Article: Community wellbeing watchdog reveals findings
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Barnsley Councils Community Wellbeing scrutiny commission has concluded its investigation into how Barnsley people feel about the future of their communities and whether more can be done to become stronger and more self-reliant.
At its meeting on 8 February, it heard from representatives of the media about what role they can play in helping people understand the challenges facing them and how they can be encouraged to do more to be self resilient.
The commission felt that the media has an influential role to play in these challenging times - not only to communicate the budgetary and service reductions but also to enable people to understand what is happening and the potential impact these reductions may have on them.
However, feedback from the community groups indicated that although they were aware of the budgetary reductions facing the council and other public sector organisations due to the coverage by the media over the past year, they were still uncertain as to what these changes meant for the delivery of services locally.
The commission also felt that the media has an integral and influential role to play in both promoting and encouraging people to do more for themselves and their communities. Positive stories of volunteering or community activity can often be the stimulus to encourage other people to get involved and participate more actively within their own communities.
The commission members reached the conclusion that a lot more needs to be done to pull things together and felt that there was a need for a focussed communications approach.
The second key issue which the commission looked at is how the council and its partner organisations are going to now turn the talk of a new relationship with communities into practical action on the ground, and especially how they can effectively empower communities, so that they can become resilient and play an active part in defining their relationship with the council.
The feedback from the community groups highlighted the need for the council and its partners to facilitate practical ways to determine locally how to resolve solutions that address local priorities.
In particular, members felt that more needs to be done to encourage people to volunteer in their own communities, especially in those parts of the borough which do not have a strong record of local people getting involved. There is also an important issue about what can be done to enable young people and people with disabilities to get involved. To achieve these they called for a properly thought out approach to volunteering and in particular to find ways of overcoming the barriers which currently prevent many people from getting involved and doing more.
Commenting on the investigation, the Chair of the Commission, Cllr Margaret Bruff, said: This has been a real eye opener of an investigation, because it has shown just how important the cuts are going to be to Barnsleys communities, but how little knowledge there is about them and especially the long term impact they are going to have. These are not something that will go away in a years time or so, but rather they will affect our community for years to come. As a commission, we do not think that this message has got through yet and that is why we want all sides to come together to develop a proper communications strategy to get over the message.
The other key message which came out of the investigation was that although a lot of people are involved in helping to make their communities better places by volunteering their time, the picture is patchy. We need to get to the point where everyone in the borough is encouraged and able to get involved. One of the main ways in which we can do this would be by looking at how we can get rid of the red tape and bureaucracy which can stand in the way of people doing things. At the moment it can seem that things are designed to stop people getting involved. We need to turn that mindset around.
The commission will now submit its recommendations in a report to the councils Cabinet.