Power in the community: how community groups can achieve their goals by Andrew Bright.



Many people with learning difficulties face discrimination and are often excluded from society rather than included in the communities where they live. Since it began three years ago, the Elfrida Society Community Development Project has shown that there are opportunities for people with learning difficulties to be included in their communities. The project has worked across three London boroughs Islington, Camden and Westminster. People with learning difficulties have been supported and mentored to establish their own community groups, some of which have become community enterprises.

The project has worked with people at their own pace to develop their groups successfully. There is no standard recipe for establishing a community enterprise.

During the second and third years of the project, we used some empowerment indicators to discuss how the groups were developing. These included considering the ability of each group to be:

self managing/self reliant
able to problem solve
democratic
sustainable.

At the end of this article I will return to these indicators and discuss what the groups have achieved.

The project supported four community enterprises to establish themselves: Islington Rovers Football Club, Westsiders Night Club, the Euro Savings Club and First Choice Trainers.


Islington Rovers Football Club
When the project started working with Islington Rovers football team it was a group of Elfrida Society service users who played football on Highbury Fields in Islington. The project supported the Player Manager, Gary Wilkinson. The team was also being supported by a Football League Club's Community Sports Programme and played in a league for people with disabilities. The project supported and advised the team in their self-administration and organisation. However, the Community Sports Programme had the most control over the group. There was an agreement in place between them and the team which, after a while, was found to severely limit the freedom of committee members, especially those with learning difficulties, to take a full part in the committee. The role of the committee was described by the Community Sports Programme as that of an advisory group.




In these circumstances it was highly unlikely that members of the committee who had learning difficulties could go against the advice of the other members. In this respect the football team was significantly disempowered.

The football team also had problems. A number of incidents occurred during the first and second years of the project chaotic administration, financial irregularities, conflicts and verbal abuse. With the support of the project they looked at different ways of resolving these issues, including the old committee standing down and a new committee being elected to take on the running of the team.
The tensions between the Community Sports Programme and the team finally led to a withdrawal of support in the summer of 2002. The project continued to work with the team, now called Islington Rovers AFC.

The work is focussed on strengthening the new independent management committee. I felt that while they had support from the Community Sports Programme the football team was powerless but now they are independent the power is back with the team. The team has become empowered and is more confident about running its own activities.

As they have been very successful, the big goal of team members now is to go into a mainstream league.


Westsiders
In Westminster the project met a young man called Graham Reeves. Graham is a man with a vision of how he would like things for people with learning difficulties to be. He was very interested in a club where people could go, different to Gateway but similar to the Wild Bunch that the Elfrida Society runs (see Community Living, Vol. 15, No. 1, Moving on up in West London). He wanted dancing, DJs and all the excitement of a night club.
Westsiders was born out of these ideas. Graham made links with Paddington Arts who were interested in doing something similar both wanted the same thing and were willing to work together. But here Graham was in control from the start, in contrast to the experience of Islington Rovers AFC.

Westsiders has a small management committee made up of people with learning difficulties who manage the running of the club nights, with advisory support from Paddington Arts. Westsiders has successfully run seven club nights in two years. Graham is a man with a mission to make Westsiders a success.

The project has given Graham the skills he has needed in time management and writing budgets, including writing financial reports for the management committee. Over the three years of the project, Westsiders has built up networks with other London clubs and has also encouraged two people to go away and set up their own clubs in Watford and Harrow.

Graham says,I like working for my own business.


Euro Savings Club
When the Euro Savings Club project started one of the aims was to look at establishing a Credit Union run by and for people with learning difficulties. This part of the project has been a bit like Pop Idol, with the Euro Savings Club being created by the Community Development Project as a test group. In June 2000, the group was established by a young man called Elvis. Five months later, Elvis had to withdraw as he got a two-year place on a theatre project. After some persuasion, Patrick Cording and Edmund Marriott took over the reins. The club has tried to highlight the fact that many people in our communities are on low incomes and aims to educate them to save and invest their money for the future.

Patrick and Edmund have also been learning especially the importance of working together. There have been conflicts between them but, with support from the project, difficulties have been resolved.

Patrick and Edmund are the Ant and Dec of the savings business always disagreeing with each other but always laughing at the end!

Now they are working really well together. General meetings to do with the club are held at Edmund's home and visits to Credit Unions are done by Patrick with support from the project.

At first, Patrick wouldn't leave messages on answerphones and I would have to leave any messages for the club. Now he is happy to talk to answer machines himself.

The project has encouraged the club to build a support network by visiting Credit Unions and financial organisations. Though the Euro Savings Club hasn't been that successful in gaining a huge number of members, it has gained a great interest from financial organisations. The Association of British Credit Unions Limited and Bootstrap Enterprises have both said what a good idea a savings club is for people with learning difficulties.

The Savings Club is not quite working yet we still have a lot of work to do.
The project is continuing to work with Patrick and Edmund to find ways for the continued development of the Savings Club after the initial Community Fund grant runs out.


First Choice Trainers
The trainers group came out of a course run at The Elfrida Society called Training For Change (see Community Living, Vol. 15, No. 1, Training for Change). This group have been developing the skills, confidence and experience to be trainers. It has delivered training to professionals in health and social services and to medical students, work for which they were paid.

Most recently the group have been commissioned to do two big pieces of work: to produce an accessible resource directory and a video on services in Islington for people with learning difficulties and to lead a Training for Change course for people with learning difficulties in the two London Boroughs of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. The aim is to set up a second trainers group in these boroughs.

First Choice Trainers are a motivated, successful, and more and more self-organised group. They are going from strength to strength with support from The Elfrida Society's Siren Arts and Advocacy and Community Development Projects. The Elfrida Society is seeking funding to support the continued development of the trainers groups.

To go back to the indicators mentioned earlier in this article, how well did the groups do?


Self Management
The project supported people to develop and acquire self management skills. The ultimate aim was that any decision-making would be 100 per cent by people with learning difficulties and not by professionals (people without the label of learning difficulties).

In the early development of the football team only 40 per cent of the decision-making control was with people with learning difficulties. It is now 100 per cent.


Problem Solving
The community groups have gained experience in problem solving. They are able to express feelings and concerns leading to a shared understanding of issues and a strong resolve. People have learned that when they work together as committee members, their group can achieve successful outcomes.


Democratisation
We have already discussed how the football team benefited from having full empowerment. The team's committee is more democratic now and team members are back in control. The First Choice Trainers continue to develop their democratic power and recently decided democratically how to use the money they had been paid from recent commissions.


Sustainability
All the groups supported by the project have some degree of sustainability but each at present also has some need for continued support. Islington Rovers AFC are planning to go into mainstream football, Westsiders are now exploring the prospect of becoming a limited company and the Euro Savings Club aims to become one of the first savings clubs in London for people with learning difficulties.

The two trainers groups, hopefully supported by a grant, have great potential for sustainability; for example, the First Choice Trainers aim to become a social firm. This will enable people with learning difficulties to be paid a proper wage and could be a way of overcoming the difficult issues involved in balancing being paid for commissions as a group and receiving benefits.

Working in this project has taught me that there is always a risk that a community group could lose its identity and control over its affairs, like any other business. This could happen to any community group seeking to progress significantly.

My role as Community Organisations Development Worker has been as a mentor and advisor. At times this has not been an easy role, especially when the people I have worked with have expected me to make decisions for them, making it difficult to avoid the trap of taking over. In her article, Rosemary Tilley talks in more depth about mentoring.

The Community Development Project has demonstrated not only that community enterprises can be sustained but that they can achieve a considerable amount of empowerment.

Andrew Bright was the Community Organisations Development Worker in the Community Development Project at the Elfrida Society. He is a person with a learning difficulty.