Community Involvement and Cohesion Strategy
What do we mean by Community Involvement?
Community involvement is when you share your voice, time and skills to build better communities in partnership with others.
Engaging, enabling and empowering our communities is at the centre of what we do as an organisation and we are committed to developing the capacity of our communities to make improvements in their estates whether it be social, environmental or economic.
What do we mean by Community Cohesion?
Community Cohesion focuses on building positive relationships among people from diverse backgrounds. It aims to strengthen social bonds, reduce inequalities, and foster a climate of acceptance and understanding.
Cohesion has 5 key themes:
• Residential Segregation/Integration
• Race Relations
• Communities in Transition
• Interface areas
• Flags, Emblems and Symbols
13 Good Relation Officers work to meet the need and demand for good relations and cohesion-based support for local communities.
We have been working with communities through the Housing Community Network, in different formats, for more than 40 years.
We build strong relationships with our tenants, residents, and leaseholders, giving them a central role in governance and the decisions that affect their lives. The ways to get involved are wide and varied. Our approach is co-production based, whereby the design and delivery of services is in partnership with, rather than onto our customers.
Our current Community Involvement Strategy provides a framework through the Housing Community Network for us and our communities to work together towards mutually agreed outcomes.
It sets out how residents, along with their local community associations, can get involved in developing their local services to improve their quality of life.
Our current strategy is now coming to the end of its life cycle and we are consulting on our new draft Community Involvement and Cohesion Strategy which will see the amalgamation of the current Community Involvement and Community Cohesion strategies.
Our strategic priorities are to enable our communities to promote and strengthen involvement; engage our communities to influence, shape and improve our services and encourage them to embrace community cohesion within and between our communities.
You can now read our Community Involvement and Cohesion Strategy 2024-2029.