Shadow Communities Secretary, Mark Isherwood AM, has called for the Cabinet Secretary for Communities to engage with organisations working to ensure community resilience is developed at local level.
Speaking in the Assembly Chamber this week, he said:
“In the summer edition of the Bevan Foundation’s ‘Exchange’ newsletter, the Director of the Bevan Foundation, in an article entitled, ‘Learning to Love Local’, says that the January 2017 White Paper, ‘Reforming Local Government: Resilient and Renewed’, once again focuses on ‘collaboration’, and she then says that ‘essentially, the public is being asked to agree to major changes in how local services are delivered without knowing how they can make their views heard’, which clearly falls more into your portfolio.
“The Building Communities Trust is working with the Talwrn network of Welsh third sector organisations and the community branch of the union Unite, identifying the key factors in developing community resilience at local level that would deal with the issue raised by the Bevan Foundation, and state that they’ve already engaged with Ministers and civil servants in the Welsh Government on these issues, which include looking at the Rhondda Cynon Taf public services model, working with the third sector to develop a local community well-being approach, using asset-based community development - that’s people’s strengths.
“And they go on to say that independent community organisations are ‘well-placed to effectively deliver local services’, from social care to family support and employability, and hosting these provisions by others. I wonder if you could tell us what discussions you’ve therefore had with this organisation and their partners, and what actions, if any, might result from that.”
The Cabinet Secretary replied: “I haven’t had a conversation with those particular organisations, but I will check to see whether my team have.
’I think the Member is right in terms of the fact that local need and local influence have to have a purpose in developing policy and the delivery of services. We are working in a very different financial environment as we stand, and therefore, I would encourage third sector organisations, or local organisations, to get engaged with the PSBs, and a good example the Member raised was the RCT one, the Rhondda Cynon Taf PSB.”
Mr Isherwood added: “I think the key message from that project was the need for independent third sector organisations to be involved in design and delivery with the statutory sector - adopting models that weren’t introduced originally in the situation of budget constraint or austerity or whatever you want to call it; they were introduced because they made life better.”
ENDS