The Local Leadership Programme (LLP) was initiated in November 2018 to address policy problems (including high crime neighbourhoods) that are extremely complex or ‘wicked’ and require new collective approaches. It brings together leadership teams to identify and examine such problems, to engage with relevant research and evidence and to develop potential solutions. The LLP aims to:

• Help to improve local capacity to deal with complex problems
• Increase learning about how to improve social programmes, and to harness the collective planning and implementation expertise of participants

The Programme provides a supportive, deliberative, and collaborative space in which to turn ideas into actions in supporting local initiatives while cultivating a sustainable leadership network within communities. The programme examines what it means to be evidence-informed, what this can bring to improving outcomes, and what is required to bring about positive change.

Background to the programme: Tackling complex problems
The Programme is designed for people with responsibility for addressing complex problems. While the causes of such problems are structural and rooted in poverty, inequality and deprivation, they also involve difficulties or limitations with services or facilities, and feature people whose behaviour causes difficulties to themselves and others.

A deliberative space
The fundamental purpose of the Programme is to provide a safe, deliberative space for frontline practitioners and others with a vested interest in addressing issues that have been illusive to effective responses. Initially participants collectively identify commonalities in relation to a given problem. They then form small task groups to select and fully examine the nature, characteristics, and challenges of the problem in terms of how its causes, its direct and indirect effects, and how it sustains itself. Complex problems require thorough understanding, which means that the process involves drawing on participants’ tacit knowledge, generating fresh questions and insights, and not rushing to come up with answers. To date, programmes have been held in Dublin’s north and south inner city, Limerick, West Kerry, Cork and Galway.

P.5 Research Evidence into Policy Programmes and Practice (REPPP) at the University of Limerick is a research collaboration between the School of Law and the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration aimed at improving the evidence base in relation to youth crime and youth justice reform in Ireland. REPPP’s research activities are informed by and support the Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027 (Department of Justice, 2021). The University of Limerick’s Local Leadership Programme (LLP) was developed by REPPP and piloted in Dublin’s north-east inner city (NEIC) in 2019. The purpose of the programme is to provide participants with the space and possibly new tools to relook at what may have been to date intractable problems in their community or their area of work and co-design better solutions. The programme offers places to professionals, usually preferencing frontline practitioners from the statutory, community and voluntary sectors with the demonstrable capacity to bring energy, critical thinking, imagination, leadership, and influence to addressing the problems they face. The problems may be ‘wicked’ by nature and not amenable to simple solutions (Rittel and Webber, 1973). At local level, wicked problems include criminal activity, community safety issues, drug and substance misuse, poor educational achievement or impaired community efficacy and are often associated with modern ‘developed’ societies where existing policy and service infrastructures can be part of the problem...