Thematic report on community engagement

Principles:

• Fairness, equality and inclusion must underpin all aspects of community engagement, and should be reflected in both community engagement policies and they way that everyone involved participates
• Community engagement should have clear and agreed purposes, and methods that achieve these purposes
• Improving the quality of community engagement requires commitment to learning from experience
• Skill must be exercised in order to build communities, to ensure practice in equalities principles, to share ownership of the agenda, and to enable all viewpoints to be reflected
• As all parties to community engagement possess knowledge on study, experience, observation and reflection, effective engagement processes will share and use that knowledge
• All participants should be given the opportunity to build on their knowledge and skills
• Accurate, timely information is crucial for effective engagement

Standards:

• Involvement: we will identify and involve the people and organisations who have an interest in the focus of engagement
• Support: we will identify and overcome any barriers to involvement
• Planning: we will gather evidence of the needs and available resources and use this evidence to agree the purpose, scope and timescale of the engagement and the actions to be taken
• Methods: we will agree and use methods of engagement that are fit for purpose
• Working Together: we will agree and use clear procedures that enable the participants to work with one anther effectively and efficiently
• Sharing Information: we will ensure that the necessary information is communicated between the participants
• Working With Others: we will work effectively with others with an interest in the engagement
• Improvement: we will develop actively skills, knowledge and confidence of all the participants
• Feedback: we will feed back the results of the engagement to the wider community and agencies affected
• Monitoring and Evaluation: we will monitor and evaluate whether engagement achieves its purposes and meets the national standards of community engagement