Open Government - public participation strategy: advice

Recommendation 3

Capabilities approach

Scotland needs a long-term commitment to social and economic rights. Communities need to be at the forefront of public health, the economy, welfare, education and urban regeneration.

The spectrum of community engagement and community empowerment is too narrow according to experts. Oliver elaborates and explains that we need to start with individual human and social rights. Community empowerment doesn't start with a collective process, it starts with individual empowerment to be part of social life, and then you can be part of political life (see Brunner & Watson 2015).

John Beaton highlights the value that social capital and developing a reciprocal cycle can add to communities’ sense of wellbeing and to help get, and keep, people involved. He highlights that often these communities are enthusiastic and committed. Others warn of burnout and the burden of responsibility that lies on communities to fight for themselves and help to protect others. Denisha Killoh supports an assets-based approach, emphasising that wellbeing should be at the forefront of how we approach community empowerment in Scotland. Both John and Denisha highlight the importance of experiential experts in decision making, and the importance of empowering people to be involved, as Denisha says, ‘working with and on behalf of the person, rather than doing stuff to them’.

Experts warn that communities and community organisations should not be taken advantage of, or leant on to respond to food insecurity and poverty. We need to value community responses for what we can learn from them but recognise that in the long term, voluntary responses and community action cannot be expected to stem these systemic failings. It is disingenuous to rely on charitable responses to provide basic necessities to families and communities facing hardship.

A further issue raised by Denisha Killoh of the sudden use of the term ‘communities’ throughout Covid may be conceived to be tokenistic. Where many individuals find themselves without community support and that is due to the isolation many people suffer in modern society. Communities are not always there to be used or tapped into, and can often be tokenistic attempts to create social capital when the infrastructure is not there, can be alienating for individuals living without connections and bonds. She highlights the need to break down barriers, ensuring that equity is felt and evident within the key players.

Part of creating an equitable society, based round wellbeing, is recognising that those involved also need supported. Often contributors and participants are asked to speak on personal and traumatising issues: as Yaqoob (2020) writes, ‘Lived experience is not simply a case study, it is not simply someone sharing their trauma of inequality, of distress or discrimination to a room of people, only to be thanked and shown the exit’^[9]. We need to ensure that they have been invited into a safe space which continues after they have given evidence, shared lived experience or taken part in deliberation. This also includes those that are supporting people on the ground. Invest in Community Development officers and workers, who are trained in their roles and equipped to deal with challenging circumstances.

Denisha Killoh calls for greater support, counselling and signposting to be adopted as part of any process where people are discussing their lived experience. Particularly ensuring that the questions are thoughtful, non-intrusive and dealt with empathetically. Fiona McHardy agrees, and highlights the support needed for those at the receiving end too. For community researchers and front facing volunteers and third sector workers, the pandemic has been traumatic. Receiving crisis calls and seeing the effects the pandemic has had with limited ability to respond had taken its toll.

Further, those getting involved in participatory processes – feeding back lived experiences, community researchers, CA and PB participants- are doing more than their civic duty. This is unpaid labour which is not an incentive for getting people involved or for future participation – all the experts noted that people should be compensated for their labour, time and recognised for the development of new skills. Those most impacted by the crisis are the homeless, migrants, refugees, and those on disability or universal income, young people, single parents and if we hope to hear from these people during participatory processes or community outreach, we will need to do more to incentivise and to facilitate their involvement. Denisha Killoh too feels like we should be working with participants, experiential experts and volunteers to help them to recognise their new skills, and to showcase them through CV writing, providing references and signposting opportunities, grants, funding and how they may utilise this new skillset in employment. People will feel valued and as a result, people are less likely to become disenfranchised.

Action:

• Employ community development workers (many are already in place but pay them)
• Allocate funding for collaborative applications for community projects based on rolling out best practice
• Incentivise/pay the public to take part in participatory processes and value them when they are good enough to share their experiential knowledge and expertise
• Living wage/Universal Basic Income – recognise that to be a citizen of a country, people must have their basic needs met, at the least
• Subsidiarity (see rec. 4)
• Long-term funding (see rec. 5)
• Invest in skills training and development (see rec. 8)