The community safety and well-being planning framework outlined in this section will help to guide municipalities, First Nations communities and their partners as they develop their local plans. It is crucial for all members involved in the planning process to understand the following four areas to ensure local plans are as efficient and effective as possible in making communities safer and healthier:

  1. social development
  2. prevention
  3. risk intervention, and
  4. incident response

Social development

Promoting and maintaining community safety and well-being

Social development requires long-term, multi-disciplinary efforts and investments to improve the social determinants of health (i.e., the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age such as education, early childhood development, food security, quality housing, etc.) and thereby reduce the probability of harm and victimization. Specifically, social development is where a wide range of sectors, agencies and organizations bring different perspectives and expertise to the table to address complex social issues, like poverty, from every angle. The key to successful social development initiatives is working together in ways that challenge conventional assumptions about institutional boundaries and organizational culture, with the goal of ensuring that individuals, families and communities are safe, healthy, educated, and have housing, employment and social networks that they can rely on. Social development relies on planning and establishing multi-sectoral partnerships. To work effectively in this area, all sectors need to share their long-term planning and performance data so they have a common understanding of local and systemic issues. Strategies need to be bolstered or put into place that target the root causes of these issues. Social development in action will be realized when all community members are aware of the services available to them and can access those resources with ease. Knowing who to contact (community agency versus first-responder) and when to contact them (emerging risk versus crisis incident) allows communities to operate in an environment where the response matches the need. Communities that invest heavily in social development by establishing protective factors through improvements in things like health, employment and graduation rates, will experience the social benefits of addressing the root causes of crime and social disorder.

Prevention

Proactively reducing identified risks

Planning in the area of prevention involves proactively implementing evidence-based situational measures, policies or programs to reduce locally-identified priority risks to community safety and well-being before they result in crime, victimization and/or harm. In this area, community members who are not specialists in “safety and well-being” may have to be enlisted depending on the priority risk, such as business owners, if the risk is retail theft, and property managers, if the risk is occurring in their building. Service providers, community agencies and organizations will need to share data and information about things like community assets, crime and disorder trends, vulnerable people and places, to identify priority risks within the community in order to plan and respond most effectively. Successful planning in this area may indicate whether people are participating more in risk-based programs, are feeling safe and less fearful, and that greater engagement makes people more confident in their own abilities to prevent harm. While planning in this area is important, municipalities, First Nations and their partners should be focusing their efforts on developing and/or enhancing strategies in the social development area to ensure that risks are mitigated before they become a priority that needs to be addressed through prevention.

Risk intervention

Mitigating elevated risk situations

Planning in the risk intervention area involves multiple sectors working together to address situations where there is an elevated risk of harm - stopping something bad from happening, right before it is about to happen. Risk intervention is intended to be immediate and prevent an incident, whether it is a crime, victimization or harm, from occurring, while reducing the need for, and systemic reliance on, incident response. Collaboration and information sharing between agencies on things such as types of risk has been shown to create partnerships and allow for collective analysis of risk-based data, which can inform strategies in the prevention and social development areas. To determine the success of strategies in this area, performance metrics collected may demonstrate increased access to and confidence in social supports decreased victimization rates and the number of emergency room visits. Municipalities, First Nations and their partners should be focusing their efforts on developing and/or enhancing strategies in the prevention area to ensure that individuals do not reach the point of requiring an immediate risk intervention.

Incident response

Immediate response to urgent incident

This area represents what is traditionally thought of when referring to crime and safety. It includes immediate and reactionary responses that may involve a sense of urgency like police, fire, emergency medical services, a child welfare organization taking a child out of their home, a person being apprehended under the Mental Health Act, or a school principal expelling a student. Many communities invest a significant amount of resources into incident response, and although it is important and necessary, it is reactive, and in some instances, enforcement-dominated. Planning should also be done in this area to better collaborate and share relevant information, such as types of occurrences and victimization, to ensure the most appropriate service provider is responding. Initiatives in this area alone cannot be relied upon to increase community safety and well-being.

Refocusing on collaboration, information sharing and performance measurement

In order for local plans to be successful in making communities safer and healthier, municipalities, First Nations and their partners need to refocus existing efforts and resources in a more strategic and impactful way to enhance collaboration, information sharing and performance measurement. This can be done by identifying the sectors, agencies and organizations that need to be involved, the information and data required, and outcomes to measure the impacts of the plan. Different forms of collaboration, information sharing and performance measurement will be required in each of the planning areas (i.e., social development, prevention, risk intervention and incident response). Those involved in the plan should be thinking continuously about how their respective organizational strategic planning and budgeting activities could further support strategies in the plan.

Conclusion

Planning should occur in all four areas, however, the majority of investments, time and resources should be spent on developing and/or enhancing social development, prevention and risk intervention strategies to reduce the number of individuals, families and communities that reach the point of requiring an incident response. Developing strategies that are preventative as opposed to reactive will ensure efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of safety and well-being service delivery across Ontario. It is also important to explore more efficient and effective ways of delivering services, including front-line incident response, to ensure those in crisis are receiving the proper supports from the most appropriate service provider. Keeping in mind the focus on the community safety and well-being planning framework, the next section will highlight critical success factors for planning.