ABSTRACT
The pressure for engaging communities and neighbourhoods directly in developing and delivering local services has grown enormously from the late 1990s and is now inescapable. While some professionals may still harbour the illusion that public involvement occurs at their invitation, citizen participation in the overseeing and delivery of local services is a necessary segment of practice that cannot be selectively invoked when convenient. One reason for this is that the public at large has changed its attitude toward service providers; it expects to have greater weight in the overall structure and content of services. Professional training no longer provides that mystique of knowledge separating the professional from lay people – instead, the division that does exist is between service practitioners with control over resources and an intelligent citizenry that wants those resources used in a direction of their own making.
