Download Community Engagement & Good Practice

Community
Engagement &
Good Practice
Foziha Raja
EACH Counselling Service
Key principles for community
engagement
Positive & Inclusive:
engaging
marginalized groups
Avoiding the one size fits all
approach: Distinct difference
in how communities perceive
the use of alcohol
A flexible approach to community
engagement: being transparent & building
trusting relationships
Sustaining and Evaluating Change: how do we know it
worked
A Model of Community
Engagement in Practice
In Practice: Community
engagement & Alcohol use
Education & Communication
Delivered in forms & means that is
Accessible to the
community
Working with
Religious Identification,
Cultural beliefs &
values
Physical & psychological
health
Holistic Approach
Orientation towards
empowerment
Recognising competence
& skills of each
Community & its members
A Holistic Model




Service provision to both family and individual
Key sites & points of access for underserved
communities
Based at GPs, Home-visiting, gender specific
support groups to Somali, Tamil & Asian
women & Somali & Tamil men, targeted
support to family members & carers.
Harrow & Ealing provide support via Housing
Treatment & Systemic Issues





Differences in working
with first and second
generation clients
Providing information
on alcohol issues
Gender matters!
Counselling a difficult
concept for some
communities
Working with family
members



Employing workers with
the skills & knowledge
to engage with diverse
communities
Building trust within
communities/ racism &
inequalities prevalent
Delivering services at
grass root levels: using
community venues
Examples of our work






Working with South Asian
men:
Workers who have the
linguistic skills & cultural
understanding
Outreach and word of
mouth
Cultivating an environment
of understanding, support &
equality amongst members
Engagement takes times
Working with setbacks







Somalia community
Alcohol use very hidden
Focus groups had to be
carefully planned to manage
differences in dialects & social
conflicts
Information more likely to be
disseminated in person
Workers acting as a bridge
between host culture & clients
culture
Working with attitudes to help
seeking behaviour
Understanding the pressure
the role and influence of the
family
Challenges
UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS COMMUNITY &
ACHIEVING BALANCE
Exclusion & Inclusion:
Not all those who
share an ethnic identity
feel part of the
community
TARGETED SUPPOT NEEDED FOR EACH PART
Group leaders &
Families: Alcohol issues Individuals: client’s
Organisations: may may threaten their cultural Interpersonal lives,
hold authority & be Beliefs & values, engaging their support networks
seen as a trusted
and supporting families
Impact on their
Figure/s
has been crucial
recovery
Retention & Engagement






Quality of engagement is key
Advocacy is one of the cornerstones of our
work; more than signposting
Aftercare just as crucial: addressing other
issues, its never just about the alcohol
Impact on clients mental health
Welfare rights, housing, registering with GPs,
advice on employment
Peer support; this can continue once our
work finishes formally.
Evaluating & Sustaining
Change
The Politics of Evaluation &
Negotiating Expectations









Change: means a shift and movement in the communities attitude and
way of addressing problematic use of alcohol for its members
Everyone has a stake:
service providers have diverse goals & complex relationships with
community members & funders
Funders need clear & measurable outcomes
Members of community have invested in the service and have their own
expectations
Evaluation takes place in the real-world, some of the challenges
include:
Objectives not always clearly measurable
Service not established long enough to expect results
Sometimes things go wrong!
Evaluation: Internal & External
Completion of
Treatment who
Dropped out
And why?
Did it serve the
Clients it
Intended to
How is it perceived
By other
Service providers
How did clients
Enter the service
How integrated
Within the
Community
Was the
service
Sustaining Change



Rapid needs analysis by key workers
(working at a grass roots level)
Trends are fed back into service planning &
delivery
Targeted support for example working with
the Tamil community and Eastern European
Community
How do we know it works!
By having our nose at a grassroots level
 Adapting to change - through
more appropriate service provision
 Seeing a greater take-up of our services from
these underserved hard to reach
communities.
It is the old and tried and tested community
model of working - nothing groundbreaking doing this for hundreds of years!

EACH Counselling and Support
Service
729 London Road
Hounslow, TW3 1SE
[email protected]