Community engagement: New challenges, but never more important

There’s clearly still a rocky road ahead, but as we continue to respond to and, hopefully, recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, community engagement should be at the forefront of what we do.

This guide to the National Standards for Community Engagement will help you to think about how you can engage communities around recovery and renewal.

It covers some of the issues which are impacting on communities and which might make it more difficult for people to take part in engagement activity. It also points you to useful resources and online tools that can help address these issues. It should be useful for anyone working in planning services, those working in community engagement type roles and community organisations working in and with people in their community.

Download the resource at http://www.voicescotland.org.uk/support-materials/.

Given the ever-changing nature of the pandemic and the response to it, the resource is an ongoing piece of work and we will be happy to make changes based on any suggestions you have.

The National Standards for Community Engagement are Scotland’s good-practice principles for supporting and informing the process of community engagement, as well as improving what it leads to. Originally launched in 2005, but refreshed in 2016, they have been used to support community engagement, and user involvement, in Scotland in areas such as community planning and health and social care. They have been widely accepted by a range of practitioners as key principles for effective practice.