>
About Us
>
Safer Community Planning
>
Safety Audits
>
Regional Initiatives
>
Neighbourhood Initiatives
>
Working at the Provincial
Level & Beyond
>
Publications
>
Links
>
Contact Us
Find out what's going on in your neighbourhood! Click here to find out about the James-Alexander community, or click here to find out about the Cairnsmore community. Remember to check back often for news and community updates!
|
|
Neighbourhood |
Community Development
Safer
Community Planning
Safer Futures works with communities to develop Community Safety Strategies that articulate goals and action plans for creating safer, healthier communities.
Community safety issues are complex and inter-related. These issues require comprehensive efforts that:
- promote equitable opportunities for a good quality of life
- narrow the gaps between advantage and disadvantage
- ensure healthier children, stronger families and more cohesive communities.
Community safety issues affect everyone. However, those who are the most vulnerable can be severely limited in the way they can use and be part of their communities. This includes everyday activities like shopping and recreation, and also major life decisions about education, work and where to live.
Community safety strategies must be based on an understanding of physical, social and systemic obstacles to safety and access experienced by women, children and other vulnerable groups.
They must include both planning and community development improvements and ensure ongoing consideration of safety and quality of life in decision-making processes.
The Safer Communities Approach
Safer Community Planning
Community Engagement
Local Government's Role
The Safer Communities Approach
Our work is based on the Safer Communities Approach, which recognizes the importance of violence prevention, and the need for initiatives that address factors of economic, political, and social inequality that lie at the root of crime, victimization and fear.
The approach recognizes that:
- Crime, victimization and fear are the visible results of problems. The challenge is to address the root issues, and increase or support the factors that offset the causes of violence.
- This means working to reduce risks for offending AND address the vulnerability of individuals and neighbourhoods.
Factors affecting safety are diverse and include gender, age, abilities, income, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The solutions lie in healthier, safer and more caring communities that respect the needs of those who experience barriers to participation.
The Safer Communities approach focuses on prevention of crime and victimization, and looks at a whole range of factors that contribute to community health and safety – the physical, social, economic, political, environments that can contribute to or detract from people’s ability to participate in community life.
This approach includes a gendered analysis*, and focuses on the vital role community planning and development can play in creating a safer community.
*Note: A gendered analysis necessarily factors in other inequalities based on class, ability, race, sexuality, income, language, and age.
Safer Community Planning
Community planning and development provide a critical foundation for healthy communities.
Planning influences the range of factors that influence our quality of life - local economic development, housing development and design, parks and recreation program provision, public transportation, and the design and maintenance of public facilities.
As such, it plays a fundamental role in the everyday life of citizens, influencing everything from our access to employment opportunities, to our ability to integrate work and family obligations, to our ways of getting from one place to another.
Safer Community Planning is a way for communities to integrate into their vision and goals for a safer, healthier community into community development processes.
Safer Community Planning involves:
- Developing a clear understanding of root issues
- Engaging community in dialogue
- Building comprehensive, integrated strategies that include
- Physical design for safety and access
- Social and community development
- Economic strategies
- Systemic change
Community Engagement
Safer Futures has extensive experience in community engagement, particularly with citizens who experience barriers to participation.
Strategies for building safer communities must be based on an understanding of both the physical and social obstacles to safety experienced by women and other vulnerable groups. It is essential that this work is carried out at the local level, and that it is guided by a collaborative community-based process.
Meaningful community involvement is the first step and the key to building an effective community safety strategy. It is essential to look at community environments from the perspective of those most vulnerable to violence and to engage those groups in a meaningful way in the identification of issues and implementation of solutions.
However inadvertently, existing consultation processes often pose barriers to inclusion for many people, and may ‘miss’ important issues. For example, timing and structure of public meetings, formal language and jargon used in the process, issues around child care and transportation, accessibility for people with disabilities, as well as other issues around language and culture, can make participation difficult or an intimidating prospect for many people.
There are a variety of tools and strategies that can help to promote participation. The Safety Audit Tool is an excellent mechanism for consulting with and involving women in the process.
Other options include:
- Moving meetings to comfortable places where people already gather
- Varying times and places of meetings
- Ensuring meeting locations are readily accessible by public transit
- Ensuring sites are accessible for people with disabilities
- Developing policies to ensure childcare is available at meetings and creating childcare subsidies
- Creating user-friendly brochures and pamphlets that clearly explain processes and regulations, such as how to bring issues forward, rules of meetings, etc.
- Encouraging a diversity of voices to be heard by holding smaller and well-facilitated meetings
- Reaching out and forming partnerships with community groups that do not readily engage in government processes, such as women’s organizations, immigrant societies, anti-poverty groups, seniors, etc.
The Role of Local Government
Since our inception, Safer Futures has worked with local governments to provide assistance in integrating community safety into planning processes through:
- Research
- Safety Audits
- Community engagement
- Policy development
Local governments can play a critical role in creating safer communities through their various roles as civic leaders, employers, planners, managers of community environments, and providers of recreational and social services.
Community planning and development are the foundation for healthy communities. Planning influences the range of factors that influence our quality of life - local economic development, housing development and design, parks and recreation program provision, public transportation, the design and maintenance of public facilities.
Planning influences everything from our access to employment opportunities, to our ability to integrate work and family obligations, to our ways of getting from one place to another.
Because of their role and responsibilities in this area, local governments are uniquely placed to provide the leadership necessary for a sustainable, integrated approach that addresses all of the factors that are important to people’s quality of life.
Indeed, many local governments across Canada are now recognizing that in order to achieve their goals for healthy, safe and vibrant communities, they must adopt new strategies that incorporate objectives for safer communities.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities recognizes that building safer communities for women is essential from both a community / social development and crime prevention perspective.
In our work with local government, Safer Futures has found that almost every function has some relation to public safety and access for women and other vulnerable groups. For example, a seemingly benign decision about where to locate a bus stop and how to program the bus schedule can have a different (and significant) impact on single mothers who do not own cars than on two parent families with vehicles.
|
|
|
