DUBLIN INNER CITY PARTNERSHIP POLICY POSITION PAPER.

(Consultation draft Jan 07)

On the future role of the DICP

1. Introduction.

The DICP Board and staff convened a number of joint planning sessions during 2006 to discuss the future role of the Partnership following the completion of the current strategic action plan 2001-2006. The purpose of these meetings was to carry out a review of activity undertaken over the past six years; to examine the present position with regard to the contribution to local development from the DICP; to identify the needs that are now present in the inner city disadvantaged communities, and among those effected directly by poverty and exclusion, and to agree a way forward in relation to the potential contribution of the Partnership over the next ten years. This review resulted in the presentation of a policy position paper to the Partnership Board meeting of November 2006 where the draft policy was endorsed for circulation, seeking a response from the key organizations and individuals associated with the Partnership, and for further development, with a view to presenting a final position to the Partnership Board meeting in March 2007 for approval.

The review was undertaken in the context of understanding the approach that has been adopted by the Partnership to date. The strategy pursued by the Partnership since it was established has resulted in the development of a local community based infrastructure, and most resources available to the DICP have been invested through this infrastructure. Since the establishment of the DICP in 1991, with the brief of tackling long term unemployment, this work has resulted in a significant reduction in the scale of the problem and the emergence of a diverse range of innovative responses to serious social and economic problems experienced by residents of the inner city.

While the strategic approach adopted by the DICP has proved effective and successful in meeting the brief of the Partnership to date, the issue now is to determine the additional contribution that has been provided by the Partnership to this activity through the implementation of the previous action plans and to agree for the next phase as to what is the most effective role for the Partnership in the future. This is especially important in the fundamentally changed position in the inner city and the reduced numbers of people that are now affected by acute poverty and hardship. However the multi-faceted nature of the diverse social and economic needs currently being presented by individuals and families living in the inner city, and the fact that many of the local residents experiencing poverty are also those now “hardest to reach,” requires a new and fresh response.

The review undertaken by the Board also took account of revised thinking that is emerging at a national level in relation to developing a new approach to tackling poverty and social and economic exclusion and the potential contribution that local area partnerships can make to this. These include the NESC policy papers and the recent National partnership agreement referred to below. The new National Development Plan is also very relevant in this context.
This policy paper is intended to reflect these discussions and to set out a position in relation to the possible future role of the Partnership that can generate debate among all of the organisations and activists that are involved with the Partnership and result in a coherent and dynamic role for the Dublin Inner City Partnership in the future. The intention is to emerge with a new way of engaging with community and statutory organizations that are delivering “front-line” services to people and families relevant to the Partnership brief and to provide additional supports and responses that are tailored to the acute needs presented. This will require the Partnership to work in a different way than before, more focused and with the objective of achieving a higher level of coordinated and targeted interventions based on selected and agreed indicators that reflect the most difficult obstacles to removing individuals and families from generational poverty.

In section 8 of this document the DICP puts forward new strategic objectives for the Partnership involving a new role and focus for the organization. If agreed, this position will require specific structural and operational changes to be introduced and will determine the contribution and deployment of resources committed by the Partnership in the future to achieve these new objectives.

2. Current activities.

At present, the main work of the Partnership is determined by the six year strategic Action Plan 2001-2006. The plan is called “Achieving Equality, Overcoming Exclusion. Strategy to secure social and economic rights in the inner city”. This plan provides the framework for priorities pursued by the DICP and the deployment and use of funding secured by the Partnership over that period. The plan sets out four main strategies within which Partnership activity and investment operate. These primary strategies are

• A. Promoting Community Regeneration,
• B. Tackling Educational disadvantage,
• C. Supporting access to employment and enterprise and, an enabling strategy, Developing Community Infrastructure.

The DICP employs a small core of specialized staff, who take responsibility for the specific strategies and coordinate the activities undertaken by local community and statutory agencies that are involved in implementing the Partnership plan. The DICP has secured funding towards the plan from a range of sources and most of this funding is invested in local community organisations to employ development workers and to support a range of targeted initiatives. In addition to this the DICP performs a coordinating function in relation to tackling poverty and promoting social exclusion and engages in advocacy and policy development work in relation to the needs of the individuals, families and communities that experience the most acute poverty and disadvantage in the inner city. A significant focus of the work of the Partnership is aimed at the concentrated areas of disadvantage in the inner city designated by the Government.

There are a number of areas of work undertaken in the inner city over the past number of years that are relevant to the consideration of a new direction in DICP policy and that can provide a range of models to further develop the concepts included in this policy paper. These include the DICP strategic planning role and coordination of local development activity as a means to mobilise a collective response to poverty, the Inner City Employment Service, the Digital Communities Initiative in the major flat complexes, the Gateway project specifically serving the needs of disadvantaged women, the local focus of the Community Development Projects, the Integrated Services Initiative in both north and south inner city, the new tailored service projects that emerged from the two local drug task forces aimed at chronic drug users, the older peoples council in the north west inner city, the CTA action research in Dominic street/ Hardwick street, the Young People at Risk (/YPAR) project, the provision of integrated essential services through St. Andrews Resource Centre and the Larkin Unemployed Centre targeted at local residents, the Tenants First initiative on maintenance issues in the flat complexes, the direct community support work with residents in social housing complexes such as Teresa’s Gardens, O’ Devenney Gardens, Ballybough and Oliver Bond House. All of these examples and the lessons learned from the experience can inform the development and direction of this new policy.

3. Emerging needs.

The current DICP strategic plan was based on a sophisticated analysis and identification of socio-economic needs in the inner city in relation to the brief of the Partnership. The majority of the six year plan has been successfully implemented and most of the measures and actions set out in the current plan have been delivered. The present imperative is to begin to identify the new needs that have emerged in the inner city that will require an intervention from the Partnership and to formulate the new response that will be required to meet those needs in the future. Some of the emerging needs have already been identified through the work underway at a local level and in which the Partnership is directly involved. Other targeted needs are being determined by a range of targeted research activity that is being undertaken. Finally, the strategic planning process underway in the four inner city quadrants through the local community networks will directly inform the DICP new strategic action plan, which will be prepared at the latter end of 2007.

However, what has become clear already is that the approach taken by the Partnership in the future will require to be fundamentally different from how we operated in the past. This is necessary not only because the present needs of inner city residents affected by poverty are different than before but also, and more importantly, because the DICP believes that the opportunity to impact effectively, and in a sustainable way, on the underlying causes of poverty is present now for the first time.

The present needs of residents are different in a variety of ways. For example, there is consistent evidence that many of the unemployed individuals living alone in the inner city public housing areas and in private rented accommodation are experiencing acute disadvantage due to a range of causes including mental health problems, alcohol and opiate abuse, disability and isolation. There are still many families living in a continuing cycle of acute poverty due to a multiplicity of linked social problems that remain over a prolonged period despite significant state interventions. There are a large number of residents affected by disability who are not receiving adequate support. In the inner city area there are significant numbers of children experiencing persistent poverty. It has been established by recent research that many older people living in isolation in the inner city are affected by a range of disadvantages that have not been addressed by national policy. There are many former prisoners living in inner city communities who have experienced substantial obstacles to re-entering society. Very large numbers of migrants have arrived to live in the inner and a significant number are experiencing hardship and exclusion. The number of people who are unemployed or dependent on welfare payments remains large in comparison to other areas.

However, in quantitative terms the absolute numbers of residents affected by poverty has reduced significantly over the past decade. Over the past fifteen years a wide range of new community based initiatives and essential local services have been developed. Much of the decrease in unemployment and improvements in educational attainment was achieved through the range of interventions supported by the Partnership and the state agencies, and delivered at a local level by community and statutory providers. The major changes that have occurred in the area due to physical regeneration, the general economic up-turn and state investment has provided new opportunities for local residents and concrete benefits in their communities. In addition, increased levels of public and private funding have been made available in recent years to target poverty and disadvantage.

Therefore, it is in the context of the reduction in the numbers affected, the range of new opportunities and the increased availability of necessary funding from the new NDP, that the DICP believes that the potential exists to tackle and remove the underlying causes of persistent poverty in a more sustainable way over the next decade. In our view this can be achieved if a strategic approach is adopted that increases the levels of cooperation and coordination between local services and activities and ensures that the resulting benefit is targeted and specifically tailored to those most in need. In order to realize this potential for further change and to achieve a quantifiable reduction in the persistence and location of acute poverty in the inner city a proposed new approach is set out below for consideration.

4. Understanding the issues.

In the past the Partnership has sought to avoid an overly academic or complex analysis of the underlying causes and manifestation of poverty in the inner city. The approach adopted has tended to be more pragmatic and practical with specific actions achieving clear outcomes, even though in many situations the nature of the activity undertaken had to be measured in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. In the initial period, the scale, persistence and concentration of long term unemployment in the inner city made it easy to identify the problem and the solutions adopted by the DICP Board took a longer term view and a strategic rather than programmatic response.

This approach allowed the Partnership to adapt to changing circumstances and to remain dynamic and flexible with a small core specialist staff. The specific actions identified and implemented through the successive action plans were delivered, in the main, through the local community infrastructure and some of the participating statutory agencies. While this presented significant benefits to the DICP it also had a negative implication in creating an over reliance on external and autonomous organizations with a range of other responsibilities and an increasing divergence in perspective on the key priorities for action in relation to tackling poverty.

The situation is different now for two reasons. The first reason is that developing a clear analysis and understanding of the complex and diverse range, severity and duration of poverty that is occurring in the inner city is no longer simple. The massive physical regeneration, rapid gentrification, population increase and changes in method of measuring unemployment has seriously distorted the picture in the inner city and is masking the incidence and location of both individual and concentrated poverty. In addition, the Partnership’s initial concepts were that an economic up-turn would benefit all residents (i.e., “trickle down theory”) and that if unemployed workers were moved in to jobs then the increased income would remove significant numbers of individuals and families from the “poverty trap”.

Neither of these assumptions has turned out to be correct and therefore we are still faced with comparatively large numbers of people affected by continuous poverty and low income. The issue now is to move past the approach to poverty that views it solely in terms of lack of income or consumption. We need to recognize and acknowledge the multi-dimensional aspects of the experience that reveal the linkages between the depth of poverty, in terms of material and social assets, and duration with a focus on household level poverty traps, often persisting on a generational basis.

The second reason is that since the establishment of the DICP in 1991 there has been a significant growth in the numbers of local community based organizations that are addressing issues arising from poverty and we have seen changes in the statutory sector and the setting up of a range of new local development structures with a more general remit than the DICP. While this has presented an increased range of opportunities and activities at a local level for local residents it has also reduced the focus on tackling poverty as an immediate priority and moved the response into a wider perspective with the consequence that local community activists and professional development workers have been drawn in to a range of peripheral activity with increased demands on their available work time and energy.

While this is a natural inclination, arising in many situations from the partnership approach that we have promoted and adopted, never the less, this scenario presents a significant challenge to the DICP, if we are to understand and address the key issues related to tackling the level of persistent poverty prevalent in the inner city today. In order to achieve this we need to have clarity and agreement in terms of our working definition of what constitutes poverty and also in relation to the longer term indicators and measures that will enable us to set targets and determine more effectively whether individuals and families are deriving concrete and sustainable benefit from the interventions undertaken on their behalf, in the future.

The fact that this policy is being developed in the context of a ten year planning period provides us with the opportunity, for the first time, to select a range of quantifiable measures that represent some of the fundamental changes needed to tackle the underlying causes of poverty. These will have to be determined and agreed on a collective basis with the key statutory and community agencies. However, it is proposed that given the potential of the partnership approach, the agreed definition will be ambitious, not just related to ameliorating “income” poverty or “consistent” poverty but driven by the objective of addressing the glaring inequalities that have emerged relative to the scale of personal wealth generated by Ireland’s high economic growth- a division most apparent in Dublin’s inner city!

5. National context.

While the future activity of the Partnership will, in the main, be determined by responding to the local needs that are relevant to the Partnership brief, it will also be useful to understand the changing national context and perspectives in relation to tackling poverty and disadvantage and the potential role for local partnerships in this new scenario.

In preparing this position paper a number of significant recent policy documents have been examined. These include the National Economic and Social Council ( NESC) publication “The Developmental Welfare State” A recently produced policy paper from the National Economic and Social Forum ( NESF), Project Team “Improving the delivery of quality public services”, The NESF publication “Creating a more inclusive labour market”. The DEIS policy from the Department of Education. The PLANET policy “Targeting disadvantaged areas” and a consultation paper from the office of the UK Deputy Prime Minister, “Local strategic partnerships: Shaping the future. The policy produced by the NESC has influenced the Government position on the issue of addressing poverty. These have also had a direct impact on the recent National Partnership Agreement, “Towards 2016”, which in turn has helped to determine the shape of the new seven year National Development Plan.

Obviously in setting out a future strategy for the DICP it is important to take account of these Government and national policies, but, more than this, these documents contain important perspectives and ideas which should influence the direction taken by the DICP.

6. Policy environment.

The above documents contain a range of important concepts and perspectives that could contribute to the strategic approach adopted in the future by the DICP. In outline five of the most relevant concepts or scenarios are as follows ;

1. The life cycle approach is a key element of NESC document and “Towards 2016” adopts this approach. In summary, this provides for social and economic interventions on the basis of different age cohorts and identifies their needs and the most effective responses in this context.
2. The NESC document also provides a framework for Ireland’s future welfare state that incorporates Services, Income supports and Activist measures. With the latter directly related to the potential contribution of Partnerships.
3. The NESF focuses on the delivery of quality public services that adopt an advocacy and rights approach with more effective and sophisticated coordination and monitoring of outcomes at a local level.
4. The British Government paper is interesting in that it sets out a key concept for Local Strategic Partnerships with the authority and role to provide strategic coordination within the area and linking with other plans and bodies established at the regional, sub-regional and local level, taking an oversight role, ensuring that the lines of responsibility between partners and sub-partners are clear and duplication is avoided.
5. The new National Development Plan (NDP) 2007-2013, published on the 23rd January 2007, promises a large scale investment over the next seven years and sets out a wide range of priorities and programmes, many of which are directly relevant to meeting the needs in the inner city.

7 Shaping the new strategy.

The above perspectives are potentially of great relevance to the DICP as we seek to establish an unique contribution to tackling poverty through local development in the future in Dublin inner city. They suggest that if a new approach incorporating these ideas is adopted then we need to rethink the strategies and activities undertaken in the past and forge a new mode of operation and formal relationships with our key partners as we move forward. This would involve establishing a more specific task oriented working arrangement with the relevant agencies, underpinned by agreed protocols of engagement. Most important it would suggest that the DICP should target core activity with a more narrow focus and aim at tackling the most acute and concentrated experiences of poverty and disadvantage happening to those most excluded in the area.

1. By adopting the life cycle approach this would suggest that DICP interventions would only be relevant to and aimed at a significantly reduced number of residents in the inner city, i.e., those in most need and poorly served by the existing system. The increasingly generalized approach that is now predominant would be avoided and efforts would be made to ensure that resources, activities and services were redirected more strategically and specifically. This would also involve the Partnership, primarily through the statutory agencies involved but also through the community networks and local community providers, acting in a more activist and advocacy role and seeking to influence the allocation and deployment of resources to the benefit of specific families and individuals.
2. A new understanding of service provision in the inner city tailored to those most in need will emerge from this approach, if adopted. This will begin to measure essential services from the perspective of the consumer and, in the case of the DICP remit, from the point of view of those most dependent on public services or who experience systemic failures that often result in the exclusion of specific individuals or families. This approach will include the agencies with a statutory remit and primary responsibility to provide public services. This comprises existing Board members such as the City Council, HSE, Probation & Welfare, FÁS, and others not yet on the Board, such as the Department of Social and Community Affairs, the Gardai, Education, Prison and, Medical service providers and some voluntary and private providers. In this context, the Community based organisations will be most relevant in relation to service provision that they are formally contracted to deliver.
3. The DICP role in innovation and introducing pilot approaches for new tailor made services and activities will be enhanced. This will emerge where it is clearly identified that there is a failure in provision and where a new or more tailored approach has to be introduced to meet individual needs. These new ideas or models would be produced in cooperation with the key agencies and organisations and promoted and delivered utilizing the Partnership structures. This would allow the stakeholders involved to experiment and establish the case for alternative methods of delivery to meet the increasingly diverse needs of residents in the inner city. This approach if adopted will ensure that the DICP is on the leading edge in relation to new thinking on quality service delivery and responding to the individual rather than operating within the constraints of the delivery system.

In this context, the NESC has suggested that the key activist role for local partnerships is to provide service evaluation systems, in-service quality development, assessment and accreditation of services and promoting continuous improvement. With the objective of implementing the Development Welfare State the NESC asks some pertinent questions- Can partnerships help identify the services that are crucial?. Can they, thereby, help find a combination of services, income and innovation? How might they relate to mainstream and other providers? This further development of this new DICP policy will need to address this potential role.

1. The operating environment has become overly complex and confusing. This has also resulted in an element of competition between the organizations and an increased demand in terms of commitment from both community and statutory workers in maintaining the structures. This position has been further complicated by the incoherent, “departmentalized” approach to approving and distributing funding from the Dormant accounts, Justice, Equality & Law reform, Pobail and RAPID and other Government sources. The need to establish a Local Strategic Partnership that has an agreed role in the inner city in relation to planning, coordinating and monitoring a collective response to poverty and social exclusion is a vital necessity at the present time.

Originally the DICP was the sole agency in the area with a specific remit in relation to tackling long term unemployment and poverty. However, over the past number of years a range of new structures have been set up that have some remit in relation to social inclusion. These include the local drug task forces, RAPID Area Implementation Teams, the City Council Integrated Area Plan committees and, on a city wide basis, the Dublin City Development Board and the Dublin Employment Pact. In addition, a number of statutory agencies such as the Dublin City Council and the Health Services Executive have established Social Inclusion Units. At present, there is little effective coordinated strategic planning occurring in the inner city between this range of local development structures, particularly in relation to tackling poverty and exclusion. The decision by the Minister for Community, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs that the Local Area Partnerships should act as the over-arching structures for local development in their areas and the agreement by the Dublin City Development Board that the Area Partnerships are the lead agencies for social inclusion should help to improve the overall cohesion in response to poverty at a local level.

1. The Government National Development Plan 2007-2013, will also have a direct influence on the future role of the DICP in that it will be used as the framework to determine state programmes and funding sources. Social inclusion measures totalling €50 billion aimed primarily at older people, immigrants, people with disabilities and children living in poverty form a significant part of this plan. Social and affordable housing, childcare, educational disadvantage, tackling unemployment and funding local development are also included as priorities for significant investment. A key objective in the coming years among all organizations involved in tackling poverty in the inner city will be to ensure that adequate resources are targeted from this plan to those most in need in the inner city area. Previous experience has shown that the main delivery capacity available in the inner city and capable of implementing this NDP is located in the community sector organizations and in the statutory agencies involved with the Partnership

In the context of the new NDP, of serious concern is the fact that a number of the above organizations are required to produce strategic plans without reference to each other. This has resulted in duplication of effort and increasingly disjointed responses. The DICP during the period of the current action plan has attempted to introduce a level of coordination and joined-up thinking in relation to the deployment of resources. It is now essential, and in everybody’s interest, but, most particularly, in the interests of the families and individuals who depend on this state intervention, that this over-arching role be further developed to assume primary responsibility for strategic planning, coordination and monitoring of the range of responses to poverty and social exclusion in the inner city, through one lead organisation. To be effective this will require, what is often referred to in organisational terms as a level of “buy-in” or “joined–up thinking” among and between statutory and community agencies that has, here to fore, proved impossible to achieve despite our best efforts.

However, given the commitment shown in the past to addressing some of the most apparently intractable social problems affecting individuals, families and communities in the inner city and the fact that a high level of cooperation has been achieved between the different sectors working in partnership, there is no question but that the imaginative and innovative capacity exists in the area to bring about this change. It is vital therefore that the strategic thinking, organisational structures and innovative approaches necessary to ensure effective, targeted and sustainable outcomes from the local investment from the NDP is provided in a coherent and accountable manner. If this is put in place successfully then the resulting investment will achieve a longer term benefit in reducing extreme poverty and exclusion.

8. New strategic objectives.

In the present situation, the DICP Board has decided that the Partnership should provide clear leadership. This is important for two reasons, first, because, in the view of the DICP Board, the diverse range of initiatives and organizations operating in the inner city with a responsibility to tackle poverty and disadvantage are not working to the optimum potential given the amount of increased resources and interventions now present, and second because, it is the belief of the Partnership, that, as a result of the social and economic improvements achieved over the past decade, the potential now exists for the first time ever to significantly reduce the numbers of people experiencing acute and persistent poverty and to fundamentally alter or remove the underlying causes of the cycle of poverty in the inner city.

In these circumstances the Partnership is proposing two principal roles for the DICP over the next ten years to 2016.

1. That the DICP should act as the lead organization in relation to strategic planning, coordination, deployment of resources and monitoring of outcomes in relation to tackling acute poverty and social and economic exclusion in the inner city, and
2. That the DICP should focus primarily on ensuring that relevant quality service provision is targeted at, and directly benefits, the families and individuals, caught in the relentless cycle of persistent and acute poverty and low income in the inner city communities.

The overriding objective in undertaking this new role is to provide additional supports and interventions to those most in need by working through the community and statutory agencies that are working on the “front line” in response to acute poverty and disadvantage. The DICP involvement will seek to bring coherence and more effective interagency cooperation to the delivery of essential services to those most in need and will encourage new types of provision where necessary to meet identified shortcomings in existing services and activities.

9. Implications of this approach.

While this approach can be presented as a logical progression and development from the work of the Partnership to date, it is also a radical departure from many of the practices and projects that have emerged over the past fifteen years. These roles, if adopted, will challenge many of the assumptions that underlie the work of the Partnership and most of the groups and organizations associated with the DICP. In particular the role and contribution of the statutory sector and the function of community based organizations directly supported by the DICP, or with primary responsibility for tackling some aspect of poverty or disadvantage in the inner city. Success will require a level of organisational and interagency integration, action and cooperation that we have not yet been able to achieve.

Both roles, while they may appear on the surface as all embracing and general, in fact will result in a significant reduction in the focus and range of activity of the Partnership and, by extension, in the relevant elements of the statutory remit of the public agencies and contracted community service providers that agree to cooperate and participate in this new approach. The joint activity will be driven by a more targeted, transparent and accountable use of public resources delivered to a reduced number of people who are experiencing the most need.

The over-riding objective will be to achieve significant changes in practice and delivery in relation to service provision as it effects selected and clearly identified consumers who have an expectation and a right to obtain concrete benefits from these public services and an improved quality of life, and that reduces dependency on state intervention in the longer term. This will only prove possible if the systemic failures in the existing provision are identified and eliminated and new innovations to tailor vital services on a family or individual basis are encouraged and enabled. This approach will require a robust and flexible method of setting specific and collective objectives and a means of measuring outcomes over a prolonged period in a way that has never been achieved before.

10. The way forward.

This position paper by its nature can only provide an outline of the new objectives for the role of the DICP and an initial survey of the potential benefits and implications of the approach if adopted. At this stage it is intended to provide the basis for discussion and debate and, by circulation among the key organizations relevant to the Partnership, generate a response or observations in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of the approach and the likelihood of acceptance among our stakeholders and our peers.

As we develop the thinking in 2007 it is intended that this policy paper will provide the basis to set out a future strategy and plan of action and to put in place the changes necessary to undertake the new roles identified above. This is also necessary to enable the DICP to successfully respond to the Government National Development Plan and to secure the resources that will be made available to the Partnership as a result of the implementation of the Governments plan. It will be important to ensure that the DICP negotiation for future funding is facilitated by the objectives adopted by the Partnership Board. This will require that we achieve support and endorsement for our approach from the relevant organizations and interests involved.

It is hoped that this policy position paper will provide the means for the DICP to enter productive discussions locally that can lead to agreement to enable the DICP to progress in the direction of the new strategies outlined and the achieve the changes required. This response will determine the shape of the strategy going forward and will help to more clearly identify the range of issues, both functional and organisational, that will have to be addressed. This response will also require the formal agreement of the relevant statutory and community based organizations that are being requested to participate.

Finally, this strategic thinking is being developed because the DICP Board and Staff believe that the opportunity exists now to achieve a significant and sustainable impact on reducing the level of poverty in the inner city and the potential to permanently remove many families and individuals from the cycle of poverty and hardship in the longer term. We believe that it is a manageable and achievable objective in present conditions. However, this is only possible if the dedicated commitment, active participation and resources necessary are secured and used effectively.

11. What is to be done?

• The DICP Board meeting in November 2006 approved the outline policy and decided that a further draft should be circulated seeking the views and observations of the organizations associated with the Partnership. The outcome and further draft policy will be presented to a special DICP Board planning meeting in April 2007.
• Meetings will be convened with the sectoral representatives on the Partnership Board, including key statutory agencies, community networks, trade union and employer organisations and the elected representatives for the inner city. The purpose of these meetings will be to seek support and engagement from these organizations and to begin to identify the key long term indicators that could provide the means to monitor and evaluate the work.
• Discussions will take place with the DICP supported core infrastructure and the relevant community based organizations with a view to identifying the changes necessary to be introduced in order to successfully implement this new policy.
• The forthcoming Government National Development Plan will be examined to ensure that the thrust of the DICP policy is consistent with the aspirations of this plan. Meetings will be convened with relevant Government Departments and funding agencies, either directly or through PLANET, to obtain public investment for the implementation of the policy and the DICP strategic plan.
• A number of research projects are being undertaken to inform the new DICP policy in relation to specific statistical analyses or identified needs.
• A joint meeting of the steering groups and workers of the local and community development organizations and networks is being planned for March 2007 to agree more effective cohesion in the inner city and to examine the implications of the DICP policy proposal.
• A public consultation meeting is being planned for June 2007 to present the new DICP policy to the large number of community statutory and residents organizations, social partners, individuals and elected representative involved in the Partnership with a view to winning public and political support.
• As an outcome from this process of consultation and debate a final draft of the proposed policy on the future role for the Partnership will be presented to the DICP Board meeting in June 2007. If agreed this will provide the basis to prepare a further six year strategic plan and provide the means to secure public funding from the relevant agencies.

References and relevant documents.

• “Achieving Equality Overcoming exclusion”. Strategic Action Plan 2001-2006. www.dicp.ie
• “Realising rights”. Strategic Action Plan. Report on progress 2001-2003. www.dicp.ie
• “Implementation plan 2004-2006”. www.dicp.ie
• “The developmental welfare state” National Economic and Social Council. www.nesc.ie
• “Improving the delivery of quality public services”. National Economic and social Forum. www.nesf.ie
• “Creating a more inclusive labour market”. National Economic and Social Forum. www.nesf.ie
• “Targeting disadvantaged areas” PLANET policy paper. www.planet.ie
• “Local strategic partnerships; Shaping the future” Office of the UK Deputy Prime Minister. www.dpm.gov.uk
• “Towards 2016” Ten year framework social partnership agreement. www.taoiseach.gov.ie
• “National report for Ireland on strategies for social protection and social inclusion”. www.socialinclusion.ie
• “National development plan 2007-2013” www.ndp.ie

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