Community Partnership Programme bid

We applied to the Community Partnership Programme; which will then lead to generating more depth (with new partners?) as we prepare to deliver in 2012-13 the suggested local services, or some modification of these plans:

"Priority Outcomes for this round of funding

a. Job creation – employment/self-employment (Corporate Priority 1)

i. Start-up advice·

ii. Business skills workshops·

iii. Services that retain/create businesses and jobs for local people·

iv. Employability/vocational skills provision, including advice to young people

v. Inward investment services

b. Advice services in response to residents’ needs (Corporate Priorities 1 and 4)

i. Money, debt, welfare

ii. Legal

iii. Housing

iv. General

c. Safer communities (Corporate Priorities 2 and 4)

i. Services that reduce/prevent rough sleeping

ii. Services that prevent domestic violence

iii. Services that reduce alcohol/substance misuse and associated anti-social behaviour

d. Active involvement of residents in community-based activity (beneficiary focused and targeting disadvantaged areas and disengaged/vulnerable groups) (Corporate Priorities 1, 2 and 4)

i. Services/activities that enable individuals to exercise greater participation in the wider community

ii. Activities that involve residents in the delivery of services/projects in disadvantaged areas

iii. Services that help vulnerable individuals to gain skills and confidence to become stakeholders in their local community

Priority Outcome(s) we are expressing an interest in delivering:

Active involvement of residents in community-based activity (beneficiary focussed and targeting disadvantaged areas and disengaged/vulnerable groups) 

a) What are the types of specific and tangible results (Outcomes) that your project will achieve? 

Neighbours knowing each other better across an area of 5 streets, sharing more items and skills, formed local well-being groups, identified local needs and households provided caring services to isolated/poorly-supported individuals.

b) What would you do to achieve these Outcomes? 

1) Engage people with door to door rapport-building, asking people to consider what items and skills would improve their quality of life & offering ways to request & share these.

2) Employ a timebank broker to establish a way in which more skills are recognised in the community and hours of peoples time are put into the timebank, which can be drawn from in a number of ways, including increased ease of access to leisure facilities for those who have built credit in the timebank. (The co-ordinator of this timebank, with much paid & unpaid experience of being a timebank broker in London has family in Hastings and has agreed to move based on  funding for at least one-day per week employment.)

3) Create “local wellbeing groups” that ask and address the question: “What would improve the relationship with ALL those who live on this street and the nearest four streets?”

4) Support Local-Wellbeing-group-led surveys of care needs undertaken, so that, for example, a household taking on the provision of a breakfast for a nearby elderly isolated individual, and in time offer accommodation within the household as a viable alternative to a care home etc 

5) Link the provision of items on websites that share resources and skills to those who don't use the web. Alongside this encouraging organisations seeking to provide resources in specific locations (eg libraries and cinemas) to dove-tail their service provision with those providing items and skills on the hyper-local level.

c)Please describe the project beneficiaries

The beneficiaries will be those who are isolated in anyway that can be served by the “St Leonards Sharing” consortium and the local well-being groups created. Hyper-local areas (5 streets at a time) will be more interconnected through sharing resources and skills, and there will be more local knowledge of the needs of people within each of those areas. Emphasis will be placed by the “St Leonards Sharing” project co-ordinator on the needs of those who might be being considered for care within other settings, though ultimately the local wellbeing groups can only be encouraged to take as inclusive approach as possible to the beneficiaries of their activities.

A brief description of why  "St Leonards Sharing" consortium is suitable to deliver this project. 

Within the Consortium organisations there are many years work not only with those who have experienced themselves as marginalised (often evidenced by criminal records) or experienced themselves as stuck in situations of addiction and dis-empowerment, but also with those who hold power and resources. Much of the wealth in the consortium is in the creativity of the connections that we have and make; drawing from experience in generating a more cohesive community in parts of Brazil -as recognised in the “Radical Efficiency” report by the (UK) National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, who are currently funding one of the consortium members. The Brazil work began with identifying skills wanted by those living in the favelas and finding people from the wealthier communities who would meet those needs and work towards creating a more cohesive society.

This consortium has the innovative credentials, commitment and accountability required to deliver this project. Income and expenditure can be independently examined and monitoring and evaluation is achievable at a door-to-door and well-being group to well-being group level.

The innovation in St Leonards is partly in the creation of “local wellbeing groups” that ask and address the question: “What would improve the relationship with ALL those who live on this street and the nearest four streets?”. The key skill offered is that of engaging with neighbours in such a way that trust is built and resources and time is shared towards constructive ends.

Gradually people are coming to see how much their wellbeing is determined by their local connections, the sharing and looking out for each other within communities and the resilience of their local communities in terms of providing those things that cannot long-term be reliably provided by funding streams from above.

BIG Lottery Fund

-Forthcoming

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