Communication and Engagement - best practice

Consultation and Engagement - I was asked to produce this for a company working with tenants on resident engagement - but you may find it useful too.

All the following points are drawn from my experience in delivering consultations and engagements for different clients over the years.  Some will seem like common sense – but you would be surprised how often these things are overlooked.

Why are you consulting or engaging?

A good idea to take a long hard look at motivation here.  There is a scale here – with tokenism at one end and genuine participation at the other.  You are probably familiar with Hart’s Ladder of Participation.   But those who you are working with or for may not be.   It does make a difference.  People can detect when they are being asked to endorse a decision already made and when they are being approached with an open mind.   So honestly placing yourself on the ladder is a good start.   Consultation may not be the practical response, for example when legislation limits options or funding is very tight.

Who do you want to consult?

Are you seeking a cross-section of views from a representative sample of the general population.   Perhaps there are specific groups who will be impacted.  Equality Impact Assessment methodology might be the way to go.

How much time do you have?

There are guidelines in place as part of the Compact arrangements in some local authorities – and these define what good consultation is.  Typically a timescale of six months is required for an effective consultation.  This enables you to go through the stages of testing hypotheses, focus groups to explore the accessibility and relevance of questions and to employ a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods.

How much money do you have?

Budget will impact on your choice of consultation method.   Telephone interviews can be expensive in high numbers, but provide a richness of data that questionnaires may not.

Common mistakes

-       Relying on one consultation method eg an open meeting, an on-line survey.  Best practice is to use at least two methods, so that there is a choice of ways to engage.  Open meetings assume that people have transport and childcare and that caring, employment, education and training commitments can be overcome in order to attend.

-       Assuming that trust exists between those asking the questions and those responding.   A historical perception that consultations were just paying lipservice to opinion gathering will taint any future activities.   For example, a consultation I was involved in with parents, on behalf of the local authority, where we had to get past feelings of anger over service cuts in another part of the council.

-       A confusion between representing and being a representative.   To genuinely represent the views of others an individual needs to have a means of gathering a range of opinions – and setting their own aside to voice those opinions.  A representative is a sample of one – and may give a personal view that resonates with others in a similar position – but do you, and they know the difference?  Beware of activists who claim to represent others.

-       Cultural insensitivity in the choice of venue, or timing of consultations.  Check your religious calendar first – or even better, speak to people locally.  Your local Multi-Faith Forum should be a help in interpreting and advising.

-       Boiling everything down to numbers on a scale – and losing the variety of responses and opinions! 

Good practice

-       Use of ambassadors or community representatives in peer led consultations.  For example, a consultation with families with disabled children included training disabled young people to interview one another on film.  Peer to peer, this generated really rich information.   One borough recruited parents on short term contracts to go out to universal settings such as shopping centres, GP surgeries, libraries etc as well as toddler groups and schools to talk to other parents.   Recruit and influence people in leadership positions – for example church leaders, imams, leaders of community groups, those providing voluntary services.  This is all about social capital – and building strong networks before consulting.  Some LINk organisations train people from different local communities so that they are skilled in gathering information and views.

-       The best practice elements here include thinking carefully about where the target groups could be found – and going to them, rather than making them come to you.  Drop-in events for disabled adults are a good example.  And expect to spend a few sessions building relationships and trust – and providing people with sufficient time to reflect on their views before presenting them.

-       Use of symbols and images to support consultations with people with low levels of literacy or with communication difficulties.  So easy to put a confusing question, requiring a verbal response.  Use image banks that are familiar – and test your questions with individuals so that your meaning is clear.  Could the use of drama or art enable a different level of communication – with a more open question – what makes you happy?  Be careful of asking people, especially those on the autistic spectrum, to conceptualize changes – in these instances experiential consultation works well.  For example in the decisions around the design of a play space at a special school – visit other playgrounds, try things out, what works, and what doesn’t.  Be careful about asking people to imagine.

-       Involve people who are independent, and very clearly have no stake in the outcomes or a preferred finding.  This objectivity, especially if accompanied by anonymity, will lead to more open communication and honesty.  For example the local authority who commissioned the CVS to undertake a resident consultation on library use.

-       Consider the change equation and cover each element – to achieve change there will need to be an acknowledgement that the status quo is not working.   Consultation falls down when there is no agreement on this point.  There also needs to be a shared vision for the future, and confidence that the first step is a positive move towards that vision.  

-       Providing accessible feedback on the findings, in a form that can be understood by the target groups.  Including specific versions for eg children, young people, in different languages.

-       Invest in confidence building support for community representatives – for example a London borough that targeted Asian mothers as school governors found that they needed support to speak out in meetings run by professionals.  The environment was alien and created a barrier to genuine consultation.

-       Use of technology – flipcameras are a cheap way of capturing vox pops – as are many mobile phone.  Surveymoney for on-line questionnaires is worthwhile if you are going to want to do this frequently, or if you have a small number of questions.   LinkedIn and Facebook discussion threads can draw people in – but may need a moderator to avoid abuse.   Eventbrite is a good tool for managing attendance at events.  There are ipad apps – though I haven’t used them.   Also remember that some of your population will not have access to technology or will uncomfortable with it.