Downside Network

Some 15 months ago the Partnership started work on a skills audit of Downside Estate in Dunstable. The aim was to talk to people on the estate and find out what skills they had that they could offer to other people. The data was collected from over 500 interviews and was used by the South Beds District Council to start up what is known as a LETS Scheme or Local Exchange Trading Scheme. The idea was to set up a local scheme where people can exchange services. No money was involved, it was about what you can offer. Maybe some gardening in exchange for some shopping or help with letter writing or form filling. LETS schemes are quite common and there are already several in Bedfordshire, for example LETSbuzz at Leighton Buzzard. A key aim with LETS is to encourage people to use their skills and to promote social cohesion within communities. The skills audit did identify a core group of 20 to 25 people interested in setting up a scheme for Downside. SBDC has committed resources to support this initiative.

Residents played a key part in delivering regeneration activity to date as part of the Downside Trailblazer project, an arts led regeneration project delivering environmental improvements.  They utilised their social networks to identify friends and community leaders with various skills to get involved, take key roles in delivery activity and influence decisions.  Social networks owned by the community are essential to regeneration activity becoming sustainable. 

Stage one of the project was to map hidden skills by conducting an audit in the form of a questionnaire.  32 residents were targeted to pilot the questionnaire.  They were asked to look at the format, style, content and context and supply feedback with the view to what changes should be made and any areas of skills that may have been missed.  The audit was designed to capture qualitative and quantitative information into ‘hidden/transferable skills’ by means of a series of structured and semi-structured questions.  The following themes were addressed in the questionnaire:

  • Education and training.
  • Employment.
  • Health and lifestyles.

Using a pre-defined interview schedule, a number of households within Downside were targeted.  Interviews were conducted face-to-face with residents using the predefined questionnaire as the basis for these interviews.

This work identified the wealth of ability held by individuals and groups in Downside.  It also identified what gaps there are in relation to the community’s aims for carrying out local activity and what basic employment skills are lacking in relation to current demands in the job market.  The role of the Learning Partnership was to share this information strategically within partnership networks to help better target delivery of learning activity by promoting the delivery of a bespoke estate based programme.  The Learning Partnership explored if this work practice model is useful and transferable to other projects.  It was the aim to produce a training needs survey with the information gathered to tailor a bespoke estate based program against researched needs.

Stage two build on the existing social network.  It facilitated an increased level of skills sharing for the benefit of residents and community regeneration projects.  The intent was to help volunteers set up a sharing scheme (the Downside Network) similar to Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) but designed and set up according to how volunteers believe it will work best for Downside.

The last element of the project was dependent upon local buy-in.  Linking the Network with wider estate regeneration.  Examples such as the youth accreditation scheme already linking it with Trailblazer projects helped to evidence how individuals gained recognition of talent and promote learning of new skills that in turn were recognised by employers therefore increasing employability.  By facilitating opportunities to share skills were be able to increase the opportunities for learning new ones and this was a potential area for the delivery of bespoke learning opportunities with the Network.

The project sought to:

  • Determine the learning and skills gaps in the community and to define residents’ training needs.
  • Determine the main obstacles to securing employment and the tangible elements of social exclusion.
  • Ascertain the availability of provision within Downside.
  • Find out what residents consider to be the major social problems and which affect the quality of their lives.

The final report on the skills audit has been prepared for publication and includes details of how the audit was done as well as a breakdown of the results. Copies will are available from the Learning Partnership or downloading from this PDF link

 Downside Network Skills Audit Project.

 

 

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