Blog

Community Engagement for Housing Associations

MutualGain are looking to host a series of breakfast workshops for practitioners and managers working in housing associations who would like to learn more about how they can improve their public engagement and participation. MutualGain has a strong track record of delivering strengths based engagement training and support, and we would love to share some of[…]

August 11th 2016

Continental measurement

How long is a piece of string? That was my first thought when someone proposed an unconference discussion about how the impact of Participatory Budgeting could be measured. To a degree it depends on the point of view that you take. For public services it usually involves a numerical target e.g. the number of crimes[…]

November 6th 2015
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Participatory Budgeting and the Police

On Monday 26th October 2015 over 70 people attended the UK PB Network conference in Birmingham. The conference was designed for academics, practitioners and those who want to learn a little more about PB in terms of the process, the results and the successes. Following a series of short, but informative keynote speeches, the participants[…]

November 6th 2015
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Themes emerging from the National PB conference, 2015

As you got ready for work today did you prepare yourself with a nice cup of coffee? A caffeine shot to perk you up and take on the world? Are you one of the many that has moved to decaffeinated coffee for health reasons, and do you still get the desired effect? A.C Van Cherub[…]

November 6th 2015
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Health and Wellbeing: Creating the Well society.

This time last year I had a call from the Consultation Institute asking if I would support the North of England Commissioning Support Unit (NECS) to do some Participatory Budgeting (PB). It was a bit different to normal calls from people wanting to do PB – they didn’t have a small pot of money to[…]

November 6th 2015
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PCCs and Innovation: Innovating for Better Community Engagement

This blog builds on the learning from the MutualGain networked learning and support programme which has been tested in two police forces – one large and one small. The visual above captures emerging themes from cohorts when asked what would need to happen to police with, by and for communities: what would policing look like[…]

December 3rd 2014

My night in A and E: a stream of consciousness

Those that know me know that I am absolutely committed to learning; I love the idea of us all being critical friends to each other so that we can work closely with those who are providing public services on our behalf. I have been doing quite a bit of work in the NHS recently so[…]

August 14th 2014
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Football and Policing Social Citizens

I was challenged recently to consider how the MutualGain programme (capacity building the police to engage with the public differently) reflected a game of football.  It was important for me to test this metaphor as it came from a participant of the programme: I wanted him to present with me at the Citizens in Policing[…]

February 22nd 2014
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Save the date 26-27 June

How does football relate to police engagement? http://mutualgainorg.wordpress.com/?p=110

February 22nd 2014
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Reflections on 2013 (2): Building and Maintaining Relationships

Working, children, friends, domesticity and blogging – can we really do it all I ask myself?  Well in keeping with my commitment to try and blog I’m going to give it a go, but it may feel rushed when you read it.  You’ll get my drift though hopefully.  Everyone tells me to just write –[…]

January 2nd 2014
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