Community centre policy

Contents | Foreword | Context of the policy | Auckland City's role | Policy framework | Philosophy of operation for community centres | Governance and management of community centres | Support for community centres | Measuring the success of community centres | Monitoring and review of the policy | Appendix one

Appendix one

Identifying and prioritising local community needs

Identifying needs is a common sense process of understanding what the local community needs from a community centre, and how the centre might respond.

This requires the community centre manager, and where relevant governance committee, to access general and demographic information (gained via council staff, community members, and agencies working with the community) to determine who 'the community' is in terms of the different demographic groups.

Having established who 'the local community' is, the community centre manager will use their general and demographic information to determine:

• what the specific needs of groups in the community are that a community centre might accommodate
• which groups with identified needs are currently using the community centre
• which groups with identified needs are not currently using the community centre
• what other resources exist in the community to meet local needs.

Prioritising needs in the local community

Responding to the needs identified in the local community may introduce competing priorities between individuals or groups. A process for prioritising needs would consider the individual's or group's relative disadvantage in terms of:

• isolation and access (e.g. home bound, lack of transport, disability, language or other barriers to participating in the community)
• ability of individuals or groups to access other facilities or services in the community
• opportunities available to meet the needs elsewhere in the local community
• whether the group was in the local geographic catchment (eg. the local area that the community centre serves)
• whether the need is linked with the purpose of community centres (e.g. the need for space to run an election campaign or small business would not be part of a community centre's purpose).

Published June 2002