found on the following website http://networkedneighbourhoods.com/. The research focuses on three well-established community forums using information from both resident users of the site, elected members and council officers (both in the local area where the sites are based and nationally) and has found the benefits to be numerous. They include:

• The case study sites stimulate positive connections between residents, both in terms of encounters and exchange.
• Three quarters of respondents felt that participation on the local site had had a positive effect on whether or not people pull together to make improvements.
• Some 91 per cent of respondents agreed that through their site, people express pride in their area.
• 69 per cent felt that participation on the local site had strengthened their sense of belonging (to their neighbourhood)
• Overall, two thirds (68 per cent) of respondents felt a little more or much more able to influence decisions locally as a result of participation on their local site.
• One councillor, active online, noted that if a theme is discussed on the forum it helps him, in his relations with officers, in trying to get things done.
• It seems likely that local websites can both stimulate and reflect a latent demand for informal opportunities for collective involvement, very much on a dip-in dip-out basis.
• Twenty one per cent of respondents said that participation on their site had changed their attitude towards council officers for the better. Almost twice as many (42 per cent) said their attitude towards local councillors had changed for the better. (In those areas where people in an official role had been proactive in making themselves accessible and providing information, the figures were significantly enhanced, suggesting a correlation between their participation and improved perception of their role.)

These are just a few points that seemed relevent to highlight, you may be particularly interested in section 4 of the research, relations with councils - http://networkedneighbourhoods.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Online-Nhood-Networks-Section-4.pdf

I know you recently provided answers to questions posed by members of the weston-super-mum site, and this is exactly the kind of member involvement I believe needs to become commonplace. The other local citizen sites I am aware of are the Weston Mercury forum, Weston Mercury blogs and the Weston-super-Mare People site.

Could you please tell me how the Council feels about the involvement of members and officers in such sites? Is it promoted, or are there barriers in place?

I have looked at your website, and I know you also use facebook and twitter which is brilliant. Do others though? Are we far from councillors and officers actually engaging online with residents? Do they monitor local opinion displayed on these sites? If they do, excellent, but I really believe actually engaging is what will help the council reap the benefits described in the aforementioned research.

I hope you find the information interesting, and I look forward to hearing your views.

Kind Regards,

Holly Young

I have also just come across a Facebook profile of a councillor in Portsmouth who is engaging in exactly the kind of way I would love to see everywhere. Jim Fleming, thank you for leading by example!

Off my high horse and onwards to take my little one to a Christmas party now :)

The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults

The review on poverty and life chances was published on 3rd December. The title of the review from Frank Field MP is The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults. I have started reading the review with interest (although it is around 100 pages long, so, I'll need a while!) and I have also been looking through the various media reports. There appears to be a mixed reaction. Although the report seems to have been by and large well recieved, there are some concerned commentators. For example, blog Left Foot Forward cite the response from the Institue for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warning that Frank Field is wrong to ignore the importance of family income in improving the life chances of children under 5. The report claims that Field's review gives a false choice between improving early years services, or putting money into the tax credit and benefit system for low-income families. We are all aware of the current financial climate, but the IPPR advise that the Government would be wrong to make this choice. We need investment in both if we want to improve the life chances of our most vulnerable children. The recent UNICEF report The Children Left Behind states that income poverty has the greatest impact on child inequality in the UK.

However, If we look at summary evidence from the Effective Pre-School Provision (EPPE) research, their findings state that 'For all children, the quality of the home learning environment is more important for intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income. What parents do is more important than who parents are.' Which quite clearly places a bigger emphasis on the parenting a child recieves, than family income.
The same research states that 'Settings that have staff with higher qualifications have higher
quality scores and their children make more progress' and 'High quality pre-schooling is related to better intellectual and social/behavioural development for children.' Which seems to agree with Field's recommendations regarding the need for investment in the early years services provided.

Surely though, it is all related. Are families with a higher income more likely to be able to access this high quality pre-schooling? According to a recent survey entitled Towards universal early years provision: analysis of take-up by disadvantaged families from recent annual childcare surveys, the answer is yes. The report found that 'Children from lower-income and larger families (i.e. with three or more children), those whose mothers did not work and those whose mothers did not have any academic qualifications were less likely to receive early years provision.' I will continue to read the Frank Field review, and continue to read the media reaction, but from what I know now, I must agree with the IPPR. We cannot afford to choose one route or the other, we need to provide a truly holistic solution if we want to provide the best start in life for all, but especially for, the most vulnerable children in our society.

My first visit to a local council meeting...

Was very enjoyable!

I was the only person in the public gallery, but considering the lady I first spoke to on the reception desk today sent me to wait outside a locked door "because they usually open them when a public meeting is on", I'm not really very surprised. I won't say it was very hard work to get in to the meeting, but it did take asking the same question over several days to several people before I got the right answer.

I think more could be done to involve the public, to make council meetings more welcoming to Joe Bloggs. But, at the same time - I suppose if the public are that interested they will find their own way there? I would like to stress once I actually got IN they were very welcoming indeed!

Anyway! I attended the Children and Young People's Services Policy and Scrutiny Panel, and apart from now understanding a little more about the way the Council operates, I was given a piece of documentation others may find interesting. The Department for Education Business Plan 2011 - 2015.

Of particular interest to me are the following points contained in the document:

Action: Retain a national network of Sure Start Children’s Centres with a core universal offer, while also ensuring that they deliver proven early intervention programmes to support families in the greatest need.

i.Develop a Sure Start Children’s Centres reform programme (which has started already, end date Mar 2011)

ii.Work with local authorities to develop a plan to increase voluntary and community sector involvement within Sure Start Children’s Centres, improve accountability arrangements, increase the use of evidence-based interventions, and introduce greater payment by results (start date Jan 2011, end date Mar 2011).

iii.Introduce a new Early Intervention Grant to provide local authorities with the funding they need to support Sure Start and other intervention programmes (start date Apr 2011, end date Jun 2011).


There are many Children's Centres that are run by voluntary/private organisations already, and so this part of the plan neither surprises nor particularly concerns me. What does raise a concern is the payment by results. How will this be measured?

I am aware the Early Intervention Grant has caused some worries as it appears the majority of the grant will be taken up by Sure Start with little being leftover for many other interventions... The Local Governement Settlement Grant is due to be finalised this month, Dec 2010, and this will contain details of the Early Intervention Grant, so we won't be waiting much longer.

More points of interest include:

Action : Ensure access to sufficient and high quality early years provision

v.Put in place a new Early Years framework that is less bureaucratic and more focused on improving young children’s learning and development (starts Sep 2012, ends Sep 2014).

This raises an eyebrow! Just when everyone has got used to the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework... The milestone for the New Early Years framework to be in place is September 2012, which is not as far away as it seems. On the bright side, if the framework is more effective in improving outcomes for children, we can't really complain, can we?


The final milestone I will make reference to is:

First annual data released on number of families that have been through an evidence-based early intervention programme by local authority (exact measure to be agreed after Graham Allen review) to be released Dec 2011. More details of the Graham Allen review can be found by clicking here.

So there we go, that is what I learnt today! Hope somebody finds it interesting and/or informative :)