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• Developing a disability
  policy to comply with the law
• Reviewing and planning for change
• Involving communities in
  shaping their futures
• Researching and developing
  a policy position
• Evaluating your organisation
• Improving the accessibility
  of public transport
• Contact me
• My Career

Involving communities in shaping their future

I can help you devise and deliver practical ways of involving the communities you serve to help shape what you do and ensure that your services best meet their needs.

I can help you identify the audiences you need to reach and help you develop strategies to reach them, ranging from the conventional public meeting to questionnaires, focus groups and practical planning days.

I believe that consultation and involvement exercises often fail because the boundaries are not clear, and communities ask for changes which are beyond the powers of the body consulting them. I can help you draw up questions to ask communities which will help them understand the issues, and give you answers that are useful to you and to them.

I had practical experience of this kind of work when I was Coordinator at Barton Hill Settlement, where I devised a process to involve users (and other residents who did not use its services) in drawing up a completely new constitution. This resulted in a constitution which embedded user involvement, but also required regular reviews to ensure that this did not exclude potential new users from the local community. I've helped regeneration projects to involve communities in their plans and devised the model which resulted in other communities in Bristol choosing Barton Hill as the city's nomination for New Deal for Communities.

Most recently I've been advising public bodies on how to involve disabled people in drawing up their Disability Equality Schemes.