Summary
As COVID-19 limited the ability for Community Councils to function, work has been ongoing to assess the digital capacity of members, provide support and training where necessary, and implement initiatives to allow citizen voices to still be represented.
Making A Difference
The establishment of the Community Council Social Recovery Group has already facilitated the representation of citizens who were unable to participate in digital spaces. More detail regarding Performance Indicator links can be found in the Performance section.
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically impacted the functioning of Community Councils, with their standard model of operation being untenable due to lockdowns, social distancing, and reduced capacity venues. A number of Community Councils continued to meet remotely, but by Jan 2021 (10 months after the first lockdown was announced) this was still only around 15 of the 77 which were active prior to the pandemic.
In order to ensure the views of citizens were still able to be represented, it was proposed that the Council engage with Community Councils to implement digitisation – which would include the facilitation of advice, training, capacity building, encouragement of collaborative working, peer support, and digital skills best practices.
The initial phase of digitisation work was an audit of the current level of digital capacity across the Community Councils. A simple survey was circulated to 700 community council members, which asked a few questions regarding the participants’: access to devices and internet connection, familiarity with online meeting platforms, appetite for training, and need for additional support to participate if meetings were moved online.
The survey could be completed either online or by mail (with a Freepost envelope provided), and 281 responses were received. The main findings were:
- 95% of all active CCs responded;
- 68.4% of respondents were aged 55+/48.8% were 65+;
- 86.5% of respondents had access to a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone that could connect to the internet;
- 47.3% of respondents had previously used Microsoft (MS) Teams;
- 60.1% felt confident of being able to fully participate in an online meeting using MS Teams;
- 82 respondents stated they would like to participate in an online tutorial / training exercise on MS Teams, although 33 expressed a requirement for additional support.
The responses received helped identify where in the City enhanced support and guidance might be offered for Glasgow’s Community Councils to share and participate on public digital platforms e.g. Microsoft Teams, ZOOM.
A report summarising the survey and its findings (publicly available here) was presented to the City Administration committee on 28th Jan 2021, who agreed the request to implement an initial training and capacity building programme for Community Council members.
Concurrently to the discussion surrounding building digital capacity in Community Councils, a proposal was submitted to the Wellbeing, Empowerment, Community and Citizen Engagement (WECCE) City Policy Committee to establish a City-wide and/or Sector-wide Community Council Social Recovery Group (CCSRG) of 23 community councillors (one from each multi member ward).
The group would receive appropriate support from Community Empowerment Services to enable members to work collaboratively towards meeting objectives for influencing, shaping, driving and evidencing what the operational recovery of Community Councils and social recovery of the wider community may look like.
Following agreement on this proposal, the Community Councils individually engaged in a process of selecting a member to attend on their behalf who would be capable of representing their views to the group. The first meeting was held on 14th Sep 2021, and discussion in meetings thus far has largely centred around aiding the operational recovery of Community Councils and how GCC can support.
One proposed initiative currently being explored is ‘Hybrid Meetings’, allowing those with limited digital skills to attend meetings in person, while others can dial in virtually allowing social distancing to be maintained. With the assistance of a CCSRG member with expertise in delivery of blending meetings, the group continues to engage with GCC regarding resourcing and implementation of this initiative, among many others.
If you wish to assist or take part in your local Community Council, visit the Community Council page of the Glasgow City Council website here.
