Concerned about the causes of urban decline in England the Government recently set out practical solutions to breathe new life into urban neighbourhoods. Poverty exists in dispersed local neighbourhoods and estates and those areas suffering the greater deprivation often have the worst statistics. For example, they are likely to have 25% more people with poor basic skills and 30% more people with health problems than the rest of society. The mortality rates are higher and residents are likely to suffer more crime and violence. This high level of deprivation can have an effect on people’s confidence social political processes and their own ability to influence change.

Small neighbourhoods with high levels of deprivation can be highlighted by a range of social indicators. Specific funding will then be used to close the gap between those neighbourhoods and the rest, and to ensure that no neighbourhood is operating below a minimum level. A key feature of this renaissance is the local community’s ability to engage in the regeneration and renewal processes. Without the necessary skills local people may not feel part of the renewal processes that underpin urban renaissance, and their views may not get adequate expression. The Government is concerned that without this essential capacity building it will not be possible to achieve its aim of urban renaissance.

The part that providers of basic skills can play in the renaissance is crucial. There is a need to strengthen the skills needed to increase public participation in local democratic processes. Without the development of community leaders and activists at grass roots level it is possible that only partial change to neighbourhoods can be achieved.

This briefing paper looks at some of the challenges facing the providers as they work to bring about regeneration and renewal. It will look at some possibilities that are already emerging and offer some possible solutions for the future.

New Ways of Looking at Old Problems

If society has, up to now, failed large sections of our communities, a purely institutional approach to the delivery of basic skills is no longer seen as the only solution. Basic skills providers now need to get their hands dirty in the rubble of renewal. As decaying environments are reduced back to their basic elements and social rebuilding commences, basic skills providers could be working alongside local people to deliver programmes that will not only engage them but also encourage them to raise aspirations in their neighbourhood.

The national Adult Basic Skills Strategy intends that by the year 2004 the number of adults who have difficulty with literacy and numeracy at specific levels will be reduced by 750,000. This new national basic skills strategy clearly identifies priority groups in our society who are in need of support. These include those who live in disadvantaged communities who are often seen as having the greatest basic skills need. For example it has been estimated that 1.7 million adults with literacy problems live in 10% of the most deprived wards in England. By linking regeneration programmes with area based strategies the government hopes to break this cycle of neighbourhood deprivation and to build community capacity. There are also clear links between poor basic skills and financial exclusion and the Government’s Financial Advisory Group is recommending new approaches to enable adults to improve their financial literacy skills.

Basic Skills providers have, up to now, often been reluctant to carry out development work that leads to community capacity building and, at the same time, providers in the community and voluntary sector have often lacked the skills and expertise to directly deliver basic skills programmes. Recent initiatives have encouraged a wider range of agencies to develop these essential skills and basic skills support is now taking place in a variety of innovative and dynamic environments. The voluntary and community sectors are now seen as having a key role to play supported by the longer standing adult basic skills services.

Implications of Working in The Community

Terms like ‘community’ and ‘outreach’ have become almost irrevocably associated with the concept of disadvantage. This has a number of consequences (e.g. stereotyping of areas or social groups) but, at the same time, is unlocking a strong policy drive for change. The establishment of inter-agency partnerships and co-operative networks is a strong theme in current social and educational policy. They are seen as crucial elements of any work in the community and as being vital to its effectiveness.

In order to be effective in any community it would seem that there are a number of key processes which local agencies could usefully work through. These include:

• Identification of target neighbourhoods and groups on the basis of reliable data
• Pooling local, reliable information about the variety of activity needed, and already in place
• Working through relationships between relevant agencies in the same areas and via existing local groups
• Making face to face contact with people in the target groups and communities and engaging them in a process of identifying their learning interests and basic skills needs
• Negotiating learning activities with target groups
• Supporting them through the learning process
• Seeing the voluntary/community sector as a key site of learning in its own right, rather than as a source of potential further education students.

The identification and development of relationships with community stakeholders is essential. Whilst, in many cases, such stakeholders (which will include community and religious leaders, head teachers, health visitors, and employers) will be able to reflect local needs – in other cases they may themselves be acting as gatekeepers and barriers to real progress.

The recruitment of local people as learning champions or ‘signposters’ may also be critical to the success of community development. The use of volunteers in basic skills provision is well known. There is now an opportunity to develop basic skills support amongst frontline staff in the community, to develop community learning advocates whose role is to promote learning in the community and a robust volunteer network to provide one-to-one support for those with literacy and numeracy needs.

Planned Ways Forward

In the context of the national strategy, regional and sub-regional plans etc, it should now be possible to set realistic targets for improving the level of basic skills throughout a community. These targets need to be achievable and reflect improvement across a broad set of activities.

Some of these activities will relate to strengthening the role of the voluntary and community sector. Some will relate to strengthening the basic skills of those who are expected to contribute to local decision-making.

Following the target setting the partners will be clear about the job to be done and how it is to be achieved. Action planning can then include the need for improvements, what resources are required, timescales and responsibility for delivery – with a progress review system which clearly evidences progress to date and explores the reasons for lack of progress.

In these various ways a well-planned, and well resources set of basic skills developments can make a major contribution to Urban Renaissance. Not only is there a broad awareness that without the support of local people there will be no renaissance, there is also an awareness that many people in local communities lack the basic skills in literacy, numeracy and ICT to fully participate in the regeneration and renewal processes necessary to bring about lasting social changes.

The developments already underway in Birmingham demonstrate that there is strong evidence that basic skills can provide support for the involvement of local people in regeneration programmes; capacity building in the voluntary sector; training at a community level; involvement in local democratic processes etc. The Government’s drives for neighbourhood renewal and urban renaissance provide new vehicles to carry this work forward.