Our Services

We can provide a number of services to community groups, voluntary & community sector organisations, and public agencies.  A number of these services we do provide free of charge, however, because we are a charity project, our funds are limited and we do have to charge for some.  For more information on our packages please click on the link on the left hand side.

Research service

• Research about policy and practice happening in the UK
  
• Research studies about what is happening in local authorities internally

Accompaniment in developing and delivering participatory processes

• Budget literacy work with a range of stakeholders using a range of participatory tools
• Support in developing community engagement and capacity building processes to enable active participation in PB pilots
• Facilitation of planning meetings and partnership working
• Reflecting from a position outside the local authority to enable the necessary bureaucratic structures to be 'invisible' so as to give more ownership of meetings to local people

Technical support

• Workshop facilitation with neighbourhood managers, community development workers, councillors and community members
• Support with the development and delivery of participatory processes
• Support with the development of technical tools, including budget matrices, policies, rules, etc.  A number of these tools are now on our website in the toolkit, case studies and 'get involved' sections.
  

Evaluation and monitoring throughout PB process

• Development of a framework for baseline monitoring, indicators and targets
• Participatory evaluation
• Writing up of pieces of work and dissemination internally and externally

Further support is available from:

• PB Practitioners' Network - opportunity to share learning with other pilot areas
• National Reference Group meetings - opportunity to share learning with senior government policy makers
• International networks
• Peer learning sets
  

Our services are particularly suitable for organisations wishing to:

• Develop more participatory and inclusive processes in their budget decision making
• Build capacity within their organisations and the wider community around budgets
• Analyse the relationships between budget decision making and social inclusion
• Develop their commitment to inclusion and participation.