Fairer Futures Partnerships: islands communities impact assessment (ICIA)

3. Step three – consultation

Islands Consultation

As part of the FFP approach, which has been agreed with all FFP partners, community voice is critical to delivery. We expect our local partners to be engaging with local communities throughout delivery to ensure this informs their approaches.

As a programme, we are deferring to local expertise to design and lead delivery of change. Our partners bring a wealth of local knowledge, which is critical to ensuring delivery responds to local need. In the context of Island Communities, we would expect our partners to use their insights and understanding of the unique challenges facing Island communities to direct services towards the greatest need. We are consulting with our Local Authority colleagues regularly to ensure we remain up to date on work as it progresses and to enable us to draw out key lessons in this space. We also recognise that the Third Sector plays a key role in rural communities and particularly for individuals experiencing or at risk of poverty.

The Shetland FFP is building on the work of the Shetland Anchor Project. This project demonstrated how early intervention and collaboration can improve outcomes for families. The evaluation of the project includes details on the consultation with frontline staff and the views of those that benefited from the service. All of this forms the basis for the next stage of this work through the Shetland FFP.

We will continue to empower local experts and encourage ongoing engagement with local communities, across both the FFP initiatives generally, and specifically for Island Communities, to ensure that they engage and address local contexts and challenges.