Partnerships for social change

New Zealand is groaning under the burden of its social ills, but Associate Professor Pat Shannon (Department of Social Work and Community Development) says it's become abundantly clear the answer does not lie with agendas and solutions imposed by bureaucrats in Wellington.

Shannon and Dr Peter Walker, members of the department's Community Action Research Team (CART), have pooled their considerable community work experience to find a better way of brokering social change through partnerships with the community: partnerships between equals, as opposed to the current government modus operandi which, Walker says, is typically "a partnership between a sardine and a shark".

"There's an unspoken assumption that power stays with the government. Consultation seems to mean: ‘We've got this good idea. Here's how it's going to work.' The community is told, not asked."

"Asking the community" is at the heart of the model for deliberative governance CART is constantly refining in the light of the community initiatives its members are involved with.

Says Shannon: "You have to engage all the stakeholders at an early stage to work out common objectives. There's no way of short-circuiting the process."

CART's current project with CCS Disability Action, due to culminate in late 2007 in a "visioning exercise" with the organisation's service users, is a case in point. Considerable effort is going into engaging the most high-needs clients.

The researchers act not as experts, but as facilitators, and a source of knowledge and skills. Often they become partners themselves.

"We're like smugglers," says Walker. "We get them through the border, help them negotiate the tricky territory of funding and government policy."

Sympathetic local bodies make great allies, as happened with a Timaru Safer Community initiative. And local co-operation among the Dunedin Community Law Centre, Ngäi Tahu and three runaka spawned a working partnership now being promoted as a model for Treaty-based law centres nationwide.

Instead of competing for funding, the Ngäi Tahu Mäori Law Centre and the Dunedin Community Law Centre share resources.

Shannon says the community activities have been "a series of experiments developing a body of knowledge which form the beginnings of a strategic model for initiating bottom-up social change".

As a research-based "how to" guide, the emerging model appears to be a world first.

It's theory with its feet firmly planted in the real world. "We're not working with high falutin' ideas," says Walker. "We're formulating a process which is practical, of real benefit to the community. It's got to work."

FUNDING
University of Otago Division of Humanities
esearch Grant