Improvement East is the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (RIEP) for the East of England.

Improvement East are an active member of the Regional Empowerment Partnership, and funded a significant amount of activity in 2009/10.  Transtion funding from Improvement East has been secured to deliver the following activity in 2010/11:

• Action Research: started in 2009, testing three different approaches in the region (guided by the NI4 Working Group).  The research is addressing the following:
  • Identifying what Local Authorities and Voluntary and Community Sector organisations are implementing in order to address and improve performance of NI4;
  • Discovering some of the deeper qualitative issues and underlying causes that enable residents to feel they can or cannot influence decisions in their locality through interactive inquiries and meetings with various audiences (e.g. NI4 leads, Local Authority officers and members, partner organisations and residents of the area).
  • Asking residents what they think would have the deepest/longest lasting impact on their attitudes regarding NI4;  
  • Producing a list of practical interventions that Local Authorities/partner organisations may use to help them deliver and improve their performance of NI4.
• Empowering Authorities: contribution to learning events/seminars to disseminate the good practice work of the 'Developing Practice Hubs', part of the National Empowering Authorities Network (NEA), using the NEA Framework, including work on the efficiency/business case.
• Citizen engagement tools training: it is envisaged that the tools training sessions for 2010/11 will repeat the popular sessions of 2009/10 which covered Voice & Eco, the Empowerment Toolkit, Climate Change tools, the Building Futures Game, the Excellence Framework, Making Connections and the Diversity Game.  All tools are suitable for Officers and Members of Local Authorities.

For more information, please email empowerment@inspire-east.org.uk.

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