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National Empowerment Partnership
The National Empowerment Partnership (NEP) programme was established in April 2007 by the Communities and Local Government (CLG), and is due to run for four years, until 2011. It works through Regional Empowerment Partnerships (REPs) in each of the nine English regions. CDF is managing the delivery of administration, support and evaluation for NEP.
Community empowerment is central to current government policy and finding effective ways of supporting government policy is thus critical. The NEP is a programme that aims to test what can be done at national and local level to support this agenda. The programme’s overall aim is to empower citizens and communities by: demonstrating the difference community empowerment can make to individuals, community groups, communities and public agencies, developing effective methods of quality assurance for community empowerment and promoting examples of good practice across the country.
The Year 1 evaluation was carried out for CDF by Gray-King and Gray Limited and the Year 2 evaluation by IVAR and researchers from the University of the West of England (UWE). Year 1 and 2 evaluations were by their nature process-focused, for example key findings from Year 1 were that, while there was considerable optimism about the NEP’s potential and government’s commitment to empowerment, there was at the time a lack of clarity about the role of the national partnership as well as the lack of a shared understanding of empowerment. Key Year 2 findings indicated more clarity on the required focus on National Indicator 4 (NI4) but residual confusion among key stakeholder’s understanding of the programme. In turn the Year 2 evaluation found that while there was some variability in the extent to which REPs were found to be targeting LAs, there was robust evidence that a start has been made on this agenda.
The Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) and University of the West of England are currently conducting the evaluation of Year 3 of NEP on behalf of CDF. The primary aim objective for Year 3 is a focus on outcomes and specifically: exploring work that is happening to promote and support communities to engage in community empowerment opportunities, work that is happening to support the capacity of public agencies to promote community empowerment, work that is happening to co-ordinate the various activities of different agencies and groups.
A Year 3 evaluation report will be available in summer 2010.
