Community engagement is a priority for us and is vital in meeting the Plan for Fife outcomes. We've created this toolkit to support services and organisations delivering impactful community engagement.
What it sets out to achieve
This toolkit gives you the tools and information you need to run good community engagement. It will help you embed this way of working into your work going forward.
What people can use it for
This toolkit can be used in the planning, delivery and evaluation of your work. We recommend checking the steps outlined below, anytime your service or organisation is undertaking decisions that affect the community you serve.
Planning your engagement
There are nine key stages to consider when planning an engagement or consultation (Adapted from People & Participation: How to put citizens at the heart of decision-making 2005)
These are:
What are you asking people about?
This is also where you need to consider setting realistic expectations for participants. What are the limitations of the consultation?
Working out the level of participation required at this stage will help to inform the rest of the process
Back To TopA good purpose will be highly focused with clear outputs, and outcomes which are easy for all to understand. A bad purpose will be poorly defined, with unclear outcomes and open to many different interpretations. A measure of a good purpose is its ability to create a commonly shared understanding of the potential impact of the project.
Examples of purposes for community engagement include:
- Inform
- Consult
- Involve
- Collaborate
- Empower
Questions to ask at this stage are:
- Who is directly responsible for the decisions on the issues?
- Who is influential in the area, community and/ or organisation?
- Who will be affected by any decisions on the issue (individuals and organisations)?
- Who runs organisations with relevant interests?
- Who is influential on this issue?
- Who can obstruct a decision if not involved?
- Who has been involved in this issue in the past?
- Who has not been involved, but should have been?
It is important to distinguish between the outputs and outcomes of a process. We define outputs as the tangible products of a process, such as reports, meetings and leaflets, which are useful in themselves but do not usually meet the full purpose of the process.
Examples of outputs include:
- Information (e.g. new information created as an input to a workshop and/or information from meetings)
- Leaflets
- Meetings or workshops held with different groups;
- Posters
- Exhibitions/presentations
- Surgeries (i.e. one-to-one discussions to share problems, get advice etc)
- Reports
- New research findings
Outcomes are the fundamental difference that a process makes, its overall results and impacts. Outcomes are more specific than ‘purpose’ and are the clear statement of exactly what is sought from the process.
Possible outcomes include:
- Improved personal and / or working relationships
- Wider circle of responsibility for decisions and actions
- Agreement on purpose and direction of a project or programme, or new policy
- Identification of issues, benefits and drawbacks
- Generation of new ideas
- New formal partnerships
- Defusing conflict to enable progress to be made
- Creation / enhancement of social capital
- Improved services for people
- Policy change
- Cost savings
- Capacity building and learning (individual and organisational)
- Building overt support for a new idea or initiative
- Behaviour change.
Different methods are designed to produce different types of outcomes, so identifying the desired outcomes helps to identify which method is most likely to deliver those outcomes. This is therefore a crucial part of the planning process. Identifying and agreeing the desired outcomes from a process helps:
- Choose the right methods to get the outcomes wanted
- Ensure that overall objectives are not lost as the process goes on
- Deal with the likely short-term impacts and results so that you are best placed to get what is wanted in the long term
Understanding the wider context is important to ensure that it:
- Links with other relevant activities going on at the same time
- Is responsive to participant needs / sensitivities by appreciating their wider role
- Builds on previous experience and learns lessons from the past
- Does not duplicate other activities
- Progresses quickly and is relevant
Ensure that you have everything in place including
- timeline for the engagement
- how the outputs and results from the engagement will be fed back to participants
This stage of planning is where you establish how and where the decisions from the engagement will be made and how you will feed this back to participants. Managing expectations throughout is a vital part of good community engagement.
Back To TopBuild in the opportunity to review how the process has gone and where improvements could have been made
Back To TopLevels of engagement/involvement
| Purpose | Expectation | Examples of Methods | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inform | To provide the public with information to assist their understanding of an issue | We will keep you informed |
|
| Consult | To collect information from the public about attitudes and opinions. | We will keep you informed, listen to and provide feedback on how public input has informed the decision. |
|
| Involve | To work with the public throughout all stages of the process to ensure their concerns are understood and considered. | We will work with you to ensure your concerns and aspirations shape the process and influence the decision. |
|
| Collaborate | To partner with the public in each aspect of the decision, agree sharing of resources and decision making. | We will look to you for advice and help in developing solutions and incorporate your advice. |
|
| Empower | To place final decision making in the hands of the public | We will implement what you decide. |
|
Community engagement methods
In the section below we've provided several useful links to external sites which we will check on as we can. However please note that we're unable to ensure that they will be always live and up to date. If you encounter any dead links or issues, please email on: CommunityEngagement@fife.gov.uk
A website that has a useful directory of methods can be found at: involve | people at the heart of decision-making | involve.org.uk
Engagement tools
These are tools that provide information that flows in one direction. They TELL people about things that are happening.
Back To TopThese tools are asking for information from people. A specific characteristic of these is that they have distinctive and clear parameters on what is being ASKED.
Back To TopUsing these tools allows of participants to be ENGAEGED in a whole process. They are tools that work with communities and allow them to shape the whole process.
- Planning for Real
- Community fairs/events Planning an event | Fife Council
- Place standard approach
- World cafes
- Appreciative enquiry
- Citizen’s juries
Planning and evaluation tool
VOiCE is planning and recording software that assists individuals, organisations and partnerships to design and deliver effective community engagement. The system will enable all users to use a common approach to plan, monitor and evaluate community engagement practice.
VOiCE will assist individuals and organisations to design and deliver effective community engagement.
The software will support you to:
- Plan community engagement and service user participation
- Monitor and record the process
- Evaluate the process against the National Standards for Community Engagement (Scotland) and principles for good quality engagement (elsewhere).
Find out more about Voice and gain free access to the tool at https://www.voicescotland.org.uk/