During Black History Month 2023, Birmingham City Council’s Public Health division delivered a virtual conference titled ‘Global Communities, Local Challenges, Partnership Solutions’ with a focus on accelerating our work to tackle ethnic health inequalities. Over 30 webinars were delivered throughout October and a playlist of recorded webinars can be found on the Healthy Brum YouTube.
The Birmingham and Lewisham African and Caribbean Health Inequalities Review (BLACHIR) brought home the breadth and depth of health inequalities facing Black African and Caribbean communities. It also carried a reminder of the importance of “addressing health inequalities through a greater understanding and appreciation of, and engagement with, our community groups”.
In addressing health inequalities, how do institutions develop a greater understanding and appreciation of Black African and Caribbean communities? How do they engage with Black African and Caribbean communities and to what end? What are the opportunities for, and threats to, engaging Black African and Caribbean communities? What good practices are emerging and how sustainable are they?
This webinar was hosted by Simeon Moore (CEO, Minds eye Development CIC) and Michael Brown (Director, Minds eye Development CIC), drawing on their experience of facilitating practical engagement between Black African and Caribbean communities and partners in the Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care system.
Time stamps:
• Introduction: 0:00
• Overarching principles of good practice: 3:38
• Presentation objectives: 6:18
• African and Caribbean Communities: 8:18
• Engagement: 10:03
• MED Community Engagement Values: 11:22
• MED Improvement Cycle: 13:56
• BLACHIR Youth Council: 17:26
• Case Studies: 20:54
• Community Engagement Enablers and Benefits: 50:30
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Thank you very much everyone for coming to today’s webinar um I’m really pleased to be joined by Simeon and Michael from Mind’s Eye development and they’re going to be discussing the topic Health inequalities and Community engagement from principles to practice so I’ll pass over to you both thank
You hi guys so I’m Simeon and um Michael I’m not sure if you can you’ll be able to but Michael’s also here um we’re from an organization called Mind eye development and um our basic focus is to support the upward social mobility of young people and families within inner
City of Birmingham um we do this for a number of activities um the biggest one is community engagement and we really look at supporting um the community or even supporting straty and large organizations to engage with the community and to tap into the experiences views and skills of of the
Community um we also do mentoring supporting young people uh and we work across Industries as well so we work across Health Industries and then also we’ve done a lot of work within the creative Industries to support organizations from those Industries to engage with the community um so we’ve
Been commissioned by public health um as engagement partners Community engagement Partners to promote black chare and the community health profiles this has um brought us into new relationships I’d say with the NHS and partners arising from that um it’s given us opportunity to look at what really works when it comes to community
Engagement and then it’s also helped us to refine how we engage with the community and how we use Community engagement as a as a model throughout this throughout this process we’ve heard a number of things from the community working with public health delivering the delivering this work for
Public health um things such as we don’t trust the NHS what’s the point of consultations when Services Ser Services don’t listen to us this is just the ticking box exercise no one ever tells us what comes out of it um and how is this going to impact my life we’ve
Actually been asked that quite a bit throughout our consultations and our listening engagement um and it’s been our role to listen to these views and feed them back to system Partners to help us shape Services um we’ve also it’s also helped us to bring the community together with system
Partners which helps to which is which is what from what we’ve seen it’s helped to build trust develop relationships and to support change in some of those views do you want to go to the next SL M Michael you on mute yeah are the slides showing yeah the first one is so we’ve
Got the right okay it’s just me can’t see sorry it’s gone to the full one now so the the first SL yeah the F the first slide um by the first the second slide uh We’ve we we’ve been looking at some of the overarching principles of good practice
When it comes to community engagement and this has been developed by nice who are the National Institution Institute for Health and Care exec and um we kind of put these up to kind of just I I I’ll just kind of explain how some of this has been applied so in terms of using
Evidence-based approaches to community engagement as mind ey development we’ve been looking at Community we’ve been we’ve been delivering some of this community engagement and building an evidence-based approach ourselves and we’ve kind of seen what really works but for us it’s it’s not just about listening to the community and then
Feeding it back to system Partners it’s we we’ve we’ve kind of this is kind of evolved and it’s really been about listening to the community feeding it back to system Partners but then bringing the system Partners around the table um with the community to start looking how to address these issues
Which which lead which can lead to developing um Services training and other stuff I’ll go straight down to the bottom where it says developing collaborations and Partnerships to meet local needs and pract and local needs and priorities that’s kind of exactly what we was talking about from us just
Listening feeding back then we want to create um create ways in which the system can work with the community to to develop these Services develop their services how does how does their services best meet the needs of the community I’m gonna I’m gonna I’ll do one more ensuring decision-making groups
Yeah yeah I I’ll do one more ensuring decision making groups include members of the local community who reflect the diversity of that Community now to do this we’ve kind of we’re not just to do this we’re not just visiting one group or speaking with one group we’ve been
Speaking and engaging with a number of groups around the community so two two we’ve engaged with two men’s groups women’s groups um we’re even we’re even engaging um we’re planning to do some engagement with a a Somali a Somali Community go on yeah you was you gonna say
Something um so we’re also okay so we’re also um looking to engage with the Somali community and we’re bringing all these voices together to feed into um the NHS and and serve as partners So based on this our objectives are to illustrate our approach our objectives of this presentation is to illustrate
Our approach to community engagement show good practice examples opportunities for Community engagement and offer a flavor of what needs to be in place to achieve effective and sustainable Community engagement so I think I think when we’re really looking at this it’s kind of the it’s what we really want to show is a
Way in which we have developed um we’ve developed a way of working which has been put into a cycle that doesn’t that doesn’t just in involve us listening and feeding back to system partners the community need to know that they’ve being they’re being listened to they need to know that what they’re what
They’re saying and what they’re feeding us is actually making an impact and that that has brought out a load of issues and opportunities that we are moving forward with go all right thanks thank thanks I I um couple of things I would just add to that um and that is to say that
Whilst on the one hand communities can say well we don’t know what happens when we contribute to these processes I think one of the things that we’re experiencing that we’re seeing is that actually even within the NHS even when PE people sit around the table quite
Often they don’t know what’s going on uh next door quite often they’re not sharing their experiences uh and they’re not sharing it internally and they’re not sharing it externally and then what we really want to do is to be able to highlight a number of things that are
Going on within the system that we think are really good practice and not just need to be shared within the system but actually they need to be shared externally as well because it’s all about building uh building trust so that’s that’s really what we want to try
To do but just to just to kick off a bit because of our our role is African and Caribbean communities it’s just worth understanding what that means or what the challenges are for that um and here we go uh can’t being 34 countries and territories and an assortment of
Independent governance and and Sovereign so sovereignties you’ve got Africa 54 uh countries and to be fair we probably all know am is Big um but I thought how big is it in relation to the to to the UK I’m thinking would someone um in Devon if you’re looking at
The UK would someone in Devon identify with someone in Edinburgh and we would probably think not and you’ve got Africa being 125 times larger than the UK so so if you like we’re talking about um the Caribbean uh or people from the Caribbean and people from Africa as if are a
Community but I think realistically they’re not a single community and they’re quite definitely not a single community and as Sim as mentioned you know we we do try to reach out to different communities but the point is here that it when we looking at uh engagement the whole notion of
Intersectionality does need to underpin the approaches that that we take I think this is the first thing for us thinking about um Community who is is the community and and then the next thing was you know we we speak about engagement and you know there are lots of different
Theories and analyses of Engagement which began many years ago with the uh ladder of participation Sher Einstein’s Einstein’s ladder of uh participation and evolved in in in different ways um and you have here this lader Co co-production and there’s a lot that kind of says yeah you know it’s it can
Be coercion it can be engagement it can be co-production uh it can be involvement in setting priorities in identifying skills but you know there’s actually there’s there’s very little that talks about the processes uh for achieving this yep that’s what it is but little that talks about the actual processes for achieving engagement
Uh sorry I think I’m right and what I wanted to do all right we have uh sorry that’s better my my phone is giving Echo so so we have uh in in terms of how we work I think we’re evolving set of values uh and I I’m I’m saying evolving
Because this is where we are now but over the next week or month or or or or so we may have we have may have more and I don’t think that these values are going to be particularly foreign or alien to anyone but in terms of accessibility you know I mean that’s
About time and place uh but it’s also things like child care language travel expenses you know there’s a lot that goes in there accountability is what do we do with this information how do we feedback uh to to people uh Equity you know it’s about making these P these processes Fair it’s
About um treating people as equals in these processes and I know that there are people on here uh who are from the HS but you know often when we hear about the professionals and the community um you know some people in the community think well are you’re suggesting that if
You’re in the community you can’t be a professional so there’s this notion of equity purpose is important and and that is to say that the engagement processes need to be purposeful not just ticking a box but uh purposeful and there need to be you know in terms of that purpose it
Needs to be a purpose that engages all parties people need to be treated with respect and with sensitivity uh and there these processes should be uh should be transparent so that we don’t hear yes there was Community engagement we did it last week we didn’t tell anybody about it um
Because that really works against this last one which is about building trust and so these these are a set of values that we I don’t know if we try to put them in or we’ve identified if you like after after the fact that uh are apparent in how we work but equally and
More importantly they’re apparent in some of the good practices that we have begun to see um coming from uh or through working with our our partners uh in the IC and in um in in public health Simon made reference to a cycle and there are lots of process Improvement Cycles uh and
Stuff like that and we we really wanted to think what does it look like for us right um and how do we apply that and so we’ve borrowed from uh some discussions on co-production discussions that we involved in earlier on this year uh around cultural intelligence and the
Thing about that is it began with the whole process began with curiosity this is to say somebody somebody needs to be asking a question yeah um somebody needs to be curious enough to ask a question uh and to look at identifying a problem it’s not enough to just identify a problem because quite
Often that can be F that can focus on symptoms rather than root causes so understanding the problem and then thinking okay so what are the kind of solutions which isn’t necessarily you know what do we always do you always do what you’ve always done etc etc um but
Scoping the Sol scoping the solution and think about implementation planning how are we going to go about uh planning to deliver that and to test the solution and then even when we’re testing the solution we have to have some processes in place uh to enable us to learn learn
From those tests learn from those pilot situations uh and then look at standardizing that so that those processes can be rolled out uh more widely and again to to continue learning and the thing about this is that where any of these what do you call them they’re not
Quadrants that’s four isn’t it slices segments any of them all of them in all of them there is the capacity for for engaging with communities yeah and sometimes we hear oh we’re not ready to to do the engagement yet and I’m saying well why not how how far do you need to
Be you know before you start Community engagement and what does that mean for the quality of that community engagement so we see the opportunities for Community engagement to be to to run throughout all of this uh and the point that we stress that we repeat is that Community engagement isn’t an event
Community engagement is a way of working and that’s really what we want to um that’s really what we want to illustrate and one of the things that uh that we should have said at the beginning is that we’re hoping to just get we’re H to go through the
Presentation probably in half an hour or so and to leave some time afterwards for uh for for questions for discussions so you know you make a note pop them in the chat um and we’ll come we pick them up uh later in the presentation Simon so part of the part of the project
Um black chair project that we are Community engagement partners for we developed a youth Council and the youth Council was really developed to um give young people a voice to help shape services so initially that looked like us having our listening do delivering our listening activities um feeding that
Back to the youth Council so the youth council could develop an informed perspective on on on what they’ve heard and and what they’ve been involved in which will then be which is then fed back to um which is then fed back to system partners and and NHS um but this
Has evolved quite some quite a lot in all fairness um and the youth counil have been involved in many things such as so as well as discussions with ourselves on certain issues there’s been discussions with senior Partners who are involved in decision making um they’ve been involved in co-production so they
Was involved in co-production around cultural intelligence with um the director of Public Health Justin V and other assistant Partners they’ve also there was they also supported the appointment of independent of an independent chair for the black chair implementation board and then we’ve also had them part of some of our discussions
So um which we I think we’re we’re going to speak about anyway we’ll speak about that anyway so we’ve also had them in part of our discussions which has made a very big impact in terms of allowing some of our youth council members to engage and tell and speak to the
Community even even adults of the community um and and sharing their voice and opinions which has it it has had big impact in terms of changing the way some people from the community think um as as well as helping to feed back into system Partners so the youth the youth Council
Has kind of is really evolved and now we’re looking at the we’re looking at the youth Council really deciding on the direction that they want to go in um and supporting them to do that so as well as just being a vehicle to feed back an inform perspective there’s been many
Opportunities that have been created for the young people within the youth Council to get involved and be around the decision- making table um and we hope for that to continue yeah I it it it was always important to us that when it came to young people that no matter how much we
Might aspire to be young people ourselves uh but it was always important to us that it was a young people should be at the table themselves yeah that they should you know they should be able to hear what other young people are saying and then bring their perspectives
To it uh and not not risk having a a distorted perspective applied to their thoughts and you know many young people would say well nobody listens to us uh and probably a lot more would say you know we’re never invited we’re never actually at the table with with these
Decision makers so it’s been a real opportunity for us to to introduce young people to to that and for us to test this model uh of of of working um but now I just want to introduce uh it’s a bit of a case stud St there are a number of case studies
That we’ll share with you um and and this one is well I mean the person behind is K the mystery who uh has has since left this or organization but cancer cancer partnership Improvement manager and she had a number of objectives that she wanted to deliver
And I just want to walk you through the process that she went through and if you like how communities were involved in that how engagement actually featured in this process yeah and it began with you know this notion I I said about curiosity and the Caribbean Community
Health profile and data in that in that Health profile that got count thinking hm is this the case what are we doing about it what could we be doing about it um and if you like Bas based B on that and not having the answers uh herself uh
And wanting to engage with Community what she then did so sorry so these these were some of the findings from that uh Community Health profile but what what she did was she approached the uh Legacy Center of Excellence which those in Birmingham will be uh aware of
It’s I think it’s pass itself as the largest uh Black Run cultural creative venue in the UK I think if anyone’s here from the Legacy you can correct me um so so she spoke with the Legacy uh center of excellence and she commissioned them to undertake some Market testing essentially to go
Out and find out from communities from the African and Caribbean Community what what their concerns were and if there was an appetite from from the community to do something in relation to to promoting awareness of of of cancer of resources available to support and and that came back saying
Yes and arising out of that through another series of community engagement processes a a one- day event was organized under the title let’s get together and and feel all right and again the design of that event uh was uh or in the design of that Community engage engagement featured quite heavily
And the event itself took place at the community venue being the Legacy uh Center um here here here in Birmingham now I mean the event itself was very well attended uh and not just was it well attended it was well attended by by if you like the target group but equally
There was good representation there from across the across the NHS different system providers coming coming out into the community and it wasn’t all about them providing services to the community a lot of it was about building the relationship understanding the needs of the target group establishing trust ra raising awareness through those
Conversations just this whole point about coming out to engage with the community and not always if you like expecting communities to engage with the system this is yeah but how do the system engage with communities and so this is what this event was able to do and the event there
Was also an evaluation then undertaken of the event to record The Learning and I I really wanted to to to illustrate this as as a good practice because it began with someone just asking herself a question yep there was that Curiosity to Kickstart it there was a degree of humility I think
In accepting that in this case she knew what she didn’t know and often that’s not the case often people don’t necessarily know what they don’t know but they’re not they don’t have the human humility to then go out and find and get answers to those to those
Questions and that’s what she was able to do and and she used Community Resources including Community radio um uh Community networks to promote the the event um she used an existing platform which was the black pound day to if you like to piggy back on that and I think
That it was a really good example of of working with with communities and the difference that working with communities can make S yeah so this was another um act a listening event that we had um for me which was very impactful and this was what I was speaking about earlier
Because we had one of our youth council members Addie as part of um the panel so this is kind of like it was kind of like a talk show style um which we called take note and this was on um health literacy so Addy who’s part of our youth
Council he’s a third year medical student as well as a a poet a very talented poet and he came on and sat down and we had a discussion around health literacy which kind of spiraled off into and covered a range of different subjects but it was really about hearing the voices from people
From the community to find out what they knew about health literacy um um some of the things that want that they want to see changes some of the changes that they wanted to make and um I think if if if we’re looking at building relationships this this is definitely
One of the best ways um of building relationships with the community for Service Partners because it’s it even just with Addy he’s he’s is a medical student but the community actually listen to him and people are still asking about him now so there was a number of things that came out of this
Came out of this event um the biggest one for me the biggest one for me was around um there’s been a men’s group that I’ve that we’ve been engaging with around some of these issues and they they they they started off very negative towards the NHS service users like it
Was it was hard work engaging with the engaging with the lads around around some of these issues because they was just Zero Tolerance they didn’t want nothing to do with the health services it was there was it was just there was just against the NHS and the house CES
Totally that was their views um a few of them actually attended this event and Addy was there and he was giving he was talking about his experience as a medical student and a question was a question was asked about the relationship between the community and
Um the NHS and Addy just came up and just says look guys you got to start trusting the NHS start building a relationship start having conversations with your GP and um and and develop that trust because they they are here to help you now after the event um the person
Who was most volatile from that men’s group towards the NHS came to me and says you know what I kind of trust the NHS now and for me that was a big thing because there was there was a lot of fight from that person in particular and
Just from that conversation he could it kind of opened his eyes and and allowed him to see oh maybe they’re not so bad maybe if we start having conversations with the NHS then things can things can change another thing that came out of it came out of the conversation was around
Foods so there was um we had we had a few nutritionists from the community that came in and said why why isn’t it why doesn’t the NHS offer us and let us know what minerals and things that help us with illnesses come from this food
And he started to reel out a lot of different foods and what comes from them that can help with ill help with illnesses um Addy who was a junior junior medical student he started to then say Oh okay he started to recognize what medications um give you the same thing
That these Foods were given and then it was like so why isn’t the NHS why can’t the NHS kind of say okay here’s this medication but see this nutritionist as well these are the foods that you should be eating and really have something there that’s um that’s something in
Place that’s substantial that can support people getting Foods having their medicines from Foods as well as medication because in the black community it they’re really big on food and and the right Foods herbs and things like that vegetables that you can that can help with your health so that was
One thing that came out of it we took it we took it a step further and then met with so we met with social prescribing and then we met with public health and food Strate food strateg food strategy so we had we had a meet with them and
Started to speak to them around these ideas and then we then fed it back to the Comm we then fed it back to the community to say this this might be plausible so we might be able to make something like this now make something like this happen in the sense of social
Prescribing and when our our community go to the doctors as well as getting medication they can say okay then see this nutritionist these are the foods that you should be taking and that’s something that’s in the pipeline that’s being developed now now feeding that back to the community
And back to the people that were having these views the response that I got was oh they’re really listening so this is helping to build relationships it’s helping to build a lot of a lot of trust because when people believe that they’re being heard and and that’s without anything really happening just us
Bringing people to the table to say okay then can we do something can something happen around this and just the fact that the people that are me that were speaking about this could hear and listen that are something could happen from it it was like a it was like it
Like a win and nothing has really happened yet so I think just by letting the community know that they’re being listened to and what they’re saying um service providers are acting on it has a massive impact in terms of developing the trust and building the building the building the
Relationship along with within this event we also um had a we also did a quiz which was really kind of an imaginative way to of finding out what the community knew about heal literacy so we did we did we did a quiz online quiz made everyone take it we got over
100 just over a hundred people to fill it out and some very very interesting data came out which we was able to then feed back into public health as um as in as intelligence and what I one of the things that came came out of that um Public House was really surprised that
Only 20% or only 20% or something like that people knew how much exercise they should do a day as an adult and public health were really surprised about that because they put out loads of information or over the last year or so they put out loads of information about
Um health literacy about how healthy eating and exercising so they was quite surprised that the community was unaware of this now I think that gave um Public Health the opportunity to kind of see that we’ve been we’ve we’ve had we put so much resources into putting all this
Information out but it’s not reaching the community we need to we need a different strategy um so just that small little quiz which which was really a bit of fun kind of supported um Public Health to really look and say look we’ve been doing this for a year we put x
Amount of resources into getting this information out there and the people are still not getting it so these are the things that can come out just from small engagement with the with the community do you want to add anything Michel yeah I mean if it really is that
Last point and I think there’s another point which is about um Community engagement from a community perspective itive doesn’t have to begin if you like only when the community is invited to uh to to engage with system Partners so the discussions on food that came out of the
That arose from the discussion initially on health literacy that that enabled us to initiate a process of Engagement with uh with with providers with with the system right and and similarly those people who engaged who who took part in in the quiz they probably thinking yeah we
We’re taking part in the quiz we’ve got an opportunity to win £25 50 or or or whatever it was but again it’s a it was a simple way of them contributing to and engaging in policy so you know it it really is about demonstrating I think
How um some of it is how easy it can be some of it maybe maybe not sim yeah so um this here is another event that we had the opportunity to get involved in um and this actually came from the event at the Legacy so at the Legacy again there was loads of
Engagement happening at the event at the Legacy and I spoke with this woman A lady called Miss culture Jam lovely lady um so I had a brief conversation with her at in in the event and maybe a few months a month or two later she she got
In contact with me to say Simeon I’m having this event I want to do something just like um what was going on at the Legacy but she wanted to do it for her chaplaincy um and people who attend her chapy so we was able to support her with
That with with this event I introduced her to on who Dr on who is the um chair of the IC task force for blackair and an kind of introduced the event and and and Miss culture Jam to the system system Partners we we was then able to invite
Like diabetes um people from testicular Council cancer um quite with and a few other organizations to attend the event who also had stalls um and this was for us person on a personal not this was really engaging because um a lot of people came to speak to us we was able
To take down people’s details who wanted to be involved more who wanted to continue the conversation and as we were speaking about some of the other projects that we are were supporting around this um it just it just gave the opportunity for more people from the
Community to hear about it but then also to get involved um Al also an Dr an she met with um someone from the Birmingham hospice at a similar event the week before and she was able to invite them who to to come along and they came along
And had a stall as well so these kind of events are really big opportunities for system Partners to really engage with the community to get to get in front of community and really really speak and then even with the even with the one at the Legacy even with the event at the
Legacy there was people coming to have their blood pressure checked so you didn’t have to go to the doctors to get your blood pressure checked people came to get their blood pressure checked and that was really a big one because I’ve seen quite a few people really
Encouraged by being able to go to their local community spaces to get things done like your blood pressure checks speak to healthcare advisors um so it’s really these these events are really beginning to make an impact and get the community more involved in these discussions I think I mean there’s
Another Point here as well which is that uh and it’s it’s it’s really about uh on Dr Aon and the fact that she went to an event on the Saturday prior to this particular event uh and that’s where she met met people including the representative from Birmingham hos
Uh and so not only did she invite them or tell them about this particular Windrush event but she also saw the value of engaging them in the blacker uh ICS Task Force and and so now they they’ve joined the task force and it’s not just that that widens or increases
Community engagement but it also brings in a unique and specialist knowledge uh a ag aging aging end of Life Care particular as it impacts on African and Caribbean uh communities and if you’re like that may not have transpired had only you not simply attended an event such as this this one
Here and I think for us it was it was a missed opportunity this wind Rush Event it was a missed opportunity for so many assistant Partners who could have come out spared an opportunity on a Saturday yeah uh met with met with the community in terms of potential service users as well as
Other agencies some of them Illustrated here who could have been or who could yet become partners and collaborators in their service delivery yeah I I just want to also say like this when it comes to community engagement we’ve really found that it’s not just about listening to what people
Are saying and feeding it back it’s it’s about developing that relationship um and building the trust um and that’s really important for us in in within this process the last the last one we want to Ill illustrate just for this section is is around maternity and again you know
It begins with some startling data uh around our infant mortality around black women’s experiences uh and and outcomes uh maternity outcomes for for black women and I guess many of you will be aware of them I’m not going to go in in into them but we wanted to get some
Upto-date uh intelligence about what was going on here in Birmingham um and so we undertook a whole series of listing events so we did 11 listing events and we engaged some you know more more than 70 African and Caribbean uh women we produced a report of that event and we
And and and we’ fed that report into a committee that has just been established which is the infant mortality action uh committee which sits as as part of the I IC now what what Dan is doing just there is it’s taking it’s taking the voices for uh from the
Community and Fe feed them into the system right um but the point is that that that isn’t it’s not enough you know it’s it’s not enough that we that we simply do that because as I was illustrating earlier for us uh engagement goes throughout processes
It’s not just an event it’s a it’s a word working and so we have been we were invited to join the act action committee uh and we facilitated some or enabled some wider engagement some wider Community engagement in that uh infant mortality action committee the that that committee has developed a work plan
Which is split into three sections and one element of it looks at um a preconception phase and I want to bring that up because this is a really good example of of co-production now because that that Community wants to develop an educational resource and so this is a resource that
Has been developed interactively through co-production yeah um so the the document is on a shared drive right so members of that committee can all all feed into them I’ve been able to take that out and speak with people in the community hear what they’ve got to say and feed
That into to to this process and it really is uh a a a process of a good illustration of of of co-production and it’s not even just about what is produced within this document because I know last week I was I was feeling something back and even I
Was questioning whether the points that were being raised were based on if like P you know perception or they were in reality correct and and and the response was extremely encouraging because the response says well it doesn’t matter if it’s perceptional or or or if it’s correct because if it’s what people
Believe that’s what we need to address now again the point is if people are not voicing uh their concerns if if people not saying this is what they they believe then they’re not feeding into these processes and so it was a really good example of how to my mind of how
Open and inviting system Partners were for engaging with the community uh and and hearing and encouraging the community voice and representing and reflecting the community voice in in this document and then the next stage is also furthering this notion of of community engagement we spoke about them having a work plan
What does the community think of the work plan that they’ve got even if the community agrees how does the community then want to be engaged and we have we have a conference event coming up on Thursday this week at which again the system Partners will come they will
Present they will invite feedback on their work plan and they will also present opportunities for more detailed Roundtable discussion co-production disc discussion to begin to inform how they can move forward with uh you in in terms of delivery on some of their plans um Sim I’m going to suggest that we pause
Here um and see if there are any questions yeah if not I’ll just keep going I I can’t see the chat so I don’t know I haven’t there there’s not not is it no no questions in the chat at the moment but please do feel free to raise your hand if that’s easier
Angela hi Michael thank you and thank you for the import I was just curious um given the size of Birmingham I know you kind of reflected the different communities in terms of the African Community and the Caribbean Community but Birmingham has that kind of reflection also and I just wondered
How in terms of that engagement you’re able to do that Citywide um because I know you referen the legacy center and some of the activity that was linked to the legacy center but clearly it’s a City and trying to connect him with all the communities across that city is is a
Challenge and I just wondered how you were managing that in all honesty uh Andel I I mean SIM can chip in here but I’ll just say we’re not I mean we have we have finite resourcing uh and this is something we’ll come to later so we are not truly
Able to to get across the whole city so you know we have been out and we’ve reached out into you know into West Birmingham into into into Quinton into into North Birmingham to uh City Center or in in the city of Birmingham um but also we do use social media so social
Media does provide us an opportunity to widen widen the reach but in ter but in terms of physically being able to go out and make those connections it is not it it’s it’s not a question of not wanting to it’s just it’s about our own resourcing anything to add Sim yeah um
Just that um so a lot of the a lot of the activities that we have we have been involved in people are coming from different areas so they’re not just necessarily coming from one area um just for example the one of the men’s groups that we we’ve been working closely with
Um they’re men from across the city from different areas I don’t think probably like two of them are from the same area but we’ve got people from down into hudg Hill all the way to acot Green so it kind of it’s kind of like reaching out to people reaching out to individuals and
Bringing them together and then hopefully encouraging them to share it to share it with their family with their friends and then as as Michael was saying so we use social media quite a lot and we have we we have started conversations through social media which then are carried into our actual imp P
Inperson event so I think social media is a powerful tool and um like the conversation that we showed we showed that we had with our our one of the members of our youth Council that was filmed and is available on YouTube so people can put it on YouTube we’ll Al
We’ll also be doing we’ll also be going into now doing some live streaming which we’ve done before um but now we’re going to do live streaming with a focus on community engagement now as well as having a physical audience live streaming some of those conversations um will enable The Wider
Community to get involved have their say and and and and they’ll do that by leaving comments um and having the conversation within the chat and the comments which are which are also moderated we have we have moderators that are moderating just to ensure the safety people it’s a safe space for
People to share their views so social media is a very powerful tool and and that’s kind of where we’re widening our reach right now based on our re based on our resources I think the point you make about tapping into networks is is is it is an important one because there is
Another Network that we tap into as one of the groups that we go to in fact a couple of others so so we tap into for example the uh Council of black majority churches and so its membership um is is is actually not even just Birmingham it goes into Sandwell uh
As well and and maybe a bit a bit more there’s another group that we tap into and its membership extends into the um in into the black country so it is fair to say that some of the networks that we have are you they they have the wider
Coverage um and we are tapping into those it’s more about our own ability to to physically go into um a whole range of communities across Birmingham we just don’t have that capacity I mean I just just one more when we when we had the event the the discussion at the Legacy I
Mean someone came all the way from wolver Hampton who who had never met us personally but they’d heard about it through social media came down because they followed the work that we do um and they came down to get involved in the conversation we’ve also had discussions where someone came from Notting them
Because they seen the conversation so again so social media has a very power is powerful in terms of pushing things out there and bringing people to us if we can’t go to them then sometimes they can come to us thank you so thank thank thanks for that question Angela I I’ve just seen
The time and so um a if there are any questions please do put them in the chat because what we can’t answer in the session we can always address afterwards I think Eloise will as has confirmed that there is a mechanism for you to be able to access
Uh responses after this but I wanted to just very briefly um reflect on what we think are some of the enablers for Effective and sustainable uh Community engagement so some of it we’ve already mentioned around curiosity visit having a vision uh uh the humility to go out and ask ask
Questions U resilience because if I say it’s not easy well it isn’t but having said that it gets easier and easier and easier and that’s because the relationships or the relationships start to develop yeah uh and so therefore it becomes easier because people know people know who to
Speak to abandoning Comfort zones and acknowledging we have to do something different particularly in terms of working outside the 9 to5 um uh and going to events outside res resources an investment yes that that’s important accountability to say what came out with what are you doing with that in
Information how are you following through afterwards and being able to demonstrate there’s some follow follow through and an organizational culture that is conducive to uh Community engagement that actually give staff the time and support to go out and engage with community and From community’s perspective again there are
Enablers uh and you can flip it over and you can see what the constraints might be as well but having trust yeah uh having an understanding of the issue uh for organizations having The credibility that recognition of being a trusted voice within the community to go out and do it and operational
Capacity the the the networks that bring enable communication and distribution and you know this notion about imagination we can’t always be doing the same thing that we’ve always we’ve always done so these are some of the enablers that I think we have we’ve mapped and I’m not going to
Say that this is all us we’re not the only ones I mean we’re yeah there are other community engagement partners and so we’re sort of drawing on that wider ex experience and I think you know what’s it All For You know what are the benefits uh and it you know it really
Starts at the beginning uh you know the slide about um you know one Community yeah and one size doesn’t build doesn’t fit all you know we have to recognize uh and respect uh intersectionality um it’s about building trust and you know it is so it’s it’s
It’s in our faces Prett pretty much all the time yeah um and it was there before we had the report from the race disparity unit you know the fact that there are issues relating to to to to trust uh uh but you know you can access Community assets and when we think about
Community assets there’s so many of them trusted voices skills knowledge resources networks communication channels reach so that there so many uh of them and you know further benefits it’s about conveying ownership right it’s about these Services being more relevant and meaningful and being able to measure uh and monitor how those
Services are are performing in ways that not just make sense to institutions but also make sense uh out in the communities building social capital and peer support networks has already been demonstrated as being a as as making a valuable contribution to health and well-being yeah and improving learning
Uh and ultimately working to reduce um Health inequalities so you know that there are real benefits here for everyone in getting it right and from our perspective we would say there is a lot of good practice uh that is there showing how just just demonstrating it is it is
I wouldn’t say it’s easy to get it right but it is definitely not difficult to get it right um and it applies to institutional partners and it also applies to communities and I think our final message is to communities and you know I think it’s appropriate to sign
Off with a quote from uh AK but ad AO um and here was at an event I was that a couple of weeks ago uh and in his in his in his speech he made this comment it’s your space take possession of it and that really kind of
Hit home with me because it says to says to us as communities yeah there is that space for us we need to take possession of it and not necessarily sit uh and wait to be invited yeah bro I let me add because this for this just for the system partner
Um and people working within the services like if you really want to change the way people think or the way Service Partners and organizations have seen Community engagement is very important like it it literally I’ve seen it happen in person it changes the way people think