South Staffordshire Council

Editor's Notes

• #2 Partnership Locality Manager – working in a multi-agency environment within a Local Strategic Partnership framework, focusing on locality working where the district has been broken down into five smaller area.
• #3 20.2% of the population are of retirement age or older (this compares with 18.5% for England and Wales). Most rapidly increasing sector of the population is 75+, and over the next 20 years it is expected that his age group will more than double.
• #5 Gaining a better understanding: This information enables service delivery to be bespoke to identified needs and resources allocated to achieve maximum impact to local communities Locality Working is about improving quality of life within a community and the way in which services are provided within that community. Working with local communities and local agencies a better understanding of what works well and what needs to be improved is ascertained. Through the local government structures of parish, district and county councillors, communication with local communities can be improved and support given to groups wanting to solve their own problems    
• #7 The top two groups in South Staffordshire are successful professionals living in suburban or semi-rural homes and residents living in isolated rural communities, the third group is residents of small and mid-sized towns with strong local roots. When we are looking for feedback from our local communities to inform our strategies and consult on our priorities for a statistically sound return we need to target our residents in the right way. Often we hold fact to face meetings through Partners And Communities Together (PACT) meetings, but according to our customer insight information successful professions living in suburban or semi-rural homes are less likely to respond through face to face interaction. This group of people are more likely to be associated with local voluntary organisations and community associations and with an increase in volunteers being an outcome from the community safety partnership effective engagement with this sector of the community is essential (through internet, telephone or post). Again residents of isolated rural communities still value a traditional county ‘way of life’, characterised by a strong community spirit and sense of responsibility towards one’s neighbours. Community Voice is a forum led by the Voluntary & Community sector in South Staffordshire. It encourages local people and community groups to meet twice a year to network, hear about local projects and work by other local groups and put their ideas forwards to set up new activities. South Staffordshire Council are funding one project/activity per locality which will be set up and managed by the Community Voice forum (led by one of the local community groups), but the rural communities who don’t have access to an extensive range of community services, do have good voluntary networks, again it’s effective engagement of this sector of the local community. Transport as you have/will hear has evolved since the Rural Transport Partnership was established 18 months ago. Local elected members assisted South Staffordshire Council with promoting the ‘myplacemysay’ website and although interaction wasn’t exceptionally busy to begin with, it did give us an insight into some of the problems our local communities were facing.
• #8 As part of the priority setting process in South Staffordshire a lot of engagement takes place with local communities, to consult on proposed priorities and to tease out local issues that can be fed into the final agreed priorities. Children and young people offer an alternative view about crime, youth facilities, employment, access to services and transport and we access this group through the established structures of the Young People’s Service, Families First and Educational system. The Voluntary & Community Sector support the forums to encourage networking across community groups and to assist with the setting up of a local project/activity. Business are a sector South Staffordshire is just beginning to tap into, to establish their issues and how the district council can support them. Face to face consultation is a fluctuating activity and has been tried in several different guises – with structure focus groups, open public meetings, themed meetings and ward walks. This is a constant developing piece to the cycle and a further review will be taking place in April, once this cycle has been completed. A Rural focus groups is to be incorporated into the cycle next year and now we have the customer insight information available, targeting the rural communities can be improved via the V&CS networks, by talking to people within their local village – via the village agent network up and running in South Staffordshire, via mobile phone networks – through the existing Rural Watch initiative active in the district and through the internet – e-mail and ‘myplacemysay’.