Section 6 - Toolkit for Community Safety and Well-being planning

The ministry has prepared a toolkit to assist municipalities, First Nations and their partners in developing, implementing, reviewing, evaluating and updating a local plan. These tools have been tested by Ontario communities and include valuable feedback from local practitioners across the province. Overall learnings from these communities have been incorporated into the toolkit, including the processes undertaken to develop local plans.

The following toolkit includes:

• Tool 1 - Participants, roles and responsibilities
• Tool 2 - Start-up
• Tool 3 - Asset mapping
• Tool 4 - Engagement
• Tool 5 - Analyzing community risks
• Tool 6 - Performance measurement
• Appendix A - Information sharing
• Appendix B - Engaging youth
• Appendix C - Engaging seniors
• Appendix D - Engaging Indigenous partners
• Appendix E - Definitions
• Appendix F - Risk and protective factors
• Appendix G - Community safety and well-being sample plan

In addition, as part of the Provincial approach to community safety and well-being, the ministry has developed other resources that are available to municipalities, First Nations and their partners to support local community safety and well-being planning.  These include:

• Crime prevention in Ontario: A framework for action
• Community safety and well-being in Ontario: A snapshot of local voices

Tool 1 – Participants, roles and responsibilities

The champion and coordinator(s)

Each community will approach community safety and well-being planning from a different perspective and starting point that is specific to their unique needs, resources and circumstances. Some communities may have champions and others may need to engage them to educate the public and serve as a face for the plan. In municipalities, the community safety and well-being planning process should be led by a clearly identifiable coordinator(s) that is from the municipality. In First Nations communities, the coordinator(s) may be from the Band Council or a relevant agency/organization.

Role of champion(s)

Champions are public figures who express their commitment to community safety and well-being planning and rally support from the public and community agencies/organizations. It should be an individual or group who has the ability to motivate and mobilize others to participate, often because of their level of authority, responsibility or influence in the community. The more champions the better. In many communities this will be the mayor and council, or Chief and Band Council in a First Nations community.

A champion may also be a:

• community health director
• local elected councillor at the neighbourhood level
• chief medical officer of health
• municipal housing authority at the residential/building level
• School board at the school level

Role of the coordinator(s)

The coordinator(s) should be from an area that has knowledge of or authority over community safety and well-being, such as social services. As the coordinator(s) is responsible for the coordination/management of the plan, this should be someone who has working relationships with community members and agencies/organizations and is passionate about the community safety and well-being planning process.

Key tasks of the coordinator(s)

• The key tasks include recruiting the appropriate agencies/organizations and individuals to become members of an advisory committee. This should include multi-sectoral representation and people with knowledge and experience in responding to the needs of community members.

The City of Brantford is best positioned in terms of resources, breadth of services and contact with the public to both address risk factors and to facilitate community partnerships. Specifically, the City can access a wide range of social services, housing, child care, parks and recreation and planning staff to come together to create frameworks that support community safety.
Aaron Wallace, City of Brantford

Responsibilities of the coordinator(s)

• planning and coordinating advisory committee meetings
• participating on the advisory committee
• planning community engagement sessions
• ensuring the advisory committee decisions are acted upon
• preparing documents for the advisory committee (for example, terms of reference, logic model(s), the plan)
• receiving and responding to requests for information about the plan
• ensuring the plan is made publicly available

See Appendix F for risk and protective factors, Tool 6 for guidance on performance measurement and Appendix G for a sample plan.

Advisory committee

The advisory committee should be reflective of the community and include multi-sectoral representation. For example, a small community with fewer services may have seven members, and a larger community with a wide range of services may have 15 members. It may involve the creation of a new body or the utilization of an existing body. To ensure the commitment of the members of the advisory committee, a document should be developed and signed that outlines agreed upon principles, shared goals, roles and resources (for example, terms of reference).

Members of the advisory committee

• Member agencies/organizations and community members recruited to the advisory committee should be reflective of the diverse make-up of the community and should have:
  • knowledge/information about the risks and vulnerable populations in the community
  • lived experience with risk factors or part of a vulnerable group in the community
  • understanding of protective factors needed to address those risks
  • experience developing effective partnerships in the community
  • experience with ensuring equity, inclusion and accessibility in their initiatives
  • a proven track record advocating for the interests of vulnerable populations.

• Individual members will ideally have the authority to make decisions on behalf of their respective agencies/organizations regarding resources and priorities, or will be empowered to do so for the purposes of developing the plan.
• Advisory committees should, at a minimum, consist of the following representation:
  • an employee of the municipality or First Nations community
  • a person who represents the education sector
  • a person who represents the health/mental health sector
  • a person who represents the community/social services sector
  • a person who represents the children/youth services sector
  • a person who represents an entity that provides custodial services to children/youth
  • a person who represents the police service board or a Detachment Commander.

See Tool 2 for guidance on start-up and Tool 3 for guidance on asset mapping.

Responsibilities of the advisory committee

• Leading community engagement sessions to inform the development of the plan.
• Determining the priorities of the plan, including references to risk factors, vulnerable populations and protective factors.
• Ensuring outcomes are established and responsibilities for measurement are in place and approving performance measures by which the plan will be evaluated, as well as the schedule and processes used to implement them.
• Ensuring each section/activity under the plan, for each priority risk, is achievable.
• Ensuring the right agencies/organizations and participants are designated for each activity.
• Owning, evaluating and monitoring the plan.
• Aligning implementation and evaluation of the plan with the municipal planning cycle and other relevant sector specific planning and budgeting activities to ensure alignment of partner resources and strategies.
• Setting a future date for reviewing achievements and developing the next version of the plan.
• Thinking about ways in which the underlying structures and systems currently in place can be improved to better enable service delivery.

See Tool 4 for guidance on engagement and Tool 5 for analyzing community risks.

Key tasks of the advisory committee

• Developing and undertaking a broad community engagement strategy to build on the members’ awareness of local risks, vulnerable groups and protective factors.
• Developing and maintaining a dynamic data set, and ensuring its ongoing accuracy as new sources of information become available.
• Determining the priority risk(s) that the plan will focus on based on available data, evidence, community engagement feedback and capacity.
  • After priority risks have been identified, all actions going forward should be designed to reduce these risks, or at least protect the vulnerable groups from the risks.
• Based on community capacity, developing an implementation plan or selecting, recruiting and instructing a small number of key individuals to do so to address the selected priority risk(s) identified in the plan.

Implementation teams

For each priority risk determined by the advisory committee, if possible and appropriate, an implementation team should be created or leveraged to implement strategies (for example, programs or services) to reduce the risk. The need for implementation team(s) will depend on the size and capacity of the community and the risks identified. For example, a small community that has identified two priority risks that can be effectively addressed by the advisory committee may not require implementation teams. On the other hand, a large community with six priority risks may benefit from implementation teams to ensure each risk is addressed. They may also establish fewer teams that focus on more than one priority risk. If planning partners determine it is appropriate for them to have a new implementation team to ensure the commitment, a document should be developed and signed that outlines agreed upon principles, shared goals and roles.

It’s important to ensure that committee members want to be there and have a strong understanding of safety and well-being planning.
Dana Boldt, Rama Police Service

Members of implementation teams

Members of the implementation team(s) should be selected based on their knowledge of the risk factors and vulnerable groups associated with the priority, and have access to relevant information and data. They may also have lived experience with risk factors or be part of a vulnerable group in the community. Members of implementation teams should have:

• In-depth knowledge and experience in addressing the priority risks and which protective factors and strategies are needed to address those risks.
• A proven track record advocating for the interests of vulnerable populations related to the risk.
• The ability to identify the intended outcomes or benefits that strategies will have in relation to the priority risk(s) and suggest data that could be used to measure achievement of these outcomes.
• Experience developing effective stakeholder relations/partnerships in the community.
• Experience ensuring equity, inclusion and accessibility in their initiatives.

See Tool 6 for guidance on performance measurement and Appendix G for a sample plan.

Responsibilities and tasks of implementation teams

• Identify strategies, establish outcomes and performance measures for all four planning areas related to the priority risk, including promoting and maintaining community safety and well-being, reducing identified risks, mitigating elevated risk situations and immediate response to urgent incidents.
• Engage community members from the vulnerable populations relevant to the priority risk to inform the development of the strategies in each area.
• Establish an implementation plan for the strategies in each area which clearly identifies roles, responsibilities, timelines, reporting relationships and requirements.
• Monitor the actions identified in the implementation plan, whether it is the creation, expansion and/or coordination of programs, training, services, campaigns, etc.
• Report back to the advisory committee.

Tool 2 – Start-up

Once partners involved in community safety and well-being planning have established an advisory committee or implementation team(s), they should document important information pertaining to each group, including background/context, goals/purpose, objectives and performance measures, membership, and roles and responsibilities. Making sure that everyone knows what they are trying to achieve will help the group(s) stay on track and identify successes of the plan.

For many planning partners, this will be done using a terms of reference. The following was created to guide the development of this type of document. Some planning partners may decide to develop a terms of reference for their advisory committee and each implementation team, while others may decide to develop one that includes information on each group; this will depend on a variety of factors such as the community’s size, their number of risk factors and implementation team(s).

Background and context

When developing a terms of reference, planning partners may wish to begin by providing the necessary background information, including how they have reached the point of developing an advisory committee or implementation team, and briefly describing the context within which they will operate. This should be brief, but include enough detail so that any new member will have the necessary information to understand the project’s context.

Goals and purpose

Planning partners may then wish to identify:

• the need for their advisory committee or implementation team (i.e., why the group was created and how its work will address an identified need)
• the goal(s) of their group/project - goal is a big-picture statement, about what planning partners want to achieve through their work – it is the change they want to make within the timeframe of their project.

Objectives and performance measures

If the planning partners’ goal is what they plan to achieve through their work, then their objectives are how they will get there – the specific activities/tasks that must be performed to achieve each goal. It is important to ensure that goals and objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused and Time-bound (SMART) so that partners will know exactly what information to look at to tell if they have achieved them. Information and data that help planning partners monitor and evaluate the achievement of goals and objectives are called performance measures or performance indicators. See Section 5 - Ontario’s way forward for more information and guidance on performance measures.

For each goal identified, planning partners may list specific objectives/deliverables that will signify achievement of the goal when finished. For each objective/deliverable, they may list the measures that will be used to evaluate the success of the results achieved. To help planning partners stay organized, they may wish to create a chart such as the one below, which includes example goals/objectives and performance measures. These may look different for the advisory committee and implementation team(s). For example, the goals/objectives of the advisory committee may relate to the development of the plan, where the goals/objectives of an implementation team may be related to reducing a specific risk identified in the plan through the expansion of an existing program. Planning partners should develop their own goals/objectives and performance measures depending on need, resources and capacity.

Goal/Objectives

Goal: To engage a diverse range of stakeholders in the development and implementation of the plan.

Objective: Develop a community engagement/communications strategy.

Performance Measures:

• number of engagement sessions held
• number of engagement sessions held
• number of community members and organizations that see their role in community safety and well-being planning
• knowledge of what community safety and well-being planning means and association with the plan brand

Goal: To reduce youth homelessness

Objective: To help youth without a home address find stable housing

Performance measures:

• number of youth accessing emergency shelters
• number of youth without a home address
• number of youth living/sleeping on the streets
• number of youth living in community housing

Goal: Increased educational attainment rates

Objective: To prevent youth from leaving school and encourage higher education

Performance measures:

• number of youth dropping out of high-school
• number of youth graduating high-school
• number of youth enrolling in post-secondary education
• number of youth graduating from post-secondary education
• education sessions held for post-secondary institutions
• number of youth meeting with academic advisors

Membership

Planning partners’ terms of reference should also identify the champion and coordinator(s) of their plan and members of the advisory committee or implementation team(s) by listing the names and agencies/organizations of each member in a chart (see example below). This will help to identify if there are any sectors or agencies/organizations missing and ensure each member is clear about what their involvement entails.

Notes:

• The champion is a public figure who expresses their commitment to developing and implementing a plan and rallies support from the public and community agencies/organizations. The coordinator(s), from the municipality or Band Council, should be responsible for the coordination/management of the plan and should be someone who has working relationships with community members and agencies/organizations and is passionate about the community safety and well-being planning process.
• Member agencies and organizations recruited to the advisory committee should have knowledge of and supporting data about the risks and vulnerable populations in the area to be covered under the plan, as well as have established stakeholder relations. Members must have the authority to make decisions on behalf of their respective agencies/organizations regarding resources and priorities, or will be empowered to do so for the purposes of developing the plan.
• Members of the implementation team(s) should be selected based on their knowledge about the risk factors and vulnerable groups associated with the priority, have access to more information about them, have established stakeholder relations with the vulnerable groups to effectively carry out the project, experience with developing and implementing local strategies, and have the specialized knowledge and technical capacities to specify objectives, set benchmarks and measure outcomes.
• It is important to include community leaders/organizations that advocate for the interests of the vulnerable populations on both the advisory committee and implementation teams. It is also important to ensure representation from diverse communities and equity, inclusion and accessibility in the planning and implementation of initiatives.

Name:
Mayor John B.

Organization:
City of X

Role:
Champion – advocates for the plan through public speaking engagements, etc.

Name:
Jane D.

Organization:
City of X

Role:
Coordinator – coordinates meetings, assists in planning community engagement sessions, records meeting minutes, etc.

Name:
Shannon T.

Organization:
Public Health Centre

Role:
Member – attends meetings, identifies potential opportunities for collaboration with organizations activities, etc.

Roles and responsibilities

It will also be important for planning partners to define the specific functions of their advisory committee or implementation team(s) to ensure that its members understand what they are trying to achieve and ultimately what they are responsible for.

See advisory committee responsibilities and implementation team responsibilities.

Logistics and process

Planning partners should also document logistics for their advisory committee or implementation team(s) so that its members know how much of their time they are required to commit to the group and are able to plan in advance so they can attend meetings as required. This may include:

• membership (for example, identifying and recruiting key stakeholders)
• frequency of meetings
• quorum (how many members must be present to make and approve decisions)
• meeting location
• agenda and materials
• meeting minutes, and
• expectations of members

Support and sign-off

Finally, after all members of the advisory committee or implementation team(s) agree to the information outlined above, in order to solidify their acceptance and commitment, each member should sign the terms of reference.

Tool 3 – Asset mapping

Achieving community safety and well-being is a journey; before partners involved in the development of a plan can map out where they want to go, and how they will get there, they need to have a clear understanding of their starting point. Early in the planning process, they may wish to engage in asset mapping to help to:

• identify where there is already work underway in the community to address a specific issue and to avoid duplication
• identify existing strengths and resources
• determine where there may be gaps in services or required resources, and
• capture opportunities

Mapping community assets involves reviewing existing bodies (i.e., groups/committees/boards), analyzing social networks, and/or creating an inventory of strategies. This will help to ensure that planning is done as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Existing body inventory

When the community safety and well-being planning coordinator(s) from the municipality or Band Council is identifying members of their bodies to assist in the development and implementation of their plan, creating an inventory of existing bodies will help to determine if it is appropriate for them to take on these roles. Often there is repetition of the individuals who sit on committees, groups, boards, etc., and utilizing a body that already exists may reduce duplicative efforts and ultimately result in time savings.

Mapping existing bodies is also beneficial in order to make connections between a community’s plan and work already being done, revealing potential opportunities for further collaboration.

The chart below outlines an example of how bodies may be mapped:

Social network mapping

Social network mapping is used to capture and analyze relationships between agencies/organizations within the community to determine how frequently multi-sectoral partners are working together and sharing information, and to assess the level of integration of their work. This information may be collected through surveys and/or interviews with community agencies/organizations by asking questions such as: What agencies/organizations do you speak to most frequently to conduct your work? Do you share information? If yes, what types of information do you share? Do you deliver programs or services jointly? Do you depend on them for anything?

Relationships may be assessed on a continuum such as this:

Collecting this information will allow planning partners to identify relationship gaps and opportunities. For example, through this exercise there may be one agency/organization that has consistently low levels of collaboration or convergence with others. In this case, the community safety and well-being planning coordinator(s) from the municipality or Band Council may wish to reach out to their local partners, including those represented on their advisory committee, to develop strategies for enhancing relationships with this agency/organization. If appropriate, this may involve inviting them to become involved in the advisory committee or implementation team(s).

Strategy inventory

When deciding on strategies to address priority risks within a plan, it is important to have knowledge of strategies (for example, programs, training, etc.) that are already being offered within the community. In some instances, a community may have several programs designed to reduce an identified risk, but there is a lack of coordination between services, resulting in a duplication of efforts. The community safety and well-being planning coordinator from the municipality or Band Council may then bring each agency/organization together to develop an approach to more efficiently deliver that strategy. Other planning partners may find that there are significant service gaps in relation to a specific area of risk, and that implementing a new strategy in order to close the gap may have a significant impact on the lives of the people experiencing that risk.

To assist with planning, it may be helpful to identify the risks addressed by each strategy, the area of the framework that the program falls under (i.e., social development, prevention, risk intervention and incident response), funding, and anticipated end dates. This will provide a sense of what strategies have limited resources and lifespans, as well as insight into which strategies may require support for sustainability.

When undertaking this exercise, planning partners may develop a template similar to this

Tool 4 – Engagement

In the development of local plans, municipalities or Band Councils should conduct community engagement sessions to ensure a collaborative approach and inform the community safety and well-being planning process. Partners may want to create promotional and educational materials in order to gain public support for and encourage participation in the plan. They may want to collect information from the community to contribute to the plan (i.e., identifying and/or validating risks).

This section is intended to guide planning partners as they develop communication materials and organize community engagement; each section may be used for either purpose.

Introduction and background

Planning partners may begin by providing the necessary background and briefly describing the context of community safety and well-being planning.

Purpose, goals and objectives

Planning partners may then wish to identify why communication materials are being developed and/or why the community is being engaged by asking themselves questions such as: What are the overall goals of the plan? What are the specific objectives of the communication materials and/or community engagement sessions?

Stakeholders

A plan is a community-wide initiative, so different audiences should be considered when encouraging involvement in its development/implementation. For a plan to be successful in enhancing community safety and well-being, a variety of diverse groups and sectors must be involved in the planning process.

This may include:

• community members with lived experiences and neighbourhood groups, including but not limited to individuals from vulnerable groups, community youth and seniors (see Appendix B for Engaging Youth and Appendix C for Engaging Seniors), faith groups, non-for-profit community based organizations and tenant associations
• local First Nations, Métis and/or Inuit groups, on or off reserve, and urban Indigenous organizations (see Appendix D for Engaging Indigenous Partners)
• police, fire, emergency medical and other emergency services, such as sexual assault centres and shelters for abused women/children, to collect data on the occurrences they have responded to most frequently, as well as relevant locations and vulnerable groups
• acute care agencies and organizations, including but not limited to child welfare and programs for at-risk youth, mental health, women’s support, primary health care, addictions treatment, to collect information on the people they serve
• health agencies and organizations, including but not limited to Public Health Units, Community Care Access Centres, Community Health Centres, Indigenous Health Access Centres, and long-term care homes
• social development organizations, such as schools and school boards, social services, youth drop-in centres, parental support services, community support service agencies and Elderly Persons Centres, to collect information on the people they serve
• cultural organizations serving new Canadians and/or ethnic minorities, including Francophone organizations
• private sector, including but not limited to bankers, realtors, insurers, service organizations, employers, local business improvement areas, local business leaders and owners, to collect information about the local economy.

Develop an engagement strategy that is manageable and achievable given the resources available — you won’t be able to engage every single possible partner, so focus on a good variety of community organizations, agencies and individuals and look for patterns.
Lianne Sauter, Town of Bancroft

Planning partners should consider keeping a record of the groups that they have reached through community engagement, as well as their identified concerns, to support the analysis of community risks for inclusion in their plan.

See Tool 5 for guidance on analyzing community risks.

Approach

In order to gain support and promote involvement, planning partners should think about how they can best communicate why they are developing a plan and what they want it to achieve. Some planning partners may do this through the development of specific communication tools for their plan. For example, one community that tested the framework and toolkit created a name and logo for the work undertaken as part of their plan — Safe Brantford — and put this on their community surveys, etc. This allows community members to recognize work being done under the plan and may encourage them to become involved.

Additionally, when planning for community engagement, partners involved in the plan should think about the different people, groups or agencies/organizations they plan to engage with, and the best way to engage them. They should ask themselves questions such as: what information do I want to get across or get from the community and what method of communication or community engagement would help me do this most effectively? For example, planning partners could have open town hall meetings, targeted focus groups by sector, one-on-one interviews with key people or agencies/organizations, or provide an email address to reach people who may be uncomfortable or unable to communicate in other ways. They may also distribute surveys and provide drop-boxes throughout the community. It is important to consider not only what planning partners want to get from engaging with community members, stakeholders and potential partners, but also what they might be hoping to learn or get from this process. As much as possible, partners to the plan should use these considerations to tailor their communication/community engagement approach based on the people/groups they are engaging.

See Appendix B for guidance on engaging youth and Appendix C for guidance on engaging seniors.

Materials and messaging

Based on the type of engagement undertaken, planning partners may need to develop supporting materials to share information about their work and to guide their discussions. Materials should strive to focus the discussions to achieve the intended objectives of the engagement sessions, and may include some key messages about the community’s work that they want people to hear and remember. Regardless of the audience, partners to the plan should develop basic, consistent information to share with everyone to ensure they understand what is being done, why they are a part of it, and what comes next. It will be important to ensure that materials and messages are developed in a way that manages the expectations of community members — be clear about what can be achieved and what is unachievable within the timeframe and resources.

With that, planning partners should ensure that all materials and messaging are accessible to a wide range of audiences, so that everyone is able to receive or provide information in a fair manner. For additional information, please refer to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005.

Logistics

When engaging the community, it will be important to have logistics sorted out so that the individuals/groups targeted are able to attend/participate. To do this, planning partners may want to consider the following:

• scheduling (for example, How many community engagement sessions are being held? How far apart should they be scheduled? What time of day should they be scheduled?)
• finances (for example, Is there a cost associated with the meeting space? Will there be snacks and refreshments?)
• travel accommodations (for example, How will individuals get to the community engagement sessions? Is it being held in an accessible location? Will hotel arrangements be required?)
• administration (for example, consider circulating an attendance list to get names and agency/organization and contact details, assign someone to take notes on what is being said at each session), and
• accessibility issues/barriers to accessibility (for example, information or communication barriers, technology barriers and physical barriers).

Risks and implications

While community engagement should be a key factor of local plans, some planning partners may encounter difficulties, such as resistance from certain individuals or groups. To overcome these challenges, they should anticipate as many risks as possible, identify their implications and develop mitigation strategies to minimize the impact of each risk. This exercise should also be done when developing communication materials, including identifying potential risks to certain messaging. This may be done by using a chart such as the one below.

Risk

• Organizations from various sectors do not see their role in community safety and well-being planning.
• Individuals experiencing risk will not attend or feel comfortable speaking about their experiences.
• Outspoken individuals who do not believe in planning for community safety and well-being in attendance.

Implication

• Risks are not being properly addressed using a collaborative, multi-sector approach.
• Information collected will not reflect those with lived experience.
• Opinions of everyone else in attendance may be negatively impacted.

Mitigation strategy

• Reach out to multi-sector organizations and develop clear communication materials so they are able to clearly see their role.
• Engage vulnerable groups through organizations that they may be involved with (for example, senior’s groups, homeless shelters, etc.).
• Assign a strong, neutral individual who holds clout and feels comfortable taking control to lead the engagement session.

Community engagement questions

Whether planning partners are engaging individual agencies/organizations one-on-one or through town hall meetings, they should come prepared to ask questions that will allow them to effectively communicate what they want to get across or information they want to receive. Questions asked may vary depending on the audience. For example, a neighbourhood-wide town hall session might include only a few open-ended questions that initiate a broad discussion about a range of safety and well-being concerns. A more focused community engagement session with a specific organization or sector might include questions that dive deeper into a specific risk, challenges in addressing that risk, and potential strategies to be actioned through the plan to mitigate those risks.

Timelines

To ensure all required tasks are completed on time or prior to engagement, planning partners may wish to develop a work plan that clearly identifies all of the tasks that need to be completed in advance.

This may be done using a chart such as this:

Activity/task

• Prepare a presentation with discussion questions.
• Reach out to community organizations that work with vulnerable groups for assistance in getting them to the sessions.

Lead(s)

• Kate T. (municipality) and Shannon F. (public health).
• Fionne P. (municipality) and Emily G. (education).

Timelines

• Two weeks in advance of engagement session.
• Twelve weeks in advance of engagement session.

Tool 5 – Analyzing community risks

One of the ways partners involved in planning may choose to identify or validate local risks is through town hall meetings, where agencies/organizations and community members are provided with an opportunity to talk about their experiences with risk. Others may decide to have one-on-one meetings with community agencies/organizations or focus groups to discuss risks that are most common among those they serve.

This section is intended to assist planning partners in capturing the results of their community engagement, including who was engaged, what risks were identified, and how those risks can be analyzed and prioritized. This process will be crucial as they move towards developing risk-based approaches to safety and well-being.

Summary of community engagement sessions

Planning partners may begin by writing a summary of their community engagement sessions, including the time period in which they were conducted, types of outreach or communication used, successes, challenges and findings, and any other key pieces of information or lessons learned. They may then record the people, agencies/organizations and sectors that were engaged and participated in their community engagement sessions in a chart similar to the one below, in order to show the diverse perspectives that have fed into their plan, and to help assess whether there are any other groups or sectors that still need to be engaged.

Sector/vulnerable group – Organization/affiliation

Health

• hospital
• public health unit
• community care access centre

Education

• school board
• high school principal
• alternative education provider

Housing

• community housing office
• landlords

Emergency responders

• police service/ontario provincial police
• fire department
• ambulance

Social services

• employment centre
• family/parenting support services
• community recreation centre
• women’s shelters
• local Indigenous agencies

Mental health and addictions

• treatment/rehabilitation centre
• mental health advocacy
• addiction support group

Indigenous peoples

• band/tribal councils
• local Indigenous community organizations (for example, local Métis Councils)
• local Indigenous service providers (for example, Indigenous Friendship Centres)

At-risk youth

• youth from the drop-in centre

Seniors

• elder abuse response team
• community support service agencies

Identified risks

Planning partners will then want to capture the risks identified through their community engagement, and indicate who has identified those risks. If a risk has been identified by many different sectors and agencies/organizations, it will demonstrate how widely the community is impacted by that risk, and will also indicate the range of partners that need to be engaged to address the risk. Examples of this kind of information are included in the table below.

Risk

• Missing school – chronic absenteeism
• Physical violence - physical violence in the home
• Housing – person does not have access to appropriate housing

Identifying sectors/organizations/groups

• principal, school board, police, parents in the community
• women’s shelter, police services, hospital, school, child welfare agency
• emergency shelter, police, mental health service provider, citizens

Priority risk analysis

Once planning partners have compiled the risks identified through their community engagement, it is likely that some will stand out because they were referenced often and by many people, agencies/organizations. These risks should be considered for inclusion in the priority risks that will be addressed in the plan. The number of risks planning partners choose to focus on in their plan will vary between communities and will depend on the number of risks identified and their capacity to address each risk. For example, planning partners from larger communities where multiple risks have been identified may choose to have five priority risks in their plan. On the other hand, planning partners from smaller communities with multiple risks identified may choose to address three priority risks. Partners should not include more risks than they have the resources and capacity to address.

There are some priorities that seem to affect many sectors on different levels through preliminary discussion. Data reports and community engagement sessions will assist in the overall identification of prioritized risks for initial focus within the plan.
Melissa Ceglie, City of Sault Ste. Marie

Additionally, planning partners should refer to local research to support and/or add to priority risks identified during their community engagement. This is important as in order for plans to effectively increase a community’s safety and well-being, they should focus on risks that experience and evidence show are prevalent. When analyzing the identified risks to determine which ones will be priorities, and how they would be addressed in the plan, planning partners may wish to walk through and answer the following questions for each risk:

• What is the risk?
  • For example, is the risk identified the real problem, or is it a symptom of something bigger? As with the above example of the risk of poor school attendance, planning partners might think about what is causing students to miss school, and consider whether that is a bigger issue worth addressing.
  • Which community members, agencies/organizations identified this risk, and how did they describe it (i.e., did different groups perceive the risk in a different way)?
• What evidence is there about the risk – what is happening now?
  • How is this risk impacting the community right now? What has been heard through community engagement?
  • Is there specific information or data about each risk available?
  • How serious is the risk right now? What will happen if the risk is not addressed?
• What approach does the community use to address what is happening now?
  • Incident response or enforcement after an occurrence.
  • Rapid intervention to stop something from happening.
  • Implement activities to reduce/change the circumstances that lead to the risk.
  • Ensure that people have the supports they need to deal with the risk if it arises.
• How could all of the approaches above be used to create a comprehensive strategy to address each priority risk that:
  • Ensures all community members have the information or resources they need to avoid this risk.
  • Targets vulnerable people/groups that are more likely to experience this risk and provide them with support to prevent or reduce the likelihood or impact of this risk.
  • Ensures all relevant service providers work together to address shared high-risk clients in a quick and coordinated way.
  • Provides rapid responses to incidents using the most appropriate resources/agencies?
• Where will the most work need to be done to create a comprehensive strategy to address the risk? Who will be needed to help address any existing service gaps?

Risk-driven tracking database

Tool 6 – Performance measurement

In the development stage of a plan, it is necessary to identify and understand the key risks and problems in the community and then to explore what can be done to address them.

In order to choose the best strategies and activities for the specific risk or problem at hand, partners involved in planning should seek out evidence of what works by conducting research or engaging others with experience and expertise in that area. Leverage the strengths of existing programs, services or agencies/organizations in the community and beyond to implement activities that are proven to achieve results and improve the lives of those they serve.

At the planning stage, it is also important to identify the intended outcomes of those activities in order to measure performance and progress made towards addressing identified problems. Outcomes are the positive impacts or changes activities are expected to make in a community. Some outcomes will be evident immediately after activities are implemented and some will take more time to achieve. Whether planning for incident response, mitigating elevated risk situations, working to reduce identified risks, or promoting and maintaining community safety and well-being through social development, it is equally important for planning partners to set and measure their efforts against predetermined outcomes.

When performance measurement focuses on outcomes, rather than completion of planned activities, it presents opportunities for ongoing learning and adaptation to proven good practice. Performance measurement can be incorporated into the planning process through a logical step-by-step approach that enables planning partners to consider all the components needed to achieve their long-term outcome, as outlined below.

• Inputs: financial, human, material and information resources dedicated to the initiative/program (for example, grant funding, dedicated coordinator, partners, analysts, evaluators, laptop, etc.).
• Activities: actions taken or work performed through which inputs are used to create outputs (for example, creation of an advisory committee and/or implementation team(s), development, ehancement or review of strategies in social development, prevention, risk intervention or incident response, etc.).
• Outputs: direct products or services resulting from the implementation of activities (for example, multi-sector collaboration, clients connected to service, development of a plan, completion of a program, etc.).
• Immediate Outcomes: change that is directly attributable to activities and outputs in a short time frame. Immediate outcomes usually reflect increased awareness, skills or access for the target group (for example, increased awareness among partners and the community about the plan and its benefits, increased protective factors as a result of a program being implemented like increased self-esteem, problem solving skills, etc.).
• Intermediate Outcomes: Change that is logically expected to occur once one or more immediate outcomes have been achieved. These outcomes will take more time to achieve and usually reflect changes in behaviour or practice of the target group (for example, increased capacity of service providers, improved service delivery, reduction of priority risks, etc.).
• Long-term Outcome: The highest-level change that can reasonably be attributed to the initiative/program as a consequence of achievement of one or more intermediate outcomes. Usually represents the primary reason the intiative/program was created, and reflects a positive, sustainable change in the state for the target group (for example, improved community safety and well-being among individuals, families and communities, reduced costs associated with and reliance on incident responses, etc.).

When choosing which outcomes to measure, it is important for planning partners to be realistic about what measurable impact their activities can be expected to have in the given timeframe. For example, their project goal might be to reduce the number of domestic violence incidents in the community. This would require sustainable changes in behaviour and it may take years before long-term trends show a measurable reduction. It may be easier to measure immediate to intermediate level outcomes such as increased speed of intervention in situations of high-risk for domestic violence, or increased use of support networks by victims or vulnerable groups.

A logic model should be completed during the planning phase of the plan in order to map out the above components for each identified risk or problem that will be addressed. Please see below for a logic model sample.

Following the identification of outcomes, corresponding indicators should be developed. An indicator is an observable, measurable piece of information about a particular outcome, which shows to what extent the outcome has been achieved. The following criteria should be considered when selecting indicators:

• relevance to the outcome that the indicator is intended to measure
• understandability of what is being measured and reported within an organization and for partners
• span of influence or control of activities on the indicator
• feasibility of collecting reasonably valid data on the indicator
• cost of collecting the indicator data
• uniqueness of the indicator in relation to other indicators
• objectivity of the data that will be collected on the indicator, and
• comprehensiveness of the set of indicators (per outcome) in the identification of all possible effects

Outcomes, indicators and other information about the collection of indicator data should be mapped out early on in order to ensure that performance measurement is done consistently throughout the implementation of activities, and beyond, if necessary. This information forms the performance measurement framework (PMF) of the plan (or for each risk-based component of the plan). Please see below for a sample PMF template where this information may be captured.

A PMF should be completed to correspond with a logic model, as follows:

1. Specify the geographical location; a bounded geographical area or designated neighbourhood.
2. From the Logic Model, list the identified outcomes at the immediate, intermediate and long-term level, as well as the outputs. It is important to measure both outputs and outcomes – output indicators show that planning partners are doing the activities they set out to do, and outcome indicators show that their activities and outputs are having the desired impact or benefit on the community or target group.
3. Develop key performance indicators;
   • Quantitative indicators – these are numeric or statistical measures that are often expressed in terms of unit of analysis (the number of, the frequency of, the percentage of, the ratio of, the variance with, etc.).
   • Qualitative indicators – qualitative indicators are judgment or perception measures. For example, this could include the level of satisfaction from program participants and other feedback.
4. Record the baseline data; information captured initially in order to establish the starting level of information against which to measure the achievement of the outputs or outcomes.
5. Forecast the achievable targets; the “goal” used as a point of reference against which planning partners will measure and compare their actual results against.
6. Research available and current data sources; third party organizations that collect and provide data for distribution. Sources of information may include project staff, other agencies/organizations, participants and their families, members of the public and the media.
7. List the data collection methods; where, how and when planning partners will collect the information to document their indicators (i.e., survey, focus group).
8. Indicate data collection frequency; how often the performance information will be collected.
9. Identify who has responsibility; the person or persons who are responsible for providing and/or gathering the performance information and data.

Sample logic model

Priority/risks: poor school performance, low literacy, low graduation rates

Vulnerable/target group: youth and new immigrants

Long-term outcome: Increased Community Safety and Well-being

Intermidiate outcome: Increased Educational Attainment

Immediate outcomes:

• community is better informed of issues faced related to community safety and well-being (education specifically)
• impacts of not graduating from high-school communicated to students, community members and service providers
• increased access to education for students in receipt of social assistance
• expansion of lunch-time and after-school reading programs in schools

Outputs:

• 47 youth and youth service providers engaged in the plan
• awareness of evidence-based strategies to increase graduation
• partnerships created between local university, college, social services
• 25 students from low income neighbourhoods provided access to free summer tutoring

Activities:

• distribution of engagement survey
• community engagement sessions
• one-on-one meetings with local university, college and social services
• broker partnerships between social services, neighbourhood hubs, library and school boards

Inputs:

• over 1,000 hours of the community safety and well-being planning coordinator's time
• 2,000 copies of an engagement survey
• refreshment and transportation costs for engagement sessions
• 500 hours of the manager of strategic planning and community development's time
• five hours of time dedicated by representatives of the local college, university, social service center, school board and library

Sample performance measurement framework