Written by: Bob Bertsch
There are a variety of ways to look at community engagement in the context of supporting family readiness.
The 2019 report, “Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society,” states community engagement involves “collaborating with key stakeholders, including military family members, service members, and veterans, all layers of military leadership across the services, and community leaders and providers…prior to or early in program development” and continuing “through all phases of program implementation.” This ground-up, capacity-building view of community engagement is somewhat undercut in the same report with a sentence in the same section, “A primary function of community engagement is to enhance access to and participation in programs that are known to be effective in supporting military family well-being.”
So is community engagement a way to build community capacity to create and sustain efforts to support families or is it a way to get more families to come to the programs developed for them, but not with them? Frameworks like the Logics of Co-Production, which I wrote about in a previous blog post, and the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership can help us sort out why we are engaging the community, how we are engaging them, and what might be possible if we deepen that engagement.
The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership
The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership was developed by Rosa González of Facilitating Power. González drew on a number of public participation tools to develop a framework that could help leaders across sectors assess and transform their community engagement efforts. The Spectrum advances the idea that the way to address the complex challenges we face is to develop capacity by engaging everyone in our communities. The authors of “Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society” draw on that same idea calling for the empowerment of “initiatives to promote local leadership, community stakeholders, and military families themselves to define their needs and influence program development, adaptation, and implementation.”
The Spectrum outlines six steps referred to as “Stances Toward Community”: Ignore, Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate, and Defer to. Each stance is described with associated “Impact,” “Community Engagement Goals,” “Message To Community,” “Activities,” and “Resource Allocation Ratios.” This level of detail is helpful in honestly assessing where our community engagement efforts are currently and in providing a clear picture of what it looks like to get where we want to be.
Ignore
When our stance towards community is “Ignore,” the impact on the community is marginalization. Our goal at this level is to deny the community access to the decision-making process, telling them “Your voice, needs and interests do not matter. Our meetings are closed, we may be distributing misinformation and all of our resources are going to support the system.”
Inform
If our stance is “Inform,” we are placating the community. We are keeping the community informed with fact sheets, open houses, presentations, billboards, and videos, but most of our resources (70-90%) are still allocated to supporting the system with 10-30% of resources allocated to promotions and publicity.
Consult
We are gathering input from the community when our stance is “Consult,” telling people “We care what you think.” However, the impact on the community is tokenization. Instead of engaging the community in the analysis of a problem and the development of solutions, we are bringing in “tokens” of the community to act as consultants by inviting public comment, sending out surveys, and conducting focus groups and forums. We are allocating 20-40% of resources to those consultation activities, but 60-80% are still going to support the system.
Involve
When our stance to the community is “Involve,” we are setting out to ensure community needs and assets are integrated into our process and are informing our planning. We are telling the community, “You are making us think, (and therefore act) differently about the issue,” and the impact of that is voice. We provide space for the community to use their voice by conducting polls, organizing and advocating for the community, and holding house meetings, interactive workshops, and community forums. A majority of our resources are still being used to support the system, but 40-50% are allocated to community involvement.
Collaborate
From the stance of “Collaborate,” our goal is to ensure the community’s capacity to play a leadership role in implementation of decisions. Creating memorandums of understanding with community-based organizations, organizing the community, convening citizen advisory committees, and holding open planning forums all contribute to the impact of delegated power. We are telling the community, “Your leadership and expertise are critical to how we address the issue.” The allocation of resources has shifted with 50-70% going to community partners and 30-50% going to support the system.
Defer To
When we are ready to defer to the community, we are telling them, “It’s time to unlock collective power and capacity for transformative solutions.” Our goal is to foster democratic participation and equity through community-driven decision-making and to bridge the divide between community and governance. We do this through community-driven planning, building consensus, conducting participatory action research and participatory budgeting, and facilitating the creation of cooperatives. Almost all resources (80-100%) are being used for community partners and community-driven processes.
Putting It Into Practice
The scope of the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership might feel too big for you in developing your program or working with community partners, but I think it is still worth reflecting on.
The Spectrum is designed to help us acknowledge the marginalization that was designed into systems that we still participate in. We need to be intentional about breaking down barriers to participation that might be affecting our work.
Reflecting on the Spectrum can also help you set a clear vision and develop a process for your community engagement efforts. Knowing your current stance to the community can help avoid misunderstandings that arise when the people you are engaging think you will involve them or use their input in ways you don’t intend to. It can also help you set a goal for what stance you’d like to work towards and assess your progress toward that goal.
Deepening community engagement can help cultivate community capacity to address complex issues, including military family readiness. It can help balance power dynamics and change the systems that have marginalized communities. It may seem like a small step to engage the community in your program planning, but it is a contribution to a broader effort to create the conditions for the collaboration and participation we need to address our biggest challenges.
References
Kizer, K. (n.d.). Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society (2019), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK547597/
Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership. (n.d.). Facilitating Power. Retrieved May 30, 2024, from https://www.facilitatingpower.com/spectrum_of_community_engagement_to_ownership
