Community Consultation & Involvement

We value the opinions of everyone in Shetland. We are working with other organisations to link various ways of hearing these opinions, and to ensure people of all ages are offered a variety of ways to influence the decisions that affect Shetland. Only by engaging with local communities can we develop services that meet local needs and aspirations. The Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) sets out 10 National Standards for Community Engagement that can be used to develop and support better working relationships between communities and agencies delivering public services.

The Council has in place which are followed by employees to ensure we have in place a consistent approach to the way we involve communities:

Date	Title	Format	Size
17/05/2011	Community Consultation and Engagement Guide	PDF	210 KB

Current Consultation

An library of current consultation can be found here.

Community Profiles

The Community Work Team, Shetland Islands Council, have developed a number of Community Profiles, to capture key data about each area of Shetland to inform services and service planning. These can be found here.

VOiCE

VOiCE is an online planning and recording tool designed to assist individuals and organisations to design and deliver effective community engagement. The VOiCE tool was created by the Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) following the creation of the National Standards for Community Engagement in 2005. The VOiCE tool is widely used in Shetland and training is available through the Policy Unit.

Your Voice

Your Voice is a citizens panel made up of 600 people throughout Shetland who put their name forward to help with a twice yearly questionnaire. You can access the results of all 8 surveys, which are run twice a year, at "Your Voice". The findings are made available to our partner organisations throughout Shetland who deliver services to the public, to assist them in policy making and community planning.

Guidelines for services wishing to use Your Voice are available here.

Youth Voice & Scottish Youth Parliament

Shetland Youth Voice is open to all young people aged 12 - 25 and allows them the opportunity to feed into the democratic process at a local, national and international level. Youth Voice provides young people the opportunity to be an active citizen within their local communities.

The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), which generally meets four times a year, discusses issues which affect young people across Scotland and tries to propose innovative and sometimes radical solutions to these problems and situations.

Notes and findings from Youth Voice and Scottish Youth Parliament meetings can be found via the links below:

Policy
Shetland Islands Council
Town Hall
Hillhead
Lerwick
Shetland
ZE1 0HB

Phone: (01595) 744537 or 01595 74 3728
Email: policy@shetland.gov.uk