Community Learning Development Resource 302 – 02
CO-WORKING AND PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENTS
SUMMARY
This resource (302-02) explores how the separate workers and agencies, engaging in community development and regeneration, might work collectively, particularly in relation to being client-centred in their practice.
KEY IDEAS
- A number of workers and agencies, can be engaged in community development, capacity building and regeneration work within a community or neighbourhood, at any one time. Evidence is that in the last decade, there have been increasing numbers of workers and agencies actively seeking to engage with local people in targeted locations.
- Workers and agencies can have a variety of purposes for working with the same people in the community, where residents can be faced with a variety of overlapping and confusing initiatives and interventions.
- Because community development, capacity-building and regeneration strategies draw in workers and agencies with different agendas and targets, joined-up thinking and co-working across the separate agencies could benefit both residents and workers.
- Most agencies and workers have the needs and wants of local people, and their expectations and aspirations, shaping and driving their work, particularly within inclusion and widening participation initiatives.
- Individuals in the community have a wide variety of needs and wants, which require a wide range of responses by workers and organisations. Is it not sensible and more effective to seek overall coherence, clarity and consistency across the range of those responses?
- Can a single worker or agency possibly address all the needs and wants of all the clients they connect with in a community or neighbourhood?
- Where workers and agencies operate independently in the community market-place, do people become confused by the variety and complexity of services and opportunities, offered separately and in disconnected ways, by different workers and organisations?
- A framework for co-working needs to be accessible and inclusive to all workers, agencies and organisations engaged in community development, capacity-building and regeneration, within a patch. Above all it needs to make practical sense to local people.
Co-working arrangements in support of community learning and capacity-building
- A learning progression framework, which offers coherent and inter-connected learning pathways along which individuals can find their way by choice, also provides a sensible framework for coherent and joined-up working by workers and agencies, encouraging and supporting learner progression.
- Individuals who are non-confident and inexperienced learners need personal support and guidance to make sense of what is on offer within community development and regeneration strategies. They benefit from supportive relationships, provided by workers and agencies, which enable them to make effective choices across providers and services.
- For most individuals there should be an appropriate variety of opportunities and choices for learning progression. A comprehensive range is likely to require the involvement of several agencies and providers. It would be good if the progression framework worked for individuals in a joined-up manner.
- The learning progression framework needs to embrace holistic learning across the whole spectrum of informal, non-formal and formal opportunities.
- It is important that education and training providers of formal learning opportunities, recognise, understand and value the non-formal and informal learning achievements of people within targeted communities and neighbourhoods.
- Co-working arrangements that have learning as the core change process at the heart of the work, need to be learner-centred (client-centred/people-centred), shaped and driven by learner needs and wants, with active participation by individuals and groups in determining their choices and routes to success.
- Local strategic bodies (e.g., LSPs/Locality Partnerships/ Neighbourhood Action Teams) through their strategies need to provide for a co-working infrastructure that supports joined-up learning pathways which effectively access and connect local people with the opportunities they want and choose.
PROMPTS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
- Where do you and/or your organisation stand in relation to these statements – do they identify with your understanding of how to support individuals and their participation in community development and regeneration initiatives?
- Do the statements convince you of the need to operate within a client-centred collaborative framework?
- Can you identify and barriers or constraints that are likely to affect co-working with other workers or agencies?