2. The Community Voice Programme
Community Voice is a strategic grants programme, managed and funded by the Big Lottery Fund, to support
citizens to have a greater influence over policies and decisions affecting their community, and to build the
capacity of citizens to engage and participate in the planning and running of services and projects that
respond to their communities’ needs and advance community benefit.
In Wales between 2013 and 2017, the Community Voice programme is led by ten County Voluntary Councils
(CVCs). In North Wales, Conwy Voluntary Services Council and Medrwn Môn have developed portfolios of
community projects with fourteen partner organisations. Partners are working jointly to develop skills and
confidence to enable citizens to participate in the planning and delivery of public services.
The CVCs are strongly encouraged by the Big Lottery Fund to include disadvantaged and seldom heard
communities within their portfolio of projects. The Anglesey and Conwy Community Voice projects include
involvement with communities who are ‘hard to reach’, disadvantaged or have the Protected Characteristics
as listed under the Equality Act 2010 of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race,
religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. The public sector equality duty requires public authorities to
consider the potential impact of any decision on groups of people with each of the Protected Characteristics.
The programme envisages that services will be more effective and sustainable in the long run, if they are co-
produced. This comes at a time when services are facing increasing cutbacks in budgets and are dependent
on the development of mutual partnerships between services and communities. Citizens are being
encouraged to take responsibility for prioritising the services that they feel are most important and services
are encouraged to actively listen to their communities and plan for preventative, as opposed to reactive,
solutions to service delivery.
This is by no means a quick fix and it is a mammoth task to raise the skills and knowledge within communities
whilst on the other hand working with service providers to look for solutions for budget cuts in the immediate
future. Community engagement and participation are crucial vehicles to achieving the goals. Dialogue
between communities, public services and the third / voluntary sector needs to be open and transparent,
ensuring that there is commitment and understanding from all partners to drive this way of working forward.
Index
Introduction
The Community Voice Programme 2
The Community Engagement and Participation Framework Baseline Study 3
The Importance of Community Engagement 4
Key Themes and Findings
1. Level of Confidence of Service Users to Engage with Service Providers 5
2. Barriers to Successful Communication / Engagement 6
3. Methods of engagement / consultation used 7
4. Targeting of participants 8
5. Feedback and Developing Opportunities for Further Participation 9
Reflections 10
Next Steps 11
National Principles for Public Engagement in Wales Poster
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Anglesey and Conwy Community VoiceAnglesey and Conwy Community Voice
Conwy Community Voice, 5 portfolio partners
Anglesey Community Voice, 9 portfolio partners
3. The Importance of Community Engagement
The Baseline study starts from the premise that engagement, as an active participative process is important
and productive to both service providers and service users.
This was confirmed by one of the Community Voice Development Officers who listed the factors that made
their best experience of community engagement and highlighted the importance placed on involvement and
ownership:
• That the community were engaged and participated in so many ways
• The fact that the community came up with the idea of holding the Fun Day
• That the community had ownership of the event and actually ran the whole
day with some support from staff
• That funding was already in place!!
• The community came together as one
• That … staff were able to carry out 160 questionnaires that enabled them to work
on the Action Plan … ‘from the community ... for the community’
• The “working group” are still holding community events!
When the eighteen service provider representatives were questioned, they all agreed that community
engagement was very or extremely important to their organisation, and all of them had undertaken some
kind of engagement activity with their service users in 2012/13 whilst nearly three-quarters said they had an
engagement plan.
However, only a third said they had endorsed the National Principles for Public Engagement in Wales and a
third did not know if their organisation had endorsed them or not.
The service providers were asked about their consultations during 2012/13 and all agreed that consultation
was very or extremely important to their organisation. The topics they consulted on varied from changes in
the NHS to improvements to the coastal infrastructure and involved people from age 19 to pensioners.
Key Themes and Findings
The key findings are presented in five thematic areas:
1. Level of confidence of service users to engage with service providers
2. Barriers to successful engagement / communication
3. Methods of engagement / consultation used
4. Targeting of participants
5. Reporting back and developing opportunities for further participation.
The Community Engagement and Participation Framework Baseline Study
Throughout the project, one of the Community Voice partners, the North Wales Regional Equality Network
(NWREN), will be monitoring the progress of citizen engagement and participation across the two local
authorities of Anglesey and Conwy and developing a Community Engagement and Participation Framework of
tools and principles. The Baseline Study was undertaken in the first half of 2014 and questioned people from
three different perspectives.
‘To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way
we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.’
Tony Robbins, Life Coach
Eighteen representative employees in the public sector gave the service providers’ perspective by completing
a questionnaire that asked for their views about their organisation’s community engagement and consultation
activities during the full year of 2012/13.
For the service users’ perspective, 662 people were asked how they felt about dealing with the public sector.
The number of respondents needed for a proportionate response across Anglesey and Conwy (with
respective populations of 69,751 and 115,500) was calculated using a Creative Research Systems sample size
tool. This concluded that a minimum of 195 responses were needed in each authority however, this study
involved a robust sample of 662 people.
The third perspective came from Community Voice partners who gave their specific perspective on achieving
effective Community Engagement. They also helped select service providers and access to their project
participants, who became our non-random sample of 662 service users.
All the North Wales CVCs and portfolio partners have endorsed the National Principles for Public Engagement
in Wales and their definitions of Engagement, Consultation and Participation will be used through-out the
document.
43
Anglesey and Conwy Community VoiceAnglesey and Conwy Community Voice
4. 2. The Barriers to Successful Communication / Engagement
SERVICE
PROVIDER
SERVICE
USER
DEVELOPMENT
OFFICER
1. Level of Confidence of Service Users to Engage with Service Providers
SERVICE
PROVIDER
SERVICE
USER
DEVELOPMENT
OFFICER
65
The 662 service users were
asked how much confidence
they had in dealing with the
public sector:
63% - said that they had tried
to talk / engage with the
Public Sector
57% - said that they were very
or fairly confident talking to
people in the public sector
50% - said that they had little
or no confidence that their
voice would be listened to by
the public sector
52% - said that they were very
or fairly confident they knew
who / where to go to make a
complaint about a service
more often than not they
make up their mind before
you’ve said anything
find it hard to express myself
I wonder if my views are going
to be listened to or taken
seriously
Community Voice
Development Officers
described an important
element in their best
experience of community
engagement as:
to see how their confidence
increased, & enthusiasm to
make sure young people have
the same equal chance as
everyone else
Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual
people felt their experiences
were valued and their
opinions had a chance of
being acted on as a result
The 18 service provider
representatives were asked
how they increased the
confidence of the general
public that the latter’s point
of view matters:
13 - said by providing evidence
that their opinions matter
12 - said by providing the
opportunities for people to
give their opinion
2 - said by making changes as
a result of the consultation
we encourage greater
engagement by celebrating
the success of our
engagement activities so that
customers can see the ‘value’
in their engagement and the
direct outcomes as a result
...how to engage properly as
well as adequately with
communities. It is quite easy
to engage with
representatives of groups but
do we actually manage to get
to the public as we should? –
Probably not. So we could do
better around that
The 662 service users
were asked what makes
it hard to talk to the
public sector.
The top answer themes
were:
1. Don’t know who to
contact / no-one takes
responsibility
2. Language /
Bureaucracy / access
issues
3. Lack of confidence in
official situations
you never get the same
person dealing with a
query
passed from pillar to post
cultural difference, trust
I do my best but whether
they listen is another
matter
would like public sector
to be more transparent
most seem to have a
bureaucratic outlook,
and don’t seem to realise
that it’s your money
giving them a wage
only available Monday -
Friday, 9 to 5 (I work).
Too many departments
who do you contact?
Community Voice
Development Officers
sent the following
messages to public
service providers:
Give more notice &
time to complete
consultations & to finish
questionnaires. Over
50's groups meet up
once a month &
therefore need good
preparation/time to
complete
lack of understanding of
the participants’ issues,
lack of accessibility,
poor engagement (body
language, us and them
set up in the physical
environment), not
recording what people
are saying, using
language which is
clearly confusing and
obstructive to the
process, no
participative activities,
no information about
how outcomes will be
fed-back/ influence
decisions
The 18 service provider representatives
were asked to name the barriers to
consulting which they had experienced
and their top three were:
1. the need for resources
2. the apathy of those being consulted
3. the access needs of those being
consulted (‘hard to reach’, second
language, age)
More than half agreed or strongly agreed
that their organisation had a process for
sharing lessons learnt to improve
engagement.
Sixteen representatives were considering
new methods of consulting to address the
two most difficult barriers:
7 - said face to face
6 - said social media
4 - said joint work to increase resources,
prevent duplication and save cost.
The same sixteen representatives judged
the success of a consultation:
13 - by the results of the consultation
leading to a change in policy / action
11 - by the content of the response
8 - by the attendance at events
8 - by the number of respondents
One voice can make a difference
The quality of response
we need to do better than that at getting
to people – but how to do that for
someone who sits in the office and
doesn’t get out and do that? We need to
use our staff better….because some of our
staff have better contact with people
Anglesey and Conwy Community VoiceAnglesey and Conwy Community Voice
5. 4. The targeting of participants
SERVICE
PROVIDER
SERVICE
USER
DEVELOPMENT
OFFICER
3. The methods of engagement / consultation used
SERVICE
PROVIDER
SERVICE
USER
DEVELOPMENT
OFFICER
87
The sample of 662
service users were
asked how they would
prefer to talk to public
service providers.
92% - said they
preferred human
interaction methods,
this breaks down into:
62% - preferred to talk
face to face
30% - preferred the
phone
8% - email / post / other
loop & T systems don’t
work, staff not deaf
aware
communication
problems as partially
deaf
face to face
communication
always best
everything geared to
computers, never talk
to a human being. 7
days to a get response
if face to face you can
read them
Community Voice
Development Officers
sent the following
messages to public
service providers:
Always involve your
target audience in the
design of engagement
processes / activities,
pilot first then tweak
and seek advice
from a critical friend
(maybe Community
Voice staff) before
rolling out across the
board. Community
engagement is an
ever changing task
which needs to be
designed to meet
the needs of those it
aims to engage.
Something that works
in 1 place, may not work
in another, each
engagement process
needs bespoke design.
make it fun, relevant
and appropriate.
Advertise, Advertise,
Advertise!
Cooperation with other
agencies
The number of 18 service provider
representatives who agreed or strongly
agreed their engagement was:
17 - planned and delivered in a timely and
appropriate way
15 - engagement was given sufficient
resources and support to be effective
12 - engagement encouraged and enabled
everyone affected to be involved.
Of the 18 representatives, the methods of
consultation used in 2012/13 were:
11 - used surveys / questionnaires / survey
monkey, but only 2 said they were very
successful
9 - used panels / focus groups / forums, and
of those 7 said they were very successful.
8 - used events and community
engagement, 4 said they were very or fairly
successful.
Almost three-quarters of representatives
agreed or strongly agreed that the
information they provided was jargon free,
appropriate and understandable.
Representatives gave the efforts they made
to ensure that their questions were
accessible and easy to understand in three
themes:
1. By ensuring that their text was easy-read,
jargon-free and there was a bilingual choice
of language
2. By using a variety of formats: social
media had the highest score of 4 out of 15
3. By testing the consultation questions
through commissioning specialist services /
using public reader groups
Comments from the
sample of 662
service users
included:
they are not trained
to deal with diverse
clients
young people don’t
get their say
they may not want to
listen to a young
person’s voice
feel our comments
and opinions don’t
count when you get
older
would like older
people to be listened
to more
Community Voice
Development Officers
sent the following
messages to public
service providers:
information and
publicity and the way
in which they consult
needs to be accessible
to people. Need to
look at how other
counties are doing
things and share more
good practice. Get
involved so the local
community can have a
good chance of having
their voices heard
people who were
isolated had an
opportunity to make
new links/friendships.
People who are not
mainstream had an
opportunity to voice
their option
Of the 18 service provider representatives, over
three-quarters agreed or strongly agreed that
their engagement was designed to make it easier
for a diverse range of people to take part
effectively.
Their top three definitions of ‘hard to reach’ were:
1. Disengaged (people who can’t be contacted
easily or who are not active in society)
2. People with disabilities / learning difficulties /
mental health issues
3. Homeless people
The top three most difficult to reach or consult
with were people who were:
1. Young
2. Full-time workers
3. Ethnic minorities
Two thirds of representatives knew that their
organisation monitored the equality categories of
their respondents.
Not all were directly involved in monitoring, but
more than a half used the following equality
monitoring categories: age, disability, ethnicity,
gender, religion and sexual orientation.
A third said the consultation findings had
informed their internal Equality Impact
Assessments.
The top purposes of monitoring were:
1. To ensure that they did not discriminate
against anyone
2. To understand issues that face particular
communities / Protected Characteristics
3. To ensure needs mapping
Intrusive questions can become a barrier so only
ask if have a purpose
Do we have sufficient people for equality
monitoring?
Anglesey and Conwy Community VoiceAnglesey and Conwy Community Voice
6. Reflections
The Baseline study starts from the premise that engagement, as an active participative process is important
and productive to both service providers and service users. The findings uncover some fundamental
differences around objectives, the perceived meaning and value of engagement and the best method to use.
The following are some reflections on the findings and the perceptions behind the findings.
1. Level of Confidence of Service Users to Engage with Service Providers
Three-quarters of the service provider representatives said that they provide evidence that service users’
opinions matter and yet half of service users said that they had little or no confidence that their voice would
be listened to by the public sector.
The criteria of the service users for such a low confidence judgement becomes clear in their comments; they
judged by how close they came to achieving their service needs, how they were listened to, valued and
involved. The criteria used by the service provider representatives seemed to relate more to promotion and
providing opportunities for engagement / consultation activities.
Communication and engagement is a two way process. Only when people feel confident and empowered are
they able to offer service providers constructive information and only when service providers are confident
and effectively engaging will they get service user input.
2. The Barriers to Successful Communication / Engagement
The three barriers to successful consultation listed by the service provider representatives were a lack of
resources, the apathy of those being consulted, and their access needs. The service users’ answer to what
made it hard to talk to the public sector highlighted a disconnection that they put down to bureaucracy,
access needs not being addressed and a personal lack of confidence in official situations.
Here the main difference seems to be in the perception of who they are communicating with, but there was a
general agreement on the nature of the barriers themselves. Interestingly, the solutions being considered by
the representatives of using face to face, social media methods and joint work did chime with the users’
preferences as expressed below.
3. The methods of engagement / consultation used
Half of the service provider representatives rated human interaction methods of engagement / consultation
such as forums, panels and focus groups as their most successful. Ninety-two percent of service users said
human interaction was their preferred method and gave examples of how technical problems had slowed or
impeded their communication.
The findings also uncovered that whilst over three quarters of service provider representatives agreed or
strongly agreed that their methods of engagement were given sufficient resources, earlier the lack of
resources was cited as the top barrier to successful engagement. This seems to imply that more is needed
than resources to achieve successful engagement.
5. Feedback and Developing Opportunities for Further Participation
SERVICE
PROVIDER
SERVICE
USER
DEVELOPMENT
OFFICER
109
However, a
significant
number of the
comments from
service users do
not indicate
satisfaction in
this area:
If you bring new
ideas they never
seem to be
implemented
Quite often left
confused as to
whether I have
been understood
or valued
when you want
our views, they
don’t advertise
very widely! You
find out
afterwards that
there has been a
consultation or
event.
Sometimes
events are not
accessible or not
very friendly
we have lots of
ideas but they
don’t want to do
anything
I don’t think I can
influence
decisions
When the Community
Voice Development
Officers were asked
what message they
would like to send to
public service providers
about achieving
effective community
engagement and
participation, two
suggested:
feedback is essential it is
central to giving value
and opening [up]
further discussion. It
can take the form of
“you said...so we did...”
people are doing you a
massive favour, make it
worth their while. Work
with people, do your
consultation far enough
ahead to work with the
info / opinions they give
you, be prepared to
change as a result of
their comments and
then make sure they
know that what they
said made a difference.
All too often it appears
that providers just want
approval of what they
are going to do (have
already started to do)
anyway. Give value
Two thirds of service provider representatives
agreed or strongly agreed that consultation
participants were told of the impact of their
contribution.
Nearly two-thirds of representatives said that when
they published the final decisions made by the
board / council they referenced the contributions
made by the consultation participants.
Over three-quarters of representatives said they
encouraged further opportunities for feedback /
interaction once the concluding document / report
had been published by:
• Providing feedback / sending an update to
contributors.
• Inviting participants to continue consultation
links with them.
• Providing an open access to communicate with
an appropriate officer.
Over three quarters of representatives said they
encouraged citizen participation in influencing local
decisions and policy making by setting up focused
panels / committees / groups which provided:
• Representation opportunities
• Citizens panels
• Boards /committees
Nearly a half of public service representatives had
developed citizen panels and the top three criteria
used for membership were:
1. Role specification (e.g. housing tenant)
2. Having appropriate qualifications for the Terms
of Reference
3. Representing minorities groups
We have a residents’ communications group that
we can run consultation questions past.
We have specialist staff (Communications Team
and Community Development Staff) that are
available to assist with developing consultations
and surveys in order to ensure they are accessible
in both English and Welsh
Anglesey and Conwy Community VoiceAnglesey and Conwy Community Voice
7. 4. Targeting of participants
Over three-quarters of service provider representatives agreed or strongly agreed that their engagement was
designed to make it easier for a diverse range of people to take part effectively.
When asked what ‘hard to reach’ meant to the representatives they listed the seldom reached, disengaged,
disabled and homeless and as the most ‘hard to reach’ for consultation listed young people, ethnic minorities
and full-time workers. Although their answers recognised the need to identify specific needs and issues they
did not cover the full diversity or Protected Characteristics.
However, individual comments like “do we have sufficient people for equality monitoring?” may indicate a
lack of drive to target the diversity of participants. Could this indicate a need for further employee training on
the value of equality monitoring and the legal requirements of the Equality Act and Equality Impact
Assessments?
5. Feedback and Developing Opportunities for Further Participation Reflections
Two thirds of service providers publish how participant responses have influenced their decision-making, and
over three-quarters encourage further feedback and offer representation and individual contribution roles.
The findings show that the public service providers are very active in this area however the service user
comments do not indicate satisfaction in this area.
There is a perception that feedback is not given and there are few opportunities to sit on citizen panels /
forums / focus groups. If this is not true then there is a need for greater publicity. As one Development
Officer said “Advertise, Advertise, Advertise!”
Suggestions for Next Steps
1. All public service provider organisations to endorse and proactively implement the National
Principles for Public Engagement in Wales.
2. All public service providers to increase the confidence of service users that their needs and
opinions matter by ensuring that they are listened to, valued and involved.
3. All public service providers to recognise and accommodate that service users most favoured
method of communication is face to face.
4. All public service providers to recognise the value of equality monitoring and ensuring
communication with the full range of diversity, this includes people who are in marginalised
minorities, have Protected Characteristics and are ‘hard to reach’.
5. Public service providers should increase feedback to participants and widely promote
available opportunities to sit on citizen panels / forums / focus groups.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Big Lottery Fund for developing Community Voice and
Conwy Voluntary Service Council and Medrwn Môn for managing the
two local Community Voice projects.
Appendices available on request
1. List of Community Voice partners in Anglesey and Conwy projects
2. Copies of Questionnaires used
3. List of service provider organisations questioned
4. Equality monitoring data and comments of service users.
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Anglesey and Conwy Community Voice
