Page 63 - WCEN Dr Rochelle Burgess evaluation report\ Baloon

Afterword
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For over 16 years, WCEN has been on the frontline of public policy programmes, witnessing their impact
on our communities. In 2001 we were part of the Governments National Strategy for Neighbourhood
Renewal and a central part of the Wandsworth Local Strategic Partnership (LSP). The aim then (as it
is now) was to enable local people, particularly those living or working in areas of multiple deprivation,
as they are better placed to know what would work for them, to be at the centre of decision making
processes, to work in a “joined up” way with our LSP partners to help “bend the mainstream”, so that
public resources are being directed towards meeting the greatest needs. Whilst the intentions were right
and correct, the speed at which Whitehall required implementation, lacking understanding on the time
and processes required for empowerment and development, meant that communities continued to
remain as passive recipients of top-down interventions and meddling.

The Neighbourhood Renewal programme was abandoned by 2005, and what followed was a return to
short-term programmes, controlled and driven from the centre, and major reorganisation of our public
institutions - the NHS shifting from Primary Care Groups to Primary Care Trusts to Clinical
Commissioning Groups to the current sub-regional mergers; Public Health moving out of the NHS and
into Local Authorities; and Local Authorities themselves who will experience upto 70% reduction in their
capacity across this decade.

With this constant shifting and reorganising of public policy objectives and infrastructure, with endless
amounts of new directives and programmes continuing to come down the pipeline, community
empowerment has fallen further down the agenda to the point where we now have fragmented, disjointed
communities, existing in isolated pockets of exclusion, not living or working together, or with our public
agencies in any meaningful way. At worst, as the recent Casey Review into opportunity and integration
noted, reflecting on the division between many communities, that where they “live separately, with fewer
interactions between people from different backgrounds, mistrust, anxiety and prejudice grow”. A recent
report from The Red Cross said that our health services are facing a “humanitarian crises” by virtue of
their inability to manage demand. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have called the levels of poverty
in the UK as “shameful” with increasing numbers of people falling into hardship and crisis.

In Wandsworth, many of those who were around the Local Strategic Partnership table in the early ‘00s,
are still working together today, but with the benefit and insights that have emerged from almost two
decades of change and flux, with the index of deprivation in the areas in which we have worked remaining
relatively the same, and in some cases, much worst. Why? This question triggered a coming together
of people from across our mainstream agencies and communities, all equally frustrated at the lack of
progress that we have been able to make, to try to find ways to unlock leadership and capabilities across
a genuinely whole system- not just public agencies, but other centres of influence and association like
churches, mosques, temples, community groups and social networks- to find smarter and better ways
to meet our shared objectives - to improve lives, close the gaps in inequalities and to make a difference.
Those who stepped-up understood and appreciated both the system levers and limitations that can
affect change, as well as the capabilities that lay dormant across our communities, and which when
working in synergy have the greatest transformational possibilities. They got the necessity of working
across traditional lines, the need to build new kinds of relationships and alliances, and the importance
of creating an environment within which new ideas and ways of working could be nurtured and grown.

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