engaging together

We are a group of officers from different organisations; Dudley CVS, Dudley Council and Public Health and Dudley Clinical Commissioning Group.

We know that because it’s something we do in our roles, and some of us also manage people who work with communities.

Organisations want communities, groups and individuals to know about their services, be involved in decisions to shape or improve services, perhaps even deliver services together. Community engagement is still high on the agenda for most organisations and partnerships. 

Over the last four years we have developed 12 different training courses and delivered them to nearly 400 officers and volunteers. We also host Community Engagement Network events three times a year, nearly 300 people have taken part in these so far. Feedback and evaluation from these activities highlight the value of bringing people together from different teams and organisations, the importance of developing confidence by learning how to do practical things and by reflecting on practice.

We estimate that we have helped organisations in Dudley to save over £30,000 in training costs by investing our own time in delivering support.

We develop and deliver this training and support because we found out during some research that many officers and volunteers aren’t confident about their community engagement skills and can find the prospect of engagement quite scary. Often people don’t know who else is doing related or similar work.

Lorna Prescott. Senior Development Officer at Dudley CVSJody Pritchard, Public Health Programme Manager at The Office of Public HealthDonna Roberts, Research & Intelligence Officer at Dudley Council, seconded to Dudley CVSHelen Ashford, Community Engagement Advisor, Dudley Clinical Commissioning GroupNicki Burrows, Children’s Development Officer at Dudley CVSKat Lafferty, Community Safety Team at Dudley Council