PLA in Action

The Lakes Children's Centre 2005

The UK government has established a series of Children's Centres throughout the country to support families of children 0-5 especially in disadvantaged areas. A PLA approach has been used in an attempt to identify the long term needs of parents. A team of 7 local people were recruited (most of whom are parents) and over a period of days and evenings trained in PLA. The project was divided into 2 phases and the team visited parents and carers in the following settings: outside schools, at play and toddler groups, parks, baby clinics, local playbus and through door to door visits. Through the use of a coded sticker system the team were able to monitor where parents were from and their status (male / female / parent / carer). During both phases of the project 81% of local parents (of children 0-5) were reached. The team used Opinion lines, Mapping, Problem trees, Photographs, Informal interviewing, Diary Charts, Problem to Solution charts and Matrices to answer the following questions:

°        What are the main issues for you as parents / carers in the area?

°        What would you like to see changed and how?

During phase 2 the team went back out and spoke to 68 parents to identify solutions to the problems from the first phase. 

At the start of the process a workshop on participatory project management was held with the Childrens Centre project Steering group. This aimed to ensure the long term involvement of the team and other community members in the project management decision making process. In July 2005, three of the team (local parents and a grandmother) negotiated with Steering group members to decide the allocation of the capital budget for the centre based upon the results of their consultation. 

Download Final report here:

Lakes Children Centre Community Consultation Final Report 2005

Flookburgh PLA project 2002/3

Flookburgh a village in South Cumbria is the site of this effort to use a PLA approach funded by Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust and supported by a group of local residents, Voluntary Action Cumbria, Public Health Development, Barnardos South Lakeland Family Support Service and Young Cumbria. Representatives from the above groups took part in 4 days of PLA training and were then supported as they used the approach and methods in various settings. The team worked with local residents at the following locations: The Square, Station Road, Main Street, Newsagents , Ravenstown Shop , Hairdressers , Chip shop , Betting Shop, Chemist , Post Office , Butchers , After Church coffee , Guides , School , Paint and Play session and the Well baby clinic. An open session was also held at the Village Hall. During the project the following methods were used.

At present the team is presenting the information gathered so far to other local residents to decide what should happen next. Watch this space to see how the project develops.

Burnley Community profiling project 2002

Many people (often quite justifiably) are very cynical of the amount of private consultants leading community consultation exercises in communities at great expense. It has always been our desire to lead a project which tackled this issue and allowed local people themselves to lead the community profiling process.

At the beginning of 2002 Bootstrap Enterprises (Blackburn) won a Burnley Community Alliance community-profiling project contract. The aim of the project was to produce community profiles of 8 of the most 8 wards in order to:

All local workers were trained in PLA (over a week) and then supported as they used PL.A  techniques to gather opinions from local residents over a two-month period. 

At the end of the two month period the local workers met in a local Social Club to share and collate the information before write up on a number of laptop computers.

We have Rights project.