ESB: Review of Standards for
Community Development
Despite the strange times we have been living through, there has been much work going on the background and we are seeking your help to progress our review of Community Development Practitioner Knowledge and Skills. We plan to spend the next 9 months reviewing what we have that still works and what doesn’t and we'd like to invite you to find out more and get involved. Click here for more information.
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The Endorsement and Quality Standards Board for Community Development Learning (ESB) was set up in 1997 through a series of community development conferences in England called Towards 2001.
ESB aims to provide a robust system of endorsement of quality for all types of training and learning in Community Development. Our role is to ensure quality standards in training and learning for community development practitioners. ESB contributes to a proficient community development workforce accessing high quality learning through the endorsement of different learning opportunities.
ESB is an independent company ltd by guarantee and has chosen not to seek public funding; it generates income through its endorsement processes and its paid for consultancies with universities and other organisations who wish to develop new community development programmes.
ESB engages with the wider field of community development learning through its involvement in:
- The development and updating of the Community Development National Occupation Standards
- Creating new qualifications
- Contributing to the QAA benchmarks for Youth and Community Work and engaging in consultations
- Consulting and working with others to establish the criteria for endorsement
- The ETS committee of NYA. ESB is recognised by NYA as an equal endorsement/ validation partner; ESB has a seat on the ETS and together ESB and the ETS undertake joint validations of youth and community programmes
- Having a seat on the TAG secretariat and undertakes joint work with TAG.
- Working in partnership with other bodies, sometimes running workshops at their conferences
- Being involved in international work
- Commissioning research into relevant aspects of community development practice and learning
- The steering group for the research being conducted By IVAR for the Local Trust
Our general guidance is below but any internal University changes to exceptional arrangements take precedence over this and we will review at the end of October as the situation becomes clearer across the HE sector.
ESB-endorsed degree programmes specify a required amount of supervised practice and require that practice is completed to a required standard. This supervised reflective practice is central to the achievement of an award recognising the Community Development skills the successful student holds.
ESB are keen to ensure that processes and agreements are put in place to support the community development sector. This applies to:
- Students who may have a need to shield or whose placement is no longer operating
- HEIs in offering recognised programme content to students and employers who partner on the programme delivery
- Future employers of graduating students with the expected community development skills
- Communities who are supported by the community development workers of the future
The steps outlined below are intended to support the needs of each of the above in these changing times. Additionally, the stages outlined below have been produced while seeking to ensure that:
- Students are not unnecessarily disadvantaged by their adoption (no detriment in QAA speak)
- Attempting to avoid compounding issues by requiring students to catch up as well as completing academic work and further placement activity
- Considering alternative measures including digital work for evidencing competence
- Trusting the professional judgement of teams offering endorsed community development programmes
While applying this information, the importance to students, their placements, future employers and the university reputation all require that this is balanced with ensuring all steps possible can be adopted to produce graduates best able to work within community development
However, with ongoing and regularly changing Covid 19 situations locally, it is expected that many students will be unable to complete these requirements as originally scheduled. Additionally, as needs for social distancing and self-isolation are likely to continue for the foreseeable future, we have therefore updated our guidance as follows.
Read more: ESB Covid-19 Quality Assurance Update for Endorsed Courses January 2021
The first Community Work skills manual was published in 1979 as a way for community workers to share their work and ideas with other community workers; since then there have been another 3 community work skills manuals produced, each one bigger than the last as people were very willing to share their practice and learning and so assist with the development of the skills and knowledge of community work. The last two skills manuals can be found here on skillsmanual.org
ESB recognises the phenomenal amount of energy and work that has been undertaken at grass roots / community level during the Covid-19 crisis and before it all gets lost we would like to create a new version of the Skills Manual of many of the ideas and actions that sprung up and to learn from the many different initiatives that were set up. It would give us an opportunity to celebrate all the usually invisible activities that happen at grass roots that are rarely recognised or acknowledged.
If you are or were involved in any community initiative(s) during the past few months and would be willing to share what happened and what was learned we would love to hear your stories. It seems unlikely that this will be the last pandemic or substantial crisis that affects all communities and hearing about what ideas were tried this time can help us prepare for the next crisis.
The manual will be published on line and will grow as more examples are contributed. Please get involved and share your practice with us! Visit the Skills Manual website to find out more or contact us here at ESB.
Our general guidance is below but any internal University changes to exceptional arrangements take precedence over this and we will review at the end of October as the situation becomes clearer across the HE sector.
ESB-endorsed degree programmes specify a required amount of supervised practice and require that practice is completed to a required standard. This supervised reflective practice is central to the achievement of an award recognising the Community Development skills the successful student holds.
ESB are keen to ensure that processes and agreements are put in place to support the community development sector. This applies to:
- Students who may have a need to shield or whose placement is no longer operating
- HEIs in offering recognised programme content to students and employers who partner on the programme delivery
- Future employers of graduating students in employing students with the expected community development skills
- Communities who are supported by the community development workers of the future
The steps outlined below are intended to support the needs of each of the above in these changing times. Additionally, the stages outlined below have been produced while seeking to ensure that:
- Students are not unnecessarily disadvantaged by their adoption (no detriment in QAA speak)
- Attempting to avoid compounding issues by requiring students to catch up as well as completing academic work and further placement activity
- Considering alternative measures including digital work for evidencing competence
- Trusting the professional judgement of teams offering endorsed community development programmes
Read more: ESB Covid-19 Quality Assurance Update for Endorsed Courses
ESB Statement on Covid-19 and Changes to placement hours and other pandemic-related allowances
ESB expects that any student or participant beginning a course from September 2022 will complete a full allocation of placement hours. Any other pandemic related allowances agreed with ESB will end at this time too (September 2022).
Students who have begun their course before September 2021 need to work within the Covid-19 response agreements given to individual institutions on placement hours.
We welcome discussion if you need any support relating to this. Please contact us