Key action three - Listen to communities
Citizen participation ensures that policy is effective in reflecting and meeting the priorities of people and gives them a stake in our democratic system. People who are worst impacted by inequality are also those who have the least voice, and it is therefore particularly important to support their participation.
Anyone who has been involved in co-production, grassroots conversations (such as conversation cafes) or any form of meaningful or deliberative participation will have clearly seen how valued, and often life-changing, these approaches are to the people who take part. And that’s not to mention the unique, insightful and forward-thinking policy ideas that emerge from these initiatives.
It’s probably fair to say that in Scotland we’ve been talking a lot about listening to, or working with, communities, but how much have we actually been doing it? There are some well-known examples, including:
The development of Scotland’s Social Security Charter, and the use of experience panels to build a social security system which at one point achieved a 90% satisfaction rate.
All In For Change, the approach to tackling homelessness in Scotland, led by Homeless Network Scotland in partnership with Cyrenians and Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC), which put lived experience at the heart of system change by supporting a ‘Change Team’ of frontline workers and people with lived experience of homelessness to effect policy change.
The Citizens Assembly of Scotland, in which a representative sample of people in Scotland prioritised actions around sustainability and tackling poverty. Through informed deliberative dialogue, assembly members were able to weigh up the different policy considerations at stake and prioritised longer-term wellbeing over short-term growth. More recently, in 2020-21, Scotland's Climate Assembly took place with a specific focus on the climate emergency.
There are also many less high-profile examples of proactively working with communities and service users to improve services, utilising approaches such as co-production, lived-experience panels and participation requests.
This is a lot to build on, and we strongly encourage the Scottish Government and those making decisions about public services throughout Scotland to prioritise investment in participation and meaningful community engagement at a time when it could be tempting to make savings in this area due to this being more politically acceptable in the short term.
