Publications & Reports
Empowerment Skills for All
Gabriel Chanan and Colin Miller
HCA (Homes and Communities Academy) 2009
This study for HCA sets out a learning framework for linking the contributions of all front line public service workers to the empowerment of local communities. It argues that to be effective, empowerment must go a good deal wider than what is traditionally covered by community development (CD) but that CD staff and skills are central to guiding this growing agenda.
PACES Publications
Mobilising the Hidden Economy of the Third Sector
Gabriel Chanan
PACES, 2010
All political parties hope that the third sector will find ever more economical ways to enable communities to cope with diversity while public service cuts make life harder. But they are mistakenly looking at the third sector as if it was a unified block of similar organisations. They urge all groups to model themselves on social enterprises, under the illusion that smaller groups are ‘grant dependent’ and social enterprises are more economical. It is the mass of small community groups which are in fact by far the most economical part of the sector. Community development can boost these but needs to be done in a more thorough, well planned way than it often is. This new pamphlet from PACES sets out twelve policy actions to create effective community development strategy at minimum cost.
Management: towards high standards in community development
Colin Miller
Community Development Foundation, 2008
This project commissioned by CLG and the Community Development Challenge group is the first to closely examine the issues, challenges and best practice in managing community development workers and teams. Based on regional and national seminars with CD managers, and interviews with over 40 managers and practitioners, it provides a framework for management, analysis of factors making for good practice, and a variety of case studies.
Available from the Community Development Foundation [www.cdf.org.uk]
Thriving Third Sector
Gabriel Chanan
Cabinet Office/ Office of the Third Sector/Navca, 2010
A user guide for the National Survey of Third Sector Organisations
How can local authorities and their partners on Local Strategic Partnerships create the best environment for third sector groups and organisations to thrive? The results of the first ever comprehensive national third sector survey in England were published in 2009. The aim was to establish a new indicator (National indicator 7) but the survey goes much further, producing a wide picture of how the sector operates and the issues that are important to it. The survey website provides details for every principle local authority area, and at national level provides a cross-tabulation facility enabling users to investigate hundreds of issues. This short guide commissioned by the Office of the Third Sector puts forward a range of ideas for improving the intersectoral relationship
The Community Development Challenge and Challenging Community Development
Colin Miller
Presentation at University of the South Bank March 2010
PACES 2010
What will happen to community empowerment and community development with a new government and substantial public sector cuts? This paper critiques the aura of exclusiveness associated with community development and outlines a way forward so that this occupation can protect gains made over the last 20 years and play its full role in meeting the challenges of contemporary society.
(download pdf)
Valuing Community Empowerment: Making the Business Case
Creating Excellence [South West Regional Empowerment Partnership]
2009
Commissioned by the South West Regional Empowerment Partnership, this ground-clearing paper examines the feasibility of making a business case for community empowerment, showing what information would need to be in place in terms of inputs, processes and outcomes, and concludes with a brief discussion of alternative economic perspectives that need to be taken on board.
Evaluating Empowerment: Reconciling Indicators with Local Experience
South West Foundation, 2009
This companion piece to Valuing Community Empowerment argues that the inclusion of community empowerment and associated issues like volunteering and the third sector are a major step forward in official indicators. But there is a huge gap in scale between the local authority wide level at which the official indicators are collected and the neighbourhood level at which community initiatives take place. The paper argues for using the official indicators illustratively at neighbourhood level, without being limited to them, and provides an extensive list of these and other indicators on which local evaluation can draw, showing the exact questions to be asked.
Other Publications by PACES Staff
Publications with PACES input
The Community Development Challenge
This report by a working party in 2006 issues a dual challenge, firstly to government to use community development better and secondly to community development 'itself' to become more visible and effective. Tracing a number of weaknesses at both levels, the report sets out an agenda for improving policy, practice, training and deployment of CD which has had a growing impact since its publication and has become a major reference point for those concerned to upgrade the occupation and ensure its capacity to play a major role in the rebalancing of the role of public agencies and local communities in running society.
In and Not Wholly Against the State
This article addresses the question of how community development, which has a long tradition of working at the margins of the state, should react when a government seeks to give it a larger, more official role. Some theorists argues that the aims of community development and the aims of the state are compatible. But drawing extensively on John Abbott's book Sharing the City (Earthscan 1996), this paper suggests that the space for CD to happen at all is created by gaps in what governments can do, and needs to shape its strategy according to how governments try to confront unmanageable issues like the massive growth of shanties in cities of the South.
We regularly publish papers, pamphlets and reports relating to community empowerment and community development. To be notified of new publications Email PACES
The Big Society: How it Could Work
Gabriel Chanan & Colin Miller
PACES, 2010
The idea of ‘the big society’ became part of national political debate in the course of the 2010 national election campaign. This is an important development irrespective of the rest of the political package. Any government should be implementing these kinds of participative measure – but selectively.
Whilst it usefully puts a fresh slant on the issue, the big society idea has continuity with existing long term developments, both in the UK and elsewhere, in the rebalancing of responsibilities and control between government and people – a vital issue for our times, whatever label it is given.
PACES will therefore monitor and seek to influence the evolution of the big society concept and policy (whatever it ends up being called) and starts with this analysis.
Practical Standards in Community Development and Empowerment
Gabriel Chanan and Colin Miller
PACES 2010
The practice and reputation of community development has suffered over many years from being poorly defined and explained. The new National Occupational Standards for community development published in 2009 provide an official source but do not overcome these problems. PACES provides here a set of standards which are shorter and easier to understand and use. These alternative standards build a transparent structure which progresses by natural steps from working with single community groups to working across a locality both with groups and public agencies. This expanding perspective also shows how a widening approach to CD grows naturally into a strategy for local community empowerment as a whole.
The Big Society and Public Services: complementarity or erosion?
Gabriel Chanan & Colin Miller
PACES 2011
This analysis of how 'the big society' is unfolding eight months into Coalition government (following up the original PACES paper on big society, still available below) finds that the policy is dogged by confusion and tension between the two quite different aims of strengthening communities in themselves and encouraging them to take over public services. The critique argues that community empowerment is being increasingly marginalised, needs to be made distinct as the leading policy stream, and needs to link with a reformed version of community development if it is to become a reality.
Full Report (download pdf) (download html)
Executive Summary (download pdf) (download html)
