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Citizen empowerment

Public services should reflect the needs and aspirations of those who use them by giving greater power to people to control services, both as individuals and members of communities. In addition, citizens need to have the opportunities and support required to work collaboratively with services to meet their needs - parents with schools, patients with doctors, residents with police. Enabling opportunities for greater control over services and collaboration with services rely on providing greater information to citizens, helping them understand their own needs and the performance of local services.

Some recent examples of this approach include:

• The Children's Plan [External website] published December 2007 by the Department for Children, Schools and Families [External website] sets out new ways of giving parents a greater role in their children's education.
  The Children's Plan: One Year On: A progress report [External website] – gives a comprehensive summary of the work done by DSCF and its partners in 2008 and details the approach in 2009 and beyond.
• Communities in control: real people, real power [External website] published July 2008 by Communities and Local Government sets out how central and local government can act more strategically by giving local communities the power to drive real improvements in everything from the way their neighbourhoods are policed to the way that community assets are used.
• From the neighbourhood to the national: policing our communities together [External website] the policing Green Paper published July 2008 by the Home Office [External website] contains proposals to empower citizens to hold their local police to account through new elected crime and policing representatives.

Other examples can be found on the Excellence and Fairness links page

• Citizen empowerment section of policy toolkit

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