Introduction
1. Cytûn – Churches Together in Wales brings together 16 of the principal Christian denominations in Wales, which between them have about 168,000 adult members and meaningful contact with many thousands more children, young people and adults in every community in Wales, together with a number of other Christian organisations. (Full membership list: www.cytun.cymru/us.html). Our member churches maintain congregations in every community in Wales, including all Communities First areas.
2. Most Communities First partnerships have involved participation by local churches. This may have included providing partnership Chairs, committee members and other officers; hosting CF offices and projects; receiving CF funding for church-based projects; and engaging in community consultation. This response draws on detailed responses from local churches who have participated in nine different clusters in every part of Wales, as well as more general reflections by our member churches.
What worked and didn’t work about the Communities First programme?
3. Churches generally welcomed the inception of Communities First in 2001. The emphasis on helping individual communities craft their own solutions to problems is consonant with, and to an extent derived from, Christian practice:
a. Two of our member churches (the Church in Wales and the Roman Catholic Church) seek to serve each community across Wales through the parish system, and many ward boundaries still derive from traditional parish boundaries. Wales is still in many ways a nation of villages, and the emphasis on local communities in the original CF programme built on this cultural inheritance.
b. Some of early CF practice was, we understand, inspired by the approach of Paolo Freire, who also influenced the base communities of South America, which were in the late 20th century a key part of the ministry of the Catholic Church.
c. The Penrhys Partnership in the Rhondda, founded by Llanfair Uniting Church, (sponsored by eight Cytûn member Churches), preceded CF by several years, and its pattern was perceived as good practice and an inspiration to many CF partnerships – and the Penrhys Partnership itself became a CF partnership in 2001-12. The story of its foundation is told in Revd Dr John I Morgans’s book, A Journey of a Lifetime, and the relevant chapter still repays careful study.
d. The Penrhys Partnership succeeded in employing mainly local people in all paid roles, and seeking local contractors and partners wherever possible, in itself increasing capacity in the local community. Sadly, this was not always replicated in other CF partnerships where staff travelled in from more prosperous areas, meaning that much of the funding leeched out of the areas targeted.
4. One church officer involved in a local CF partnership from the beginning says:
The involvement with Communities First was a major step forward for this community. As the first chair of Communities First, I had close experience of the working out of the process and my impression was of an excellent new way of helping communities. While it helped deliver services for the community, it had a wider objective of bringing the community together in decision making and planning. The CF committee had good local representation and the annual meetings were among the frequent successful community events. The briefing from Welsh Government was that cohesion in community was a major objective, and we were ready to be involved.
...The local councillors were part of the CF process and this made for a good working relationship. Similarly, financial accountability was sensibly maintained by the willingness of the local authority to promote and maintain the financial systems.
5. One church summed up its long-term relationship with CF as follows:
Most of the programmes for health and employment in socially deprived areas can obviously be delivered in a different way, but the case for Communities First is that it was planned to be an integrated provision but locally based so that the community knows and can see those working for and with them. In addition, the early special element with Communities First was the local participation in the direction and decision making of programmes.
6. In 2012 the CF programme was reconfigured into ‘clusters’. In some areas, these were clusters of contiguous areas and this reorganisation enabled greater co-ordination between overlapping partnerships and in some cases better use of resources. In other cases, they were scattered clusters of disparate groups which in practice continued to operate separately. For example, it was suggested that a cluster including wards in Bangor, Caernarfon and Talysarn is unlikely ever to work.
7. The evidence we have received suggests that the loss of local ownership of programmes was in some cases critical in reducing local support and effectiveness for CF and its work. Some felt that the new arrangement was bureaucratic and distant, that communities no longer came first and that the initial effective work in building capacity and confidence in communities to seek their own solutions was thereby undermined, reducing engagement since 2012. In Penrhys (para 3c) the Penrhys Partnership lost the contract to deliver Communities First, and the Partnership closed completely in 2016. This has meant the loss of a hugely significant community enterprise, not through lack of support from local people but as a consequence of a decision made remotely from the community.
8. Each of the 52 CF clusters arranges its programmes in a different way, as each cluster of communities is different. We support this variegated pattern of delivery, while recognising that this makes generalised assessments difficult.
9. Several clusters have operated a pattern involving ‘open days’ to promote healthy and lifestyles, lifelong learning, etc. Churches are often involved in hosting, providing refreshments or participating as stall-holders. Their experience is that these days are useful in enabling a user-friendly access point for large numbers of local people, but that engagement is superficial and measuring outcomes is impossible.
10. Some clusters have focussed on providing projects through their own staff rather than using existing community organisations. One local church reported:
When we consulted with Communities First, they didn’t seem to
take on our views and we felt they planned what they wanted and
organised projects sometimes on the days we … were running
activities. We think there could have been better communication and
engagement with local people and those already working in the
community…. We’re pleased with the two workers who
have run a series of 8 youth sessions at the church during the
autumn term and will be continuing in January. They have fully
consulted with us, engaged well with young people and are paying
for the use of the room. However, in general we feel that they take
too long to organise something that is needed and should be
sustained in the community. By the time they get the trust from the
community and young people, the project/programme ends or is run by
different
workers.
Another comment from a different area said:
From my experience, it was a poorly managed waste of money. There were two full time posts for a deprived area and in two years, all that was achieved was a Teenage Shelter in the middle of a field and a sewing club. The staff were not from the community and I think this made a huge difference. The funding and management was also channelled through the local housing association. In those days, we had no idea about Asset Based Community Development and so the culture was still to assume we knew best. I remember feeling very frustrated at the time, that lots of public money was being handed out with no real scrutiny or measurement of value.
11. Other clusters have made funding available to existing community organisations. One church had hosted outreach sessions for the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and Job Centre on an estate distant from their town centre offices. This had improved engagement with the community, enabled them to help people who could not easily travel to the office, and the location in a church well accessed by the community made crossing the threshold easier. A church-based Foodbank in another area had benefited from CF funding for advice workers to be placed in the Foodbank to offer immediate help and support to clients facing difficulties with debt, unemployment, benefit withdrawals, low pay, etc. Although Foodbanks, CAB and Job Centre services are not CF funded, the outreach workers are, and their loss would be keenly felt.
12. A number of other church-based projects have benefited from CF cluster funding. The amounts involved are often small (as little as £200), but make a huge difference to volunteer-led community based activity, whose effects in terms of community development run well beyond measurable outcomes. For example, one church says:
The areas that they have primarily assisted in are grant funding applications to help our groups such as Parent and Toddlers and Sunday School and also with training such as First Aid and Food Hygiene.
First Aid and Food Hygiene training not only benefit the project concerned, but also increase the employability of the individual volunteers involved, giving them transferable skills when they apply for paid employment.
Another church in a different area reported it was involved in a range of CF funded projects locally:
· A project providing work experience for people trying to get back into the workplace and people with learning difficulties who may never be able to work, but can increase their self-esteem and build up confidence.
· Help with funding courses in our Community Hall when the Community Education placements that we had came to an end. These courses were a help to people in the poorest part of the Community.
· Support for the Food- Co-operative that enables poorer families to have an affordable source of fresh fruit and vegetables.
· Help with publicity for our Churches Together Film Club for the elderly and socially isolated.
13. Several churches commented that an emphasis on measurable outcomes, especially since 2012, sometimes skewed the CF programme in an undesirable way, as capacity building in a community is measurable only across a generation, and not across a single financial year. Attention was drawn to pp 5-10 of the RCT Homes Open Space Audit Penrhys Neighbourhood Appraisal dated May 2011 [not available online], which shows that after 10 years of Communities First work in the community, while levels of poverty might have reduced only slightly, levels of community engagement and satisfaction were remarkably high. Such ‘soft’ outcomes are difficult to measure, unless a survey of this kind is carried out in each of the 52 CF clusters, but we submit that they are nevertheless highly significant to the communities concerned and therefore to Wales.
14. Communities First partnerships which work well provide not only funding but also expertise. One church said:
Because they know the area well and have researched its needs, they appreciate our work and have been willing to share advice about good practice. It is partly through their support and involvement that we have been able to continue to provide:
· Free Work experience and training opportunities
· Volunteer opportunities/Social inclusion for vulnerable and isolated residents.
· Help provide placements for Young Offenders and ex prisoners
· Placement for recovering brain damaged patients, and from Social Services
How will local authorities decide which projects continue to receive funding after June 2017?
15. Any major change in funding arrangements creates dangers for valued community groups which have depended on such funding. See the example in para 7 above regarding the effect of the 2012 changes on the Penrhys Partnership. We would urge local authorities and Welsh Government on this occasion to learn the lessons from such experiences.
16. One project in which the church is a key partner said regarding the 2017 situation:
Everything the Welsh Government wants to do – build resilient communities through community hubs, tackling poverty, children’s zones – we already do and have done for some time now. We have the buildings, we have the staff, we just want to be able to continue to do the work that we are passionate about, making a difference to the lives of children and families. Our family centre services grew so big that we have had to extend the church building. If the funding stops, what will happen to that? We could face the situation of being handed the keys to the building and then losing our funding to deliver the services within.
17. Welsh Government wishes to see a greater concentration of resource on tackling poverty amongst families and children. We have sympathy with this aim, and many church-based programmes within and beyond Communities First areas contribute already towards these goals. The Faith in Families programme of the Diocese of Swansea & Brecon of the Church in Wales is a striking example, which is 79% CF funded. Another church in a different area says:
A small number of church members are developing a Parents and Toddlers group, using seed money from the church and funding from Communities First. The group has received all kinds of toys and activity materials from friends and, for example, parents have had tutoring in using sewing machines while crèche workers have helped with the children. There were several lovely trips this summer and some in-house activities, such as a bouncy castle, which the toddlers loved. These were all funded by Communities First.
A church-based project in a different location said:
Some parents who did not manage to take their children away for a holiday were very appreciative of the trips in the school holidays. Others said that the group was like another family. It made a big difference to them.
The ability of such programmes to tackle child poverty and adverse childhood experiences depends in part on the length and depth of community engagement which has been built up, and we would urge that in reviewing and reconfiguring the spending currently going to Communities First that priority is given to ensuring the continuity of those projects – large and small – which have proven worth to their local communities, including assisting in finding alternative income streams where necessary. This will require extensive evaluation and engagement with each of the 52 clusters, and we would urge local authorities to begin this substantial piece of work immediately.
18. We believe that it is of vital importance that anti-poverty and community empowerment programmes partly funded by Welsh Government are co-ordinated with the input of local people. It is vital that local communities are enabled to tailor solutions to their own unique circumstances, as in the early years of Communities First (see para 3), while separate programmes and funding streams from the Government all work together rather than compete with one another.