so, farewell then NI140

To Leicester City Council (B Block, New Walk Centre) for the second day running, this time to attend a meeting of the Stronger Communities Partnership.

A big part of the remit of the Stronger Communities Partnership has been oversight of one of the key National Indicators - NI140 (fair access to local services). It was confirmed at this meeting that central government has decided to do away with NI140 (among a few other National Indicators) on the grounds that it's too hard to obtain reliable evidence that it's being met. There were a few raised eyebrows (mine included) as NI140 has been at the core of so many meetings. I've become rather attached to the old thing; it was the first National Indicator that I understood and memorised - and the first I ever heard myself quoting out loud at a meeting. But rather than mourn its passing, it's easy to see abolition of NI140 (fair access to local services) as a good thing, since it will spread responsibility for assuring such fair access to all the Strategic Partnership's theme groups, rather than having it sit with Stronger Communities alone. So that takes some weight off this group and should allow it to be distributed more evenly. Of course, such joint responsibility should always have been the case, but it became easy to tag it on to realted responsibilites and pigeonhole it with this one group.

In case this makes it look these meetings are dominated by obscure beauraucratic language, I should unpack some of the topics covered here, especially in relation to Neighbourhood Working. This topic today involves (in no particular order) matters of hate crime, anti-social behaviour, immigration, graffiti, fly-tipping, vulnerability, estates maintenance, street cleaning, spikes in community confidence. These issues have to be rolled up into an effective strategic approach rather than a shopping list of "quick wins". We discuss ow to move away from a "command-and-control" model to being "needs-led". Sorry if that lapsed back toward beauracratic language there, but I'm sure it's not too hard to follow, faithful reader.

An interesting linguistic interlude here: we're told that some of the proposals related to this work are still going through the process of "stormin'n'normin". Eh? I've never heard this one before (have you, faithful reader?) and puzzled over it for some time. We try our best to eliminate beauracratic double-speak and gobbledeegook. This Stronger Communities Partnership agreed a code of conduct with EDP for accessible communication, to be adopted across the Strategic Partnership. But creativity is a wonderful thing and it'll find its way out through every available crack. "Stormin' Norman" was, of course, the nickname given Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who was in charge of Operation Desert Storm in the fist Gulf War. So, what might "stormin'n'normin" meaan in this context? That these processes are still being "brainstormed" and being systematised? ("normed"?). Who knows ...

Jim McCallum, from Voluntary Action Leicester, presents a draft paper on volunteering for our discussion. There's a call round the table for volunteers (ironically) to take the paper forward before the next meeting of Stronger Communities. Since I got some experience in this area when helping with Volunteeering England's "Volunteering and Faith Communities" project last year, I put myself forward. That and the fact that there's no real acknowledgement or promise of engagement with the faith communities in this document, an ommision that I'd like to help put right.

We discuss the goal of "talking up Leicester", in which context I mention the recent high level media contacts we've received at the Council of Faiths. There's agreement that the City Council, the Strategic Partnership and the Council of Faiths should develop a strategy for joint response to such enquiries.

2009'S TOP 10: 4

Volunteering and Faith Communities Briefing Day,

Birmingham Centre for Voluntary Action,

Monday 11 May 2009

This event at Birmingham Centre for Voluntary Action was intended for leaders in the faith and volunteering sectors who want to hear firsthand what new research in this area has revealed; faith organisations who want to learn about other faiths and volunteering and find out about the next steps for this project; volunteer development agencies interested in developing faith based volunteering and learning about the potential funding opportunities for innovative pilot projects.

Leicester Council of Faiths was asked to help organise a number of focus groups earlier in 2009 to help provide information for the research project, “Volunteering and Faith Communities”. In recognition of this support for the project, Barbara Regnier at Dare to Change asked me to be the opening speaker at this event, which drew around 60 or so attendees, from all parts of England. This was followed by researchers from De Montfort University’s Centre for Social Action who presented their findings on volunteering and faith communities in England. A free copy of the published report was given to delegates (Leicester Council of Faiths was given 50 copies of this publication, with compliments for our cooperation in the project; there are still some available if anyone would like one).

In the afternoon, we heard from Professor Harris Beider, of the Institute for Community Cohesion, who set up round table discussion where attendees worked together to share experiences and expertise to help shape the outcomes for the remainder of this programme. On a personal level, this day was important for seeing the following text for the first time, entitled “The Helping Grace”. I’d discussed this briefing - and the presentation I was intending to give - with Clare and she sent me this (from a book entitled Helping the Client by John Heron) on the morning of the event:

"People who help people move by the grace within the human spirit. This grace is the primary source of effective helping behaviour. Its presence and expression are entirely independent of professional training: it can inform and be enhanced by the latter, but can also be obscured, suppressed and distorted by it

“This helping grace seems to have five key attributes: warm concern for and acceptance of others; openness and attunement to the other's experiential reality; a grasp of what the other needs for his or her essential flourishing; an ability to facilitate the realisation of such needs in the right manner and at the right time; and an authentic presence. This combination of concern, empathy, prescience, facilitation and genuineness is, I believe, the spiritual heritage of mankind. . . . What makes the effective helper is, then, an interaction between inner grace, character and cultural influence. Inner grace is a spiritual endowment and potential, which everyone has. Character is what persons make of themselves in the light of this endowment and in response to their culture."

I picked this up on my BlackBerry, while on the train on the way to the briefing. Having read it, I decided to ditch the presentation I had prepared, and with hardly an hour to go before my talk, redrafted the whole thing, putting this text onto PowerPoint slides at double-quick time. This passage just seemed so apposite to the theme of the day and particularly the approach I was taking, that would help set the tone for the whole event. I spoke for half an hour, and gave a very different sort of presentation from the one I thought I would; it was also different from the presentations that followed, mine being the only one that presented a perspective from inside the faith communities. Two things struck me in particular, having helped organise the focus groups in Leicester and having taken part in two of them myself. One was how people within the faith communities who routinely offer services that the rest of the world consider to be "volunteering" don't see it that way themselves - it's just how they live and what they do (sometimes it's what is expected of them) individually or collectively. The other was how some belief systems embrace (or even institutionalise) service voluntarily offered and practised as "seva" or something along those lines. I made reference to these two aspects in my presentation. I'd been looking for a way to connect these two approaches that would allow them to be united without flattening out their differences; the notion of the Helping Grace allowed me to do that.

V GOOD!

In the afternoon, a quick dash across the road from Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living to Voluntary Action LeicesterShire, for a meeting of the EVDC East Midlands steering group. EVDC is an arm of Volunteering England (though independent of that parent body), and exists to promote volunteering as an expression of citizenship. The East Midlands is the last region of England to establish an EVDC (surprise, surprise); this meeting is an attempt to get one up and running. Since Leicester Council of Faiths had been involved in a major project with Volunteering England earlier this year, looking at the role of volunteering within the faith communities, I'm interested in ensuring recognition for their contribution and strengthening their ongoing involvement. There's a presentation on volunteering challenges and opportunities related to the 2012 Olympics, which I find especially interesting and rather inspiring, if truth be told. Mind you, the one thing that wasn't made clear at any point in the meeting was: what do the initials EVDC stand for? On Volunteering England's website, it appears, they appear to stand for England Volunteering Development Council, but that doesn't really make sense in terms of a regional presence. Hmmm ...