The Waitakere Way - Looking Back, Going Forward - Auckland Council

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PAGE 33How do you measure their progress or how they’ve achieved that? So we’re looking at - forexample, having something in their performance agreement that says, ‘How does yourGovernment Department engage with the community?’ and the community judges that, notthem – right across to the training packages for government officials or local governmentofficials whatever, how they’re ‘inducted’….’Relations with central government and elected officials‘That is hard because it needs to be about a whole lot of levels. It’s really about changing theculture of government, and how does government support community organisations, ratherthen boss them round – and that’s about attitudinal stuff, and behavioral stuff. That’s what Imean about the politicians, in particular, feeling that, how could they possibly, a small groupof men, sit around the table and decide things in isolation, just dependent on the work that aprofessional might do, which often just came from their brain, as well’.Success and frustrations getting funding‘I’ve been quite successful in getting money. I’ve known how to do it and how to assert for aparticular issue and need. I’ve spent lots of time being very frustrated, seeking out smallamounts of money to try and cover demands for services, and myself being prepared to takeless than I ought and also my staff. I expected too much of my staff to behave the same way.There’s a mixture here. I was able to access money, but usually it wasn’t enough, and usuallythe expectation of how you spend that money, the amount of service delivery that wasexpected, was beyond what was reasonable at times. It’s got a lot better now. That’s onething I can really say. There’s a big demand for higher level professionalism and we’ve had tosay, You want a higher level of professionalism, you’ll have to pay. And we are now, we cansee, CYPS Funding and Courts Funding being more professionally realistic than it was’.The virtues of having a paid coordinator‘They all now, the ones that I can think of, have to have a paid co-ordinator. The ‘EffectivePractice’ project - initially we didn’t have anybody. And that was really hard work. We had toscramble from year to year to try and get a paid co-ordinator. Initially the Government said,Our expectation is that you only have a paid co-ordinator for a short period of time, then you’lljust have to sustain yourselves. We managed to keep it going. There’s things like theWomen’s Network, which have a social component to it – ‘Let’s get together and eat lunchand talk about things and resource each other’. That didn’t have a co-ordinator, that wasokay. And there’s things like peer professional support and networks’.Catalysts and real community power: is there a balance?‘That catalyst role is really important. I think communities appreciate that. The danger is whenCouncilors try to run the thing, in the front row all the time, rather than sitting in the back row.That ‘catalyst facilitating’ role - if your communities can trust you enough to do that withouttaking over and having the power – that’s really key as well. And sometimes some of ourcommunities were never convinced! I think of a couple of key people, who are getting on a bitnow, who never really felt the power, ever, went out. To a certain extent, that might well betrue on lots of occasions. But it was with communities trying to enable them to do things,rather than us always doing it.’‘It is interesting. It’s not exactly cynical, but I just don’t feel like putting a huge amount ofenergy in to this next stage, because I really don’t quite understand. Nobody’s been able toexplain to me exactly what’s likely to happen’.‘There needs to be a major shift in saying ‘Okay, this is Waitakere. How do we bring all thosejuices into an even more unique way of working here, together? That’s that context.‘To go forward we actually need to understand what have been the clear limits of the past. Togo forward we need to use those clear limits. There’s the success of the past to build on’.
PAGE 34Bumpy process, struggles, and less than perfect outcomes‘I think that [starting Safer Community Council] was another example of Governmentidentifying the needs. Not giving time for the community to fully input and talk. You’llremember the myths that occurred around starting the Safer Community Council, and howthat put WADCOSS off side. A lot more could have been done to make sure thoserelationships were worked through and that WADCOSS was on board with Safer CommunityCouncil, before it got started. I think that suspicion from the Community, of Government’s gotthis good idea and pockets the money to the Community, and here we’ve got WADCOSS thatbeen driven by really well-meaning people for a long time. Why couldn’t have we found a wayof bringing those two together, because there was a level of duplication potentially there. Iwas told Safer Community Council was a big risk for WADCOSS, because of lack ofconsultation and clarity about what it would do. And it’s unlike Council (who set it up) to fallinto that trap. I think it’s been a big learning from Council because of that. I think they’vebecome far more consultative with the Community’.‘It caused big hiccups for Council and for WADCOSS. I was part of meetings, there was notalking, there was just frustration and anger about the whole situation. And then there were afew meetings between WADCOSS and Safer Community Council which did some clarificationabout the what and how. The thing we can learn is to take what’s already here and build on it.‘Cause you end up having duplications and a waste of people’s time. You see the samegroups of people traveling around the community going to very similar network sorts ofmeetings, with the idea of sitting down and looking at the duplications and where time couldbe saved’.
Page 1 and 2: “The Waitakere Way”Looking Back
Page 3 and 4: FROM THE WILD WEST TOTHE WAITAKERE
Page 6 and 7: PAGE 3Lack of services‘The main i
Page 8 and 9: PAGE 5Early empowerment‘I used to
Page 10 and 11: PAGE 7‘The growth of community or
Page 12 and 13: PAGE 9Fraternity that supported us
Page 15 and 16: PAGE 12The health forum changes‘W
Page 17 and 18: PAGE 14Council, and certainly under
Page 19 and 20: PAGE 16Wider political contexts‘W
Page 21 and 22: PAGE 18getting together and the sta
Page 23 and 24: PAGE 20working on a Project, we cou
Page 25 and 26: PAGE 22Funding WADCOSS‘….the co
Page 27 and 28: PAGE 244. IT’S ALWAYS BEEN POLITI
Page 29 and 30: PAGE 26Restructuring and the strugg
Page 31 and 32: PAGE 285. THE EMERGING WAITAKERE WA
Page 33 and 34: PAGE 30Working with community, gove
Page 35: PAGE 32‘I can see it happening bu
Page 39 and 40: PAGE 36How far can it run on love?
Page 41 and 42: PAGE 38Our understanding from the c
Page 43: PAGE 40Can’t (won’t) stop now

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