Page 50 - WCEN Dr Rochelle Burgess evaluation report\ Baloon

Sustaining Change

In addition to the risks to expansion identified above, further factors were identified in order to sustain
gains made thus far. Firstly both statutory and community partners highlighted that it was not
sustainable to continue to rely on the work of one or two key individuals to maintain the network.
Specifically, an overreliance on the WCEN director was noted as an unsustainable practice for the
future. As noted by one community organisation member:

one of the things I think of often is around again we need to have a succession plan around,
who will be participating in things - because I won’t do it forever… and there needs to be other
people who’d be able to step forward…. we need to think around how to make that happen and
it’s not good enough when just one person opts into things that I’m the person whose name is
put forward... it’s not sustainable – Community Organisation member, Female

Current structures in the network rely on key individuals to carry the load of the majority of work,
whether that be within WCEN, its community group members of key figure heads from the statutory
agencies. This suggests the need for a focus on distributive leadership – this will be further discussed
in the recommendations.

The second danger with the reliance on individuals was linked to the processes of buy in from statutory
partners. While this is also a strength of the model, there are concerns linked to establishing
programmes supported by key individuals who then move on, at times in the middle of a project. As
noted by one organisation on their partnerships with police organisations in early stages of their
participation in the network:

One of the challenges, is, it’s influenced by the policy makers, what they want, so if you’re
priority then there are people who look for you and they will come to you, if you’re not priority
for that time, they’ll cut that relationship.... then in a couple of years you become a priority again
and then they try to link again....we’ve been running this organisation within Wandsworth Council
for the past 10 years and within these 10 years we’ve seen so many changes, so many people
coming, so many people leaving – each time you have to start again - Community organisation
member, Male

Finally, it was suggested that in order to sustain change, there was a dire need to even out the capacity
across the community network sites. Despite the involvement of a very wide range of groups, it was
clear from site visits that not all groups are created equally. Two of the four community sites visited
were sustained by the inputs of two key individuals who were responsible for running programmes,
management of finances, and general systems management – in addition to the added engagement
on various groups through WCEN. This was confirmed in the accounts of many community
organisation members, for example:

The network is broad and the network can come together and like sizeable, but actually in terms
of capacity it’s really tiny and also the network is very varied, so you can slice it at one point
and what you see is very different if you sliced it differently and I think that sometimes is
problematic and I think sometimes it’s problematic also for [the director], because I think
sometimes he looks out on the network and he thinks oh well, we have so many different people
and we have so much capacity and we can do that, and while there is a commitment and
intention, there is very little capacity ......

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