Community Engagement
The National Standards for Community Engagement
The National Standards for Community Engagement set out best practice guidance for engagement between communities and public agencies. The standards were:
- commissioned by the Minister for Communities, through Communities Scotland
- developed by SCDC from the experience of communities and agencies with extensive participation of over 500 community and agency representatives
- published in 2005 with endorsement by the Scottish Executive, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, NHS Health Scotland, the Association of Chief Police Officers and many others.
SCDC was the delivery organisation for the National Standards for Community Engagement Support Programme 2005/2007. We offer training and consultancy support to partnerships, community organisations or individual agencies and providers around best practice in engaging with communities and evaluating the quality of community engagement.
Training around the standards can be adapted according to local need but will usually address:
- Why we engage with communities
- How to engage with communities
- How good is our community engagement?
- A partnership approach
- How to use the ten National Standards as a framework and tool for good practice
VOiCE
VOiCE is a database planning and recording tool designed to assist individuals and organisations to design and deliver effective community engagement. The development of VOiCE was funded by the Scottish Government as part of the third year of support for the National Standards for Community Engagement. We can provide training and consultancy support on any aspect of using the VOiCE tool.
VOiCE will support you to:
- plan community engagement and service user
participation - conduct it effectively
- monitor and record the process
- evaluate the outcomes
It can be used to support a range of participation from overall area regeneration to specific concerns of users of particular services. It is designed to be relevant both for individual services and for integrated, cross disciplinary community planning. VOiCE enables all users to have a common system for analysing, planning, monitoring, evaluating and recording that provides common protocols, definition of terms and understanding of different types and purposes of engagement.
