• Community engagement in context
  • Community engagement - an overview
  • Community engagement in a representative democracy
  • Key challenges for the public sector
  • Implications for public sector managers
  • The context for engagement
  • Clues to good community engagement
• Planning CE
  • Community engagement and the policy/planning cycle
  • Project goals
  • When is engagement necessary?
  • Community engagement objectives
  • Community research
    • Media research
    • Community profiling
    • Community segmentation
    • Community and issues analysis
  • Key communication messages
  • Selection of engagement techniques
  • Managing risk
  • Evaluation planning
  • Planning transition and exit strategies
• Implementing CE
  • Working with communities
  • Organisational culture
  • Resourcing
  • Structures and processes
  • Continuity and follow up
  • Representation and control
  • Coordination
  • Other issues
  • Embedding good practice
• Methods
  • Overview of methods
  • Methods of information-sharing
  • Methods for consultation and deliberation
  • Methods for active participation
  • Advanced participative methodologies
  • Choosing an engagement method
• Event management
  • Event engagement processes
  • Choosing a facilitator
  • Structuring the event
• Evaluating CE
  • Introduction to evaluation
  • Principles of evaluation
  • Identifying outputs and outcomes
  • Purpose and approach to evaluation
  • Evaluation criteria and indicators
  • Methods of measuring community engagement
  • Steps in evaluating community engagement
• Risk management
  • Identifying risks
  • Assessing risk
  • Managing external risks
  • Managing internal risks
  • Risk assessment and management plan
• Skills
  • Community engagement skills profile
  • Options for skills development
  • Building the skills of your team

Continuity and follow up

Managers must not only manage quality engagement activities but, in some situations, also maintain ongoing involvement. Ideally, community engagement involves a long-term relationship between agencies and communities. Engagement activities are part of this ongoing relationship, rather than being stand-alone events.

Key questions	Tips for good management
How is feedback going to be given? What are the best ways to maintain continuity of contact with different communities? What staff have the best relationship with various stakeholders and what contingencies should be considered to maintain stakeholder contact? How can staff be supported to continue to engage without being captured by particular community groups?	Ask community members at engagement events how they would like to receive feedback and progress reports. Negotiate expectations – not all input will necessarily be acted on. Provide several methods through which people can be involved. Initiate contact with communities to update them on the results of engagement.

• One of the most important contributors to engagement is continuity of contact between agencies and communities. A major criticism of community engagement events is that community people don’t hear what happened with their input and that there was little follow-up. Engagement involves not just input from communities but an obligation by agencies to feed back information and progress reports, including advice regarding the way community input was considered within decision-making processes.
• The contact between agencies and communities is often mediated through relationships between individuals. This contact can be interrupted by staff changes, transfers, etc. Management arrangements need to include ways to maintain community contact, given these changes.
• The different time frames of communities and government need to be managed. Community relationships and partnership involve a long-term commitment, yet the realities of political terms and budgets necessarily have a shorter time frame.