Baroness Newlove launched her ‘call to action’ for community safety today.
She is working with ministers to encourage local people, businesses and frontline workers (like the police) on what more they can do to make their communities safer.
The Baroness is keen to find what initiatives are being effective in various communities up and down the country in terms of community safety – so other areas can take them up if they think they would work for them.
She is going to go around the country visiting projects and meeting people who have helped make a difference in their area, witnessing first-hand what works and what the barriers are to successful community activism.
The Baroness has become a blogger! She is keen to communicate directly with activists and the wider public, sharing on-going learning from her visits, highlighting innovation and challenges and signposting people to useful resources – and reporting back to ministers next year detailing how Government can empower local people and communities in their endeavours.
For more details on Baroness Newlove’s progress – you can log on to her blog here.
Lynne Featherstone 
It was a refreshing pleasure to meet someone representing government with a genuine passion and ability to relate to and understand communities at grassroots level when Baroness Newlove visited the Cutsyke Community Group at their drop-in centre on Wednesday 15th December. As the Headteacher (now former) of the primary school that serves the Cutsyke area I actively encouraged the group as it supported and complimented the work of the school in raising standards of behaviour in the community (not just in school). The many activites offered through the centre have helped to address the well-being, confidence-building and esteem needs of individuals in the community, which I believe are a prerequisite to any meaningful academic learning and achievement. The school’s priorities during my period of leadership were very much focused on these needs and many children coming from a non-academic background made good progress. However, this did not lead to sustained improvement in English and Maths, though the school did enjoy success and recognition by the government for it’s improved progress 2002 – 2005 being 13th most improved nationally and I received an invitation to Downing Street to a special reception to clelbrate this achievement. The impact of the school and more particularly Cutsyke Community Group on behaviour has been very pleaseing. The narrowing of the curriculum as proposed in the new white paper is not a good step forward for communities like Cutsyke and the government should take a closer look at their needs as these are the communities which will raise standards from grassroots level.