Examples & Case-studies » Public & Stakeholder Engagement
» Engagement

Overview

A majority of the case studies in this section of our website involve work with stakeholders, especially the examples of Ketso in use in community planning, the environment and health and well being.

Following are some further examples of Ketso’s use in engaging with stakeholders, as well as some useful ideas which have emerged from workshops run by the Ketso team about effective partnerships and running workshops.

This page includes:

New! The Future of Public Service Delivery - an interactive dialogue

In January and April 2012 the Ketso team ran two workshops entitled ‘Learning from Renfrewshire’s Community Planning Conference success – an introduction to Ketso’. People from the public sector, community interest groups and academia from across Scotland attended both workshops, with people coming from the rural areas as well as the major cities. The first was at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in Edinburgh, which 43 people attended. The second workshop was co-hosted by Renfrewshire Council and was attended by 25 people.

Kasia Owczarek, in the Policy Officer Partnership Team Chief Executive's Service at Renfrewshire Council, presented the recent work they have been doing with Ketso, including using the kit to engage with over 400 people in their annual Community Planning Conference (click here for more information).

You can download the PowerPoint slides used in the workshops here:

Delegates also worked with Ketso in an exericse to discuss ‘the future delivery of public services’. This workshop explored the themes and issues developed in the recent report from the Commission On The Future Delivery of Public Services (click here to download). The themes discussed (as developed from the report) were:

  • Improving Performance and Reducing Costs
  • Prioritising Prevention
  • Promoting Equality
  • Working Together to Achieve Outcomes
  • Building Services Around People and Communities

Given that there were participants from Local Authorities, the health service, charities (including several working with refugees and migrants), academics and museums, the discussions were lively and broad ranging. 

You can download the Excel spreadsheet with the results here:

A synthesis report and summary will be  developed soon. In the meantime, some key points that were highlighted as important by participants in the Paisley workshop are summarised below. Graphs showing the proportion of different types of ideas discussed are also shown.

What works well already?   

  • Growing recognition of the community in solutions (It's about ownership. Agencies can't do it [improve services] to people)
  • There is more realisation that change is needed (Who for - has to be across the board) - need to ensure inclusive communication and approaches
  • Greater involvement of non-traditional services in community engagement (Greater diversity of services offered)
  • Talking to people - (importance of community involvement) 
  • Becoming learners   

Challenges and problems

  • Fear of flexibility/change (Common theme!)
  • Get over target obsession (Important to only measure the right stuff)
  • Institutional fear of changing thought process (Even though we know change is needed we don't like to do it) and bureaucratic inflexibility (a solution - Invest in greater advocacy for middle management)
  • Connect strategic thinking to community/local/operational delivery
  • Power in relationships   

Future possibilities

  • Shifting spend towards early years/early intervention
  • Shifting budgets to prevention   
  • Motivation to improve quality of service delivered
  • Establish conditions of satisfaction for working together and work to meet them   
  • Improved communication
  • Don't be afraid of communities' views and ideas   
  • Local people are involved in prioritising what services for local area   
  • Effective use of public feedback when designing services
  • Communities determine priorities and solutions (linked ideas - what works - Community planning and development of community planning structure; Partners working together better)
  • Give communities money to deliver services locally
  • Less pressure on core activists (Consultation fatigue is a real problem)
  • New ideas – housing options (Or challenging existing processes that don't help)
  • More spending and investment in vocational training
  • Strengthening links between employers and education (Needs to happen earlier in schools and be given more importance)
  • Tailor more training (Would be great but need to identify individual needs first)
  • Mandatory training for new elected members   

Feedback from the event and Ketso included:

  • Lets everyone contribute - no dominant voice

  • Limits monopolisation
  • Hugely participative and dynamic
  • Something new to motivate discussion
  • Might uncomplicate participation for folk with (non) background
  • Simple, colourful and gathers ideas well
  • Encourages positive and negative feedback but also solution focussed
  • Enables creative thinking
  • Gets people thinking and talking
  • Reusable
  • It's in the bag ready to go
  • Used across age groups
  • Can be adapted to various circumstances
  • This would work really well with vulnerable groups (e.g. alcohol) as it is very interactive and simple

Doing More With Less

Ketso encourages people to think creatively. In a time of austerity, we need to think of new ways to do our work. Using Ketso can help us to develop new ways of thinking as well as to help groups decide what is important in what they are currently doing. As ideas emerge on the felts, people can see new patterns and develop new connections between different areas of work.

Ketso has hosted a number of workshops recently, bringing together stakeholders from across the country to explore creative ways to do more with less. We have looked at issues ranging from health and wellbeing to different ways of operating in large organisations, including prisons and Universities. Results from several of these workshops are shown below.

Delivering value in a time of budget cuts

In late 2010 Ketso hosted two multi-stakeholder dialogues with the support of the Manchester Beacon for  Public Engagement. The first, held at the University of Manchester, saw twenty-three stakeholders from across the North West engaged in a lively dialogue, and the second saw an in-depth discussion of issues with nine stakeholders from London and the surrounding area. One of the opportunities that was mentioned for coping with these difficult times was to have more events like these, where people could learn from each other and take the time to reflect on new ways of doing things.  A total of 919 ideas were developed and captured on the Ketso workspaces.

As well as a dialogue around creative ways to deliver public value - such as health, environmental improvement, regeneration, education, public engagement, etc., delegates were given an opportunity to work in pairs on their own projects, asking - what is working well at the moment, what is under threat, what is not working so well, and developing creative ideas of how to do things differently.

The full set of results from the workshops can be downloaded from the links below. 

The ideas that were highlighted as important by participants (taken from both workshops) are summarised here.

Ketso was also used to stimulate debate in a North West Environment Link event discussing the Big Society.  You can download the report here.

Planning for Sustainability in the South West and Wales in a Time of Budget Cuts

The University of Bristol’s Centre for Public Engagement and the UK Systems Society South West and Wales (UKSS SW2) hosted a training session with the Ketso team, in which participants from across the South West and Wales explored the topic 'planning for sustainability in a time of budget cuts'. There were 23 participants, who came from a variety of backgrounds, enterprise development,engineering, health and engagement, sustainability, environmental policy, transition towns, and included students, academics, and people from NGOs, the public and private sector.  Two exercises were undertaken, one to look at sustainability in the area  and the second to look at how to improve stakeholder engagement in the participants' own projects.

Budget Cut in Portsmouth & A Sustainable Port

In Portsmouth, a social evening followed by a morning of training brought together over 30 participants from organisations as diverse as the Navy, Ministry of Defence, City and County Council, Universities and Involve, which promotes public involvement in the NHS and public health. Portsmouth

The workshops yielded 476 ideas in a three hour workshop about how to promote a Sustainable Port and 229 ideas in an hour workshop around Budget Cuts.

The combined report for both of these workshops is available for download (pdf) here. The full spreadsheets of results from these workshops in excel format are also available to download:

These two events on the 17th & 18th of March, 2010 were supported by the UK Systems Society and the Community of Practice “Making a Difference and Making Things Happen”, and the Ketso team would particularly like to thank Nigel Ward and Christine Welch for their support in organising and running the events.

Sustainable Port - Outcomes

The proportion of ‘existing assets’ was relatively even across the themes (in the themes that were ‘pre-prepared’ and thus discussed at each table). The Navy, the natural harbour and the water-land interface were noted as key existing assets. Several suggestions were made for making more of the land-water interface, including ‘boat-living communities’, ‘hotels on the water’ and even a ‘"Future Portsmouth" ongoing exhibit on a boat’ (this idea garnered a comment ‘Easy to do! Do it now!’). The fact that the port is busy, and enjoys government support and interest were also noted.

There was seen to be considerable scope for more to be made of the historic assets of the Port, in particular with regards to historical tourism. Several existing assets were noted, including events happening on tall ships and the fact that the dockyards are well known. There were several challenges noted, such as the fact that there were many listed buildings and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in the areas. At the same time there were many new ideas around the educational value of the port, with a discussion of the possibility for it to ‘become a major learning centre’ and to ‘release knowledge about maritime’ issues. The possibility of apprenticeships was noted several times, and the idea of a ‘Maritime university’ was mooted.

The theme that had the most coverage was Transport, closely followed by Environmental Care. 16% of the ideas developed by participants were related to transport.

all of these ideas had support from groups of participants:

  • Change of mindset
  • Recruit fundraisers
  • Go green
  • Better use of city assets
  • Effective transport meeting diverse needs
  • Clean, enjoyable place to live/work/visit
  • MOD give up 50% of existing land by 2015
  • Port 20/20 – a vision for Portsmouth
  • Delight
  • Groundswell of local community involvement in future of port
  • New sustainable industry
  • Positive attitude
  • Port is carbon neutral, revenue generating and a major employer.

Budget Cuts

An idea which was noted as important by several participants as a positive aspect of budget cuts was: ‘Cuts down puffed-up empires’. Further positive aspects that were discussed included: that budget cuts provide an ‘opportunity to re-examine processes’ and give  the possibility for ‘improved efficiency’. As can be seen from the graph above, the theme of ‘performance’ had the most ideas clustered around it.  There was a general feeling that there was a possibility for more creativity, and that it was possible to see this challenge as a way to improve services, as long as there was attention paid to people’s opinions, emotions, and the clear priorities of what needs to be done and what is important in service delivery.

Whilst ‘changing practice’ was seen as something that may be a positive outcome from budget cuts, there was discussion around the problem that there is ‘no recognition/understanding of why people are resistant to change’.

Stakeholder engagement was discussed, with a clear emphasis on gathering opinions and ideas from a wide range of people. This theme emerged at each table, and included the concepts: ‘ask the worker on the ground’, ‘get the ‘shopfloor wisdom’, ‘engage the customer’ and ‘involve the public more’. Several possible problems in this area were discussed, however, including: ‘the worker doesn't want to talk to you’, ‘too many opinions’, ‘you might not like the answer’. It was seen as important to have ‘honest, upfront communication’. Involving more people such as staff, stakeholders, ground workers and customers in decision making was seen as likely to give a better overall view of the situation and to enable better decisions to be made.

Equality and Diversity - Work with Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants

GRAMnet (Glasgow University Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network) has used Ketso extensively to bring together practitioners, researchers and refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to explore issues affecting these communities in Scotland.

The team says they have found the toolkit especially useful for exploring sensitive issues, as everyone is given an opportunity to have an input in a non-threatening way.

Ketso was originally developed to enable communication amongst people with mixed languages (Sesotho, Tswana, Zulu, Afrikaans, Xhosa, English) and different levels of literacy. Its tactile tools enable everyone to have put their ideas on the table and to develop shared understanding.

An example of GRAMNet's work is a Community Consultation event, as part of the Everybody In project, a collaboration between Equality Network, BEMIS (Black and Ethnic Minority Infrastructure in Scotland) and GRAMnet. This explored Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender issues for asylum seekers and was about 'engaging the public in research'.  They have been working to create guidance around migration issues with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender networks. This came from a realisation that often a reason for people seeking asylum is persecution due to sexual orientation, which needs to be handled sensitively in the host community.

Rebecca Kay, Professor of Russian Gender Studies, University of Glasgow and a co-founder of GRAMNet commented:
“Ketso really worked well in helping people explore research issues but also to think about how to convert them into action”.

The GRAMNet team have been working with BEMIS to create guidance on ethical research with black and ethnic minority communities. Another workshop brought together Masters students and partners from the policy and NGO sectors to develop collaborative Masters Projects. This is an innovative new project run by GRAMNET to enable research projects in the area of asylum, migration and refugee research to be carried out with partner organisations, but led by Masters students. One participant commented: "I can't believe how much work we got done in just over an hour! I thought that would take three weeks."

Effective Partnerships

Ketso was used to gather input from delegates in a workshop entitled 'Effective Partnerships' at the 2011 Engage Conference held by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement.

Following presentations from two successful partnerships, twenty-five participants from Universities, community groups and existing partnerships explored what makes an effective partnership. Delegates spent thirty minutes working as a group following these presentations to share ideas on what works, and to develop shared top tips.

A report from the workshop can be downloaded here.
The full set of results (216 ideas) can be downloaded here.

Engaging Stakeholders with Business

HGM paints

In a workshop sponsored by HMG Paints in North Manchester, Ketso was used to explore ideas for developing a long-term sustainability vision for North Manchester.

The event was attended by business professionals, academics/researchers and representatives of local organisations, such as North Manchester Partnerships (Economic Development) and Groundwork. The aim was to explore the development trajectories of local businesses and develop ideas for improvement.

Several participants commented that the dialogue exceeded their expectations and challenged them to rethink how their business operates.

 

Running a Good Workshop

Participants in a Methods@Manchester training event brainstormed ideas around 'running a good workshop'. Ketso was used to gather ideas from participants from Universities across the North West and Midlands. 

You can download the ideas here.