Locality Profile Meetings

Key Lessons

• The face to face set up of the group discussion was beneficial for hearing suggestions and thoughts first hand and allowed the Partnership Officers to explain why information was or was not included.
• It was important to have a person present who understood the data so they could answer any questions and explain why it was presented in certain ways. 
• It was helpful to have a member of the Shetland Partnership Management and Leadership Team present as this enabled attendees to speak to someone with influence who could both answer questions and take away information.
• Good attendance is important. Here, attendance ranged from 3-10 community participants. At the events with lower numbers, more attendees may have allowed further conversation.  It is important to understand why numbers may have been low and work towards improving attendance in the future.
• It was good practice to create a friendly atmosphere. This was achieved by having a local Community Worker present and directing the meeting as more of an informal chat.
• It was important to acknowledge feedback and take this on board.

Feeding Back the Results

Most feedback was gathered during the discussions, with any additional comments passed on later by the Community Workers. The final drafts were created with any suggested changes that were possible. For example, some wording was changed to make things clearer to understand and to highlight what was important to communities in the descriptive introduction. Where changes couldn’t be made, the Community Workers explained the reasons. Some information that couldn’t be included because of a lack of space - like the names of sites of special scientific interest for example - were given to attendees in person or sent to individuals after the meeting.