Anticipating disappointment

Community groups without the community.

Another meeting has been arranged for next week. I’ve typed up the minutes from the last meeting, booked a room and a number of staff at Leeds City Council have designed a leaflet to invite residents and they will also help with the distribution. Leeds Federated Housing is paying for the room that we’ll use, it’s not a huge amount but it’s still a cost that they are generously covering. I’m very grateful for all the support, the group such as it is, wouldn’t exist without these people whose job it is to help. A lot of people who work in local regeneration and housing give their time to this group. I know for a number of them it’s their job, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be recognised for it – it must be soul destroying to have to keep giving up your evenings to attend a meeting that even residents couldn’t care less about.

When the community group first started we had a paid for community worker, let’s call her Bliss, who worked across many projects doing the kinds of things listed above that I am starting to find myself having to do now. OK so my role isn’t hugely burdensome, but I’ve got a hundred other things I could be doing instead just like we all have. So why don’t we have Bliss anymore? Many community workers’ roles were paid for by funding that had been bid for by Local Authorities, short term and often applied for very specific projects with specific outputs aimed at specific social groups or geographic areas this meant that when the swingeing budget cuts came in after the 2010 election, Bliss and people like her were easy targets for a quick way to reduce outgoings.

Bye bye community outreach workers, thanks for all the vital work you’ve done, don’t let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.

In the context of the Con-Dem’s Big Society it seems counter-intuitive to undermine the existing infrastructure by removing funding from the very people who worked in the community. Not only have we lost a great member of a community team but we’ve lost the experience and goodwill that she generated and I doubt that the knowledge that she acquired and the positive working practices that she developed have been preserved for the good of the community.

I understand how the Big Society will do well in communities that already have the determination to band together and work for common goals. At the moment it very much feels a bit like the Wellness clinics that popped up around the place a few years back. Envisioned to improve the health and well being of the general public, I suspect those that are already proactive about their wellbeing will be availing themselves of the facilities and those that are too preoccupied with making ends meet will be watching it all happen to someone else; as always those harder to reach are left behind.

My little community is most certainly not rising to the challenge at the moment, though I hope I’m proved wrong at the meeting next week. Maybe I’m being too negative but I don’t hold out much hope for the continuation of the Community Group. I don’t have the capacity, or to be fair the inclination to do much more than I already am, so it’s not like I’m setting myself up as a positive example because I’m quite lazy, but a few more people need to start contributing or else it’s destined to go tits up.

Well that’s it for today, small whinge over. I’ll update after the community meeting as hopefully we’ll get news about the demolition and the renovation of the remaining properties, tragically I’m looking forward to that. I can’t take any more fly-tipping, derelict houses and general decay, no wonder I’m such a miserable cow.

miserable cow