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Self help
In a climate of tightening public finances and increasing demand for welfare services, ‘self help’ is often the default strategy for communities. Our recent work (for example, A Future for Community Development) shows that, in the years to come, greater resource will need to be focused on helping communities to meet their own needs. Community development practitioners will dedicate more of their time to supporting such vehicles as credit unions, co-operatives and community owned assets, mobilising and harnessing the resources within communities.
Given this trend, CDF’s Engaged Communities Team is exploring the key support needs of self-help groups, and the role of the community development practitioners in this. Our project is purposefully divided into two phases:
- Phase 1 will undertake detailed investigations of self-help groups, observing their development and the impact of the support they receive. This learning will be delivered to a policy audience, with recommendations about supporting the developing self-help groups.
- Phase 2 will seek to action this learning, working with community development practitioners to deliver effective support to groups to develop and sustain their work.
We intend to launch our report in the summer of 2010, and begin developing Phase 2 in autumn 2010.
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