Community governance

Abstract

The theme of this article is current developments in community governance (see, for example, Rolfe, 2016), but it comes with a warning: this is an area where definitions are extremely difficult and it is easy to become distracted by semantics, rather than focused on the substance. Discussion is further complicated by the variety of practice, the many different approaches which can come under the umbrella of community governance, and the formal responsibilities of local government in different jurisdictions: local government in England and Wales has significant social service delivery responsibilities (albeit typically under fairly tight government requirements), but in both Australia and New Zealand local government’s actual involvement in social service delivery is relatively minimal, although Australian local government does have a role in care both of older people and of children, especially in the provision of childcare centres.