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;