Communities lead the way in Greater Manchester’s Live Well transformation
A conversation between Leah Chikamba-Mulando, the CEO of local organisation Angels of Hope for Women, which supports women recovering from domestic abuse and mental health issues, and Tabz O’Brien, Strategic Lead for community-led innovation, working as part of a Greater Manchester-wide Live Well team.
The public sector has traditionally favoured a top-down approach to local governance, with councils often calling the shots on important decisions without seeking input from local communities. This lack of community voice and inclusion was reflected in our recent polling: 84% of people feel they have little or no control over the decisions that affect their lives. In the same poll, over half said they believe that giving community groups more power over local decisions would improve their areas.
In certain pockets of the UK, we’re starting to see forward-thinking councils and Mayoral authorities shift to making decisions with communities rather than for them. Over the past year and a half, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has championed a community-driven approach to shaping neighbourhoods and public services. Their Live Well initiative invites communities and local people to decide for themselves what support and services they need to live a good life.
After co-hosting the Live Well’s Big Bus Tour a few weeks ago, we caught up with Tabz O’Brien, Strategic Lead for community-led innovation, working as part of a GM-wide Live Well team. We asked our community champion, Leah Chikamba-Mulando, CEO of Angels of Hope for Women, a local organisation in Greater Manchester, to speak to Tabz about how their new approach is playing out across the city region. Below is a transcript of our conversation.
How does the Live Well initiative work differently with communities?
Tabz O’Brien: Live Well is Greater Manchester’s commitment to ensuring great everyday support in every neighbourhood. The root of it is tackling health, social, and economic inequalities with a real intersectional lens around racial and social justice.
As part of Mayor Andy Burnham’s Live Well manifesto commitment, we are growing a network of Live Well Centres and spaces in each neighbourhood and locality in Greater Manchester. Every one of our boroughs is having a conversation with their communities around what a Live Well Centre looks like and how to support organisations and groups like Angels of Hope, who are often the first point of call for people facing hard times. We want to ensure these organisations are supported and connected to a broader ‘no wrong door’ ecosystem, where power and resources reach communities facing inequalities and structural discrimination.
Can you introduce Angels of Hope for Women and how you work alongside local government in Manchester?
Leah Chikamba-Mulando: Our main aim is to empower women, and empowerment for each and every woman is different. We work and support predominantly women from black African and Asian backgrounds, but we do not say no to women from other backgrounds. We’ve been working for the last eleven years in the same area. The first thing everyone will tell any new person who comes to the area is to go to Angels of Hope.
A lot of the women we work with go through mental health issues, but don’t want to access services. In the end, you find women having breakdowns and children being taken through social services. Those are the things that we try to stop from the beginning. Once we support one woman, the whole family will be supported.
We’ve faced quite a lot of challenges in the past, especially because we don’t own our own building. Too many people want to access our services. We only employ three members of staff, but we should probably have two or three times that number. We recently got some money through Manchester City Council to employ an outreach worker for a one-year contract. The outreach worker has lived experience of what these women are going through. They are going to reach the women who aren’t confident enough to come out and look for help themselves – the ones who normally no one would get to.
I think it’s good that the local authority recognises that giving a little bit of funding to local organisations helps, no matter how little it is. They recognise that by starting to fund these organisations, they’re giving them the resources they need to support people.
What’s the impact of GM Live Well so far?
Tabz: The way that we talk about organisations like Angels of Hope and community-powered ways of working is completely different because of Live Well. It has also started to change where funding is put. In our Live Well implementation fund, 50% must go to Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise organisations. We’re hearing from local authorities that’s 50% minimum, and some are directing 100% of funding to local organisations.
With the funding we’ve received from the National Lottery, we’ve been able to test transformative approaches in five of our local areas. We’ve tested transformative governance with communities – participatory budgeting and grant-making. But we’re really at the beginning of our journey.
Leah: It’s good to see that Andy (Mayor of Greater Manchester) is coming to us and saying, “You know what is best for you. What do you want to do? How do you want us to support you in bringing that out?”
People now understand what community power is and are looking forward to the Live Well initiative because it’s a way to bring power into our communities.
What would you say to other local authorities about the impact of integrating community-powered approaches into how they work?
Tabz: If you want to reduce your NHS wait times, if you’re worried about your council budget, what other approach is there other than working alongside and with communities? It’s not about pushing the responsibility onto communities to lead without power and resources. It’s about growing a different kind of community leadership, neighbourhood power, and community wealth building.
It’s not easy, and it’s not going to be a win tomorrow. It’s going to take time. But it will have a positive impact on the public purse and how the workforce feels if they’re working with communities and citizens differently.
Leah: People are changing their way of thinking. It’s a mindset change, which both the community and the local authorities are working together to do. I think for me, it’s very important that the community is actually shaping services because that’s the best way they are going to be able to access them without a lot of barriers.
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The Live Well Initiative embraces a community-powered approach that we would like to see at the heart of all local authorities across the UK. All communities need more control over public services and spending decisions to meet their own needs. We want to see trusted community organisations across the country enter into genuine partnerships with their councils to improve their places.
We’re calling on the UK government to amend its recent English Devolution and Community Empowerment Power Bill so that communities receive the rights and powers they need to revitalise their areas.