What’s Total Craigroyston ever done for this community? Well, quite a lot, actually …
Total Craigroyston, the council-led agency formed to tackle deep-rooted children and family problems in North Edinburgh, wound up last week with a ‘Checking Out’ event at Pilton Youth & Children’s Project.
Initiated by The Edinburgh Partnership to tackle social exclusion, Total Craigroyston adopted a partnership approach and targeted considerable resources to address social and educational problems in Muirhouse, Pennywell and West Pilton.
The project ran for four years and was seen as a model for the new Localities working across the city. But now, with the cash-strapped city council faced with reduced resources and budget constraints, the Total Craigroyston model won’t be replicated across Edinburgh. Instead, some elements of the local project will be ‘mainstreamed’ into council services (see newsletter) , some may be adopted by individual Localities while other initiatives will be discontinued.
Staff, who were seconded to the project with dedicated Total Craigroyston working hours, will be redeployed and return to other duties and project manager Christine Mackay has chosen to take early severance.
Speaking at Total Craigroyston’s final event in Pilton Youth & Children’s Project last week, project manager and driving force Christine Mackay said that much of Total Craigroyston’s work ‘isn’t new or rocket science’ but genuine partnership working, community-backed initiatives and seeing issues through to the end has brought about improvements in the area that can be consolidated and built upon.
She said: “We need to be talking to and consulting with local people all the time – and listen, listen, listen! Complex problems sometimes require complex solutions and adopting different approaches can make a difference in different communities, but it’s clear that a change in culture – creating a sense of shared endeavour with common goals – is making a difference here. There is lots of good practice that we can build on: embed that and we should be able to move on.”
See Christine’s presentation (below)
Total Craigroyston has operated through seven core themes which came about through community consultations at the start of the project
- A Place to Belong
- A Place to Thrive
- A Place You Know
- A Place to Bring Up A Family
- A Safe Place
- A Place to Learn
- A Place to Live
and attendees broke into groups to discuss progress made, lessons learned and elements they think should be taken forward as the city moves into new Locality structures.
Current North Neighbourhood Partnership manager Peter Strong (above) will see his role – and geographical area – expanded as he takes over the North West Locality as part of the city’s Transformation Programme. It promises to be a challenging role.
Item_7.2___The_CLS_Project___Locality_Transformation_Plan___Presentation
Peter gave the meeting a brief insight into how the new community planning arrangements will work, but stressed that plans are still at an early stage and much is still to be agreed. No doubt there will be much more to say about Localities in the weeks ahead, but for now it’s farewell to Total Craigroyston: time alone will tell if the initiative has had a lasting impact.
24
0
20
