Together with community partners, we have developed 6 engagement principles which set out a shared vision of our approach to engaging with community stakeholders.
These principles are strongly influenced by how community groups have told us that they want to be engaged with, and they embed shared values we aspire to deliver in our engagement activities.
1. We plan engagement to achieve shared outcomes
We are well-informed about a range of engagement methods so that we can choose the one that is most appropriate for the shared outcomes we want to achieve.
2. We respect people and their strengths
We start from a strengths-based perspective, recognising the achievements of people and community groups and the value they bring.
3. We prioritise inclusion
We come to where people are rather than expecting them to come to us.
We use data to reach and include under-represented groups.
We proactively seek out seldom heard voices and engage with marginalised groups.
We collaborate with partners who work with different communities.
We recognise that some systems are not set up in a way that is accessible to everyone and we seek to remove barriers to enegagement.
4. We have continuous conversations and build relationships
We ‘fix the roof while the sun is shining’, meaning that we build and maintain relationships as part of our business as usual, not just when there is an issue or a problem.
We listen to the priorities of communities without imposing our own views and agendas.
5. We feedback and share the impact of community voice
We follow up on engagement activities and feed back the outcomes of community input and the difference this has made.
6. We use insight from lived experience to drive service design and improvement
We analyse the insights we gather through engagement activities and make sure they are passed on to the relevant service areas.
We communicate how we make decisions.
We use insights that have arisen organically from communities to inform service design, not only evidence or data-based insights, but things our community partners and residents have told us.