Susan Paxton
Susan has a BA in Community Education, having specialised in community development for two years of this course. She has over 14 years experience of working within community development at both local and national levels.
Susan was initially employed as a community worker based within North Lanarkshire Council's Social Work Department as part of Strathclyde Regional Council. She has experience and knowledge of providing community development support to a range of community groups and organisations at various stages of development within both urban and rural settings. Susan went on to become a Senior Community Worker, with responsibility for managing a team of community work staff and the provision of services across Central North Lanarkshire. She was also a Supervising Officer for various voluntary and community projects and had a role in developing community development strategy on an authority wide basis.
Susan was also a Senior Community Learning and Development within the Council, which involved managing and delivering services for the three national priorities for youth work, lifelong learning and community capacity building within local communities. She was an active member of the community capacity building strategic group in North Lanarkshire and developed and delivered CCB training to CLD staff with little or no experience of capacity building.
Susan began working for SCDC in 2005 as a Senior Development Officer within the LEAP Support Unit. She had a joint responsibility for the lottery / Health Scotland funded Healthy Living Centre Support Programme and provided extensive training and consultancy support to HLCs and their partners wishing to use LEAP for Health to strengthen their planning, monitoring and evaluation processes and systems.
As a Development Manager in SCDC, Susan currently takes lead responsibility for organising LEAP training and consultancy support, including delivery of the credit-rated LEAP course. She is also responsible for developing support on community capacity building having jointly planned and delivered the Strengthening Scotland's Communities practice development programme and is currently one of the lead officers for the Meeting the Shared Challenge national capacity building programme for community-led health. Susan also delivers numerous small consultancy projects across Scotland on topics such as needs analysis, strategic planning and community development generally. Locally based work includes compiling a local CCB resource guide for Glasgow Community Planning Ltd and Glasgow City Council, facilitating several launch events across the city for the newly established CCB Resource Libraries, and facilitating several strategic planning events. She is currently delivering a CCB support programme across the city.
Susan maintains a personal and professional interest in community development and community capacity building as the current voluntary Chairperson of the Scottish Community Development Network (SCDN), a members-led organisation for community development practitioners. She is also a management group member of the Community Development Alliance Scotland (CDAS).
