RESPECT

Both Pennine and Trans-Pennine have now signed up to the Government's Respect Agenda. The Standard, which is aimed at council and housing association landlords, is built around six core commitments:

• Accountability, leadership and commitment

• Empowering and reassuring residents

• Prevention and early intervention

• Tailored services for residents and provision of support for victims and witnesses

• Protecting communities through swift enforcement

• Support to tackle the causes of anti-social behaviour

Pennine now has a 12-month action plan in place, setting out how they are going to meet each of 6 core commitments. Pennine has recently appointed a Family Intervention Worker whose role will be to work with potential problem families, co-ordinating the delivery of services and using a combination of support and sanction to motivate families to change their behaviour.

Pennine is using a number of different methods to bring Respect into our communities:

Early Intervention work - Engaging with young people/adults and providing them with opportunities to contribute to their communities and deal with issues before they become problems.

Enforcement work - Pennine uses all enforcement and legal powers at its disposal (e.g. ASBOs, ABCs, eviction orders, etc) to take action against people who are committing anti-social behaviour.

Partnership Working - Amanda stressed the importance of partnership working with other agencies such as the Police, Council, Fire Brigade, CALM, etc in dealing with the causes of anti-social behaviour.

At our August meeting we will be having a fuller discussion about Pennine's Action plan for dealing with Anti-Social Behaviour and there will also be a roadshow touring Calderdale raising awareness of the Government's Respect agenda at the end of July and early August.

Where to next for the Federation????

The last year has seen a lot of change taking place in how the Federation delivers its service to Tenants Associations. We now have three Working Groups in place and they each have a different area of responsibility; Big Picture Group looks at wider housing issues, Training Group sort out the Federation's training package and the TARA Support Group visit both new and existing tenants groups to raise awareness of the work of the Federation.

Overall we're really happy with the way the changes have been embraced by members -- you'll always get one or two people who 'knock' things but quite often those individuals go out of their way to find faults which is the 'no brain option' -- the hard bit is rising above this and looking at how we can build on the positive things that are happening.

At the June Federation meeting we split up into smaller groups and came up with some really exciting ideas for how we can further improve the Federation, these included:

•   Visits to the new Pennine Sheffield estates and to Green Vale Homes

•   Running an 'Involving Young People' conference/training day

•   Setting up a Young People's Fed'

•   Developing links with other similar Federations

•   Organising an 'Introduction to using the Internet' training day

•   Sending out regular bulletin of housing news, press cuttings and information

•   More awareness raising about current housing issues

•   Setting up a Social Committee and running more social activities eg Quiz Night, Proms in the Park, Race Evening, Blackpool Trip, etc

•   Having a competition to design a poster and tickets for New Year Party

Some of these ideas we can get on and organise immediately eg the Quiz Night, visits and the training days, others will take a bit longer.