A slide presentation introducing the Community Paradigm approach.

Hilary Hall provided an overview of the Community Paradigm. The Community Paradigm emerged from a report from New Local, an independent think tank, and takes initial thinking around community development, involvement, and empowerment onto the next level. The principal points included:

1. Community Paradigm considers how work with communities is done on an equal shared basis of power and how different models of funding are explored to support people with different multiple complex vulnerabilities.
2. Community Paradigm focuses particularly at prevention and the outcomes that are intended.
3. That there are challenges regarding evaluation due to not having a rigid set of performance indicators and these need to be overcome.
4. That there needs to be more of a balance in terms of governance in ensuring that there is a balance between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ mind-sets which can better reflect solutions found in communities as well as institutions.

Christine Price noted that from the community’s perspective, there is a desire to work in partnership with statutory functions, but that there is not the right approaching mechanism to do that well. The fundamental idea of the Community Paradigm is that there is a shift in how funding is delivered, in addition to the need to collectively come together to arrive at shared solutions.

David Mehaffey expressed his support from an ICB perspective to work and develop the Community Paradigm.

Resolved:

a)    That the Board considers and comments on the Community Paradigm Presentation.

b)    That an update on the Community Paradigm is brought back to the board in the first meeting of the municipal year.