Community Waitakere - Kia tutahi

Kia tutahi

Kia Tutahi is about Communities and Government working well together to benefit all.   The Kia Tutahi-Standing Together steering group is a joint group of community members and government officials appointed by the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector.   They have drafted a relationship agreement setting out a vision and principles for how government and communities can work together. They have held 17 regional hui to ask communities for feedback on the following:
•         How do we ensure that the agreement is put into practice?
•         How should we get the message out?
•         How do we keep things on track?
•         How will we know its working and how will we do it right?

Tony Mayow wrote the following report on the Consultation Hui that was held in Henderson on Wednesday, 14 July 2010.

A very strong demand that the words must be matched by deeds this time
I attended a consultation meeting in Waitakere. It was well attended but not full, which may be a comment in itself. There was a predominant feeling that the work on this must continue, however that was matched by a good degree of scepticism, and a very strong demand that the words must be matched by the deeds this time. A number of people expressed the ‘been there done that, got it on vinyl, cassette tape and CD!’ the lament of a world-weary, recycled sector.
That said, us being us, eternal optimists, lots of very positive useful ideas were put forward to give the agreement teeth, make it live and ensure it survived its launch.
A few I really liked (few of them new of course) were:

Get it signed at all levels of government, publicly and systematically, to go along with a rolling signing up at community level. This starts at Cabinet, cascades to all Chief Executives, where it’s included in their performance agreements, and thence down through the ranks to the local areas
One idea was regional and local staff signing up at a ceremony where communities did the same, following an active workshop on implementing it, in visible demonstration that the staff actually see the agreement, a highly effective symbol
Put it at the front of every government/community funding contract, operationalising and demonstrating its intent constantly, and allowing constant questioning on the application of it to take place from both sides
Put a formal review process in place, and dispute procedures, as are included in any good partnership document
Central Government, as the dominant party financially, commits to an ongoing, specific resource within each department dedicated to implementing the agreement
Ensure the requirement of sustainability was injected into it
Restrict the signing scope to communities and community organisations, rather than adding in families and individuals, for purely practical reasons, but not its application, to preserve the central idea of a social compact
Apply the thing now! i.e. test it out as it’s being consulted on by applying its draft forms to current joint projects. How would the Welfare Working Group’s scope and processes look after being subjected to the agreement provisions? There is nothing like the white heat of reality checking to sharpen all of us up.
Understand from the outset that it’s a living document which will never be perfect, but that’s life…so let’s get on with it
Please please, include Local Government in it!

There were lots of other comments, I’m being totally subjectively selective, and no prioritising was done but these particularly emerged for me as beacons of hope.

I look forward to the next steps.

Tony Mayow
President, New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations

If you are interested in attending hui in other locations, please see details at:
www.ocvs.govt.nz/work-programme/relationship-agreement/relat-agree-consultation.html

You can download the discussion document and background information at
www.ocvs.govt.nz/work-programme/relationship-agreement/relat-agree-consultation.html

ja_mageia