Category: community

As we approach the Easter holidays, and we anticipate the easing of the COVID restrictions I want to use this week’s community safety blog to highlight a programme of Community safety activities that are scheduled for the next few weeks. The Forth and Clyde Canal from Lock 16 to the Falkirk Wheel will be the focus of two full days of Canal clear up and conservation work and also happening is a series of COVID proofed community litter picks which will all take place as a part of our local Tidy, Clean and Green Campaign.

Firstly, through funding that has been awarded by the Falkirk Great Place Project and with the support of Scottish Canals, The Conservation Voluneers and Falkirk Council Waste Services we will be launching the Canal Clear up and conservation Project. Initially this will involve local young people working on the canal over the school holidays, and this will include a water based clear up and a land-based conservation project. The young people will also take part in a workshop on the theme of keeping the community tidy, clean, and green and taking pride in Falkirk.  Every participating young person will have their volunteering rewarded with a Saltire Challenge Award and also by receiving a certificate of achievement from all the organising partner organisations. Central to this Project is to instil a sense of awareness with the young people about the importance of looking after our green spaces and through their own significant contribution to their conservation and improving the litter problems. This will be carried out in a challenging and enjoyable way. New skills will be learnt in watercraft and using paddle boards which will enable all the participants to gain their Paddle Start Award. This has really been a collaboration of a Project and it will continue to run on a monthly basis from May through to August. I will be encouraging local people of all ages and experiences to come and join us for a day’s environmental work on the canal, places will be available for each month and I will advise the local community of how to get involved and book their place by the end of April, so please keep an eye out for this on the Our Place social media and other local forums. Everybody who takes part will have an opportunity to gain certificates for volunteering and several accreditations, they will learn new skills whilst making a positive contribution to their local community.

There will be three community litter picks taking place over the holidays and hopefully local people will be able to see a significant improvement to the chosen target areas. I know one of the challenges is keeping areas clean and tidy after they have been cleared, however there are plans to convert some of these bad grot spots into pop up parks and wildflower meadows and this will provide another opportunity for local activity as we move into spring and summer.  I am incredibly pleased to welcome the Addictions, Support and Counselling services Recovery community and the Cyrenians Navigator project who will be leading on two of the community litter picks which is a welcome development and I believe the beginning of a long-term community safety partnership. The third litter pick has been organised by local volunteers and I look forward to supporting them to clear a a particularly bad problem area in Camelon. I would want to point out that these litter picks all comply with COVID guidelines and will be carried out in pairs and will be fully physically distanced, and for these reasons I am unable to involve any additional people to these activities, however come May and onwards I hope that we are able to have a big community litter pick and outdoor activity at least once every calendar month.

The final action that I want to highlight is the new posters and signage that will be going up around the Camelon and Tamfourhill areas, it has a truly clear message and to remind everyone here is the competition wining drawing from Jaimee who is a Primary 7 pupil at Carmuirs Primary School, please keep an eye out for this character appearing on a rubbish bin near you.   

#tidycleangreen

John Muir Son of Scotland, born in Dunbar, father of the American National Parks and probably the world’s first conservationist and ecological campaigner.  The centenary of Johns death was in 2014 when the John Muir Way was opened to mark that anniversary, the walkway goes close by as it travels through Falkirk at https://johnmuirway.org/route/kilsyth-falkirk/ and then onto the next stage at https://johnmuirway.org/route/falkirk-linlithgow

A quick resume of his childhood takes us onto the beaches of south east Scotland, Dunbar castle and playing high risk dares with his younger brother David. Fathered by a strict disciplinarian lay preacher and facing terrible brutality on a daily basis, John nevertheless developed a spiritual closeness to nature and all things wild.  He was not a great school pupil and was often getting into trouble with the class teacher, skiving off his class work to go on adventures looking for birds’ nests, animals, and rock pools and he is on record as saying, “Dunbar was my teacher”. Years later he was awarded a university degree and was hailed as a genius by many in the USA and certainly by President Roosevelt who responded to John Muirs expeditions and political campaigning by ensuring that the National Parks were established in America and have continued to thrive and develop as a core aspect of American life and culture. Muir knew that we could not take nature for granted and that as human beings we had a responsibility to look after every living thing, our human existence and the natural world were totally intertwined in an absolute whole.   

The Muirs emigrated to Wisconsin in America when John was 10 years old and its somewhat ironic that the father of the American National Parks would not have seen a national park established in his home country of Scotland until 2002 when the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park opened. His biggest realisation was that the trees and forests were the lungs of the world, our source of oxygen and hence the air we breathe. He was a prolific writer and campaigner for the protection of those trees and forests and he demanded their protection from man’s continuous destruction of them for profit. Remember that he was writing and campaigning about these issues over 150 years ago and it is a sad indictment on our lack of vision, action and ongoing abuse of our environment when we declare have to declare in 2021 a worldwide climate emergency.

“I have never seen an unhappy tree”

The keep Camelon and Tamfourhill Tidy, Clean & Green campaign can embrace the spirit of John Muir in two interrelated ways, firstly by looking after our local Green spaces and actively improving and restoring them and secondly through encouraging local people to volunteer in local projects whilst undertaking their own John Muir Award.  

The John Muir Trust was established in 1983 with a view to connecting, protecting, restoring and rewilding land for the common good. “Alongside communities nationwide, we connect people with wild places, campaign to protect those places, and restore and rewild land for the common good.” A key feature then is to work with communities, a theme that myself and Dan touch upon with regularity, the Trust cares for over 600,000 acres of wild land, the vast majority in Scotland and the Trust works with communities to conserve and improve this land. The Trust also supports and coordinates the John Muir Award, which is made up of 4 distinct sections, Discover, Explore, Conserve, and share your experiences about a wild place. A wild place could be a garden, a bit of waste ground, Easter Carmuirs Park, the Forth and Clyde Canal or the woodland around Antoine’s wall, it could even be the old coffin alley that links Brown Street with Glasgow Road in Carmuirs. Anywhere you decide is your wild place counts and then you can carry out your own John Muir Award. There are three levels of Award: The Discovery Award, The Explorers Award and the Conservers Award and each Award will involve you taking part in longer periods of time with more detailed involvement with each of the four sections.  I hope that we can use the John Muir Discovery Award locally and that volunteers, community groups, local schools, families, and individuals can all do a John Muir Award and get themselves a nationally recognised certificate whilst contributing to keeping Camelon and Tamfourhill Tidy, Clean & Green.

You can find out all about the Award here: https://www.johnmuirtrust.org/john-muir-award

There will be opportunities in the near future for local people to start their own John Muir Awards. Firstly, there will be ongoing canal clear ups taking place, initially for young people during the Easter school holidays but thereafter there will be monthly Canal clear ups from May through to August, and I will be looking to support any individuals or local groups that would like to get involved with these clear ups to potentially develop this involvement as part of their own John Muir Award. These Canal clear ups have been supported through funding awarded by the Greater Places Falkirk National Lottery Heritage Project and the active inputs of TCV and Scottish canals. My recent discussions with the Addictions Support Counselling Recovery community and the Cyrenians Navigator Project have agreed that we would offer opportunities for their local volunteers to participate with conservation and outdoor work and this again will provide an ideal opportunity for those volunteers to undertake their own John Muir Award. This is part of the developing Community Safety strategy and will be in align with several of that strategies key outcomes, especially around improving our local green environment, supporting the community’s capacity to address ASB and provide additional opportunities for those in recovery to gain training and qualifications through volunteering.

More information about the John Muir Trust can be found here: https://www.johnmuirtrust.org/john-muir-award

And of possible interest is my own experiences of the River Devon Valley and my journey of exploration with John Muir:

https://www.jhosiesite.wordpress.com/

‘When a man plants a tree, he plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which he rests with grateful interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel the joy of living.’

The Scottish Community Safety Network’s ambition is that Community

Safety is valued and integrated across all relevant policy areas.

We are committed to working to achieve a fairer and more equal

Scotland.

It is abundantly clear that we have a Scottish General Election just around the corner, it will be a campaign like no other as hustings if they take place at all are likely to be virtual and public engagement is going to be extremely difficult and challenging. I really hope that this election campaign is not reduced to social media and the tabloid press as both platforms often shed more heat onto issues than any light or increased understanding.

Communities have many priorities and as I am writing up an interim community safety strategy for Camelon and Tamfourhill I am very conscious of an array of manifestos that are being published and all with the absolute and honourable intention of influencing the Political Parties in the run up to May’s election. In recent Blogs I have highlighted the Third Sector and their Manifesto for Change and the Walk Back Better from Paths for All and Ramblers Scotland both of immense local relevance. The manifesto of greatest importance however for community safety, and which will have a significant impact upon our local strategy, is the Scottish Community Safety Networks (SCSN) Manifesto for Safer Communities.  Although our local strategy and priorities will be a community led plan and will represent the voice of local people, we also have to acknowledge the wider national context that we operate within and be aware of the central driving forces of the main partners that we will be working with in the coming months.  

Let us consider the key features of the SCSN manifesto and clarify what this will mean locally for the communities of Camelon and Tamfourhill:

• Poverty: Within Camelon and Tamfourhill we have 3 areas within the 5% poorest of the Social Index of Multiple Deprivation in Scotland, that is unacceptable, and we know that inequality impacts upon our community’s health, life opportunities and performance at school. The manifesto states:  The SCSN would like a commitment to a Universal Basic Income, thus ensuring people have more money in their pockets, Cross sector action on eradicating poverty and a continual dialogue about the harms caused by poverty.
• Community Safety: This is a biggie for the Our Place Camelon and Tamfourhill Community Safety Strategy: The SCSN believes that communities will be safer if there is more involvement of people in communities in the planning, delivery, and development of the services that they use, they go onto stress the fundamental importance of youth work and Community Learning & Development and an emphasise upon working together through creating local partnerships which keep communities safe. This then will be the guiding principle of our local community safety strategy, it will promote community development and the local ownership of new projects and initiatives, especially with young people and the development of new local youth work opportunities.
• Crime and Justice: There is a call for a system based on rehabilitation and more evidence-based approaches to reducing crime. Key recommendations include: a request to further raise the age of criminal responsibility, decreasing the prison population and increasing confidence in community justice, early interventions, and a topic I have raised in recent weeks: the decriminalisation of drug use. Locally this will be reflected through prioritising the development of new Recovery services and breaking down social barriers whilst reducing the stigmatisation for those who have been touched by the criminal justice system.
• Unintentional harm and Injury: An increased focus on Home Safety, delivering more safe and affordable housing, highlighting a commitment to making roads safer and in particular 20 mph speed limits in all built up areas and a strong belief in place-based approaches in built environments. Locally we will work towards lower traffic neighbourhoods and in this respect, we are already developing work with a local Parent Council to develop- and resource a local pocket places safer school streets project.
• Community resilience and Participation: We believe that communities that have a sense of belonging, connection and control are safer communities. The manifesto promotes a trauma informed approach, encourages a commitment to increasing community participation, including the expansion of participatory budgeting, or community choices as it is described by Falkirk Council. Our Place recently supported local people to make a submission to the Community choices programme as part of the wider; Tidy, Clean and Green campaign and in particular to further the development of local pop-up parks.
• And Finally: In concluding the manifesto refers to a world beyond COVID where there are new opportunities in a society with increased kindness & compassion, zero tolerance of hatred and an increased focus on Human Rights and the incorporation of the UNCRC across policy and practice.

This is the wider context that our local community safety strategy will be placed within, it will be a very much local affair but one that draws strength and clarity of purpose from these manifesto aspirations, a final thought, are our would-be MSP’s listening to these aspirations for a fairer and more equal Scotland?

The full manifesto can be found at:  

SCSN Manifesto for 2021 Scottish Parliamentary Elections

https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-SLRX3LKC/

This was the community safety question of the month for February and posed on the Our Place social media platforms. It received the least amount of responses of all the previous questions asked and the results did surprise me: with 54% saying No, 33% Yes and 12.5% offering a mixture of views from favouring the legalisation of cannabis only and one person being totally opposed too any decriminalised use of drugs. This issue is very topical and the recent release of Scotland’s death rate through drug use was both very worrying and encouraged a wide range of responses or suggestions as to how matters might be improved. This off course shadows our fatality rates associated with alcohol which is legal to consume depending on your age yet there is no corresponding public demands for prohibition.

I have been attending a few webinars and presentations facilitated by an organisation called Home page – Recovering Justice they offer a radical rethink and strongly suggest that the Misuse of Drugs Act is of no use, it infringes human rights and hampers agencies from responding effectively to the harm caused by the use of drugs to individuals, families and the wider community. I heard solicitors, Police officers and workers from the health services and drugs agencies recount a catalogue of disasters and negative actions created through arresting and convicting problematic drug users for the possession of controlled drugs. When we begin to view dependency as a health matter and intervention as being about recovery and supporting individuals to deal with trauma in their lives then arrest and imprisonment is clearly not working.

This is a very different perspective to the views expressed in our main stream media:

As the community safety engager I am very aware about the levels of concern that exists in Camelon and Tamfourhill about substance use and many of its associated behaviours. The Community safety survey found that 75% of respondents were greatly or fairly concerned about drug dealing and this was in the main associated with class A drugs. My focus group sessions also identified anger and disappointment that drug use continued to be so blatant on the local streets and that drug users and their behaviours had an extremely negative impact upon the safety of local people. At a time when Government policy is moving towards treating this matter as a health problem and moving away from it being a criminal and policing matter, then it is clear from the community safety survey, the recent question of the month and my focus group sessions that the community is maybe not ready to accept or support the decriminalisation of drugs.

The interim Community safety strategy that I am compiling at the moment will take account of the community views and needs however it will need to also be set within the context of developing Scottish Government Policy and the approaches of the local drugs agencies and other statutory bodies like the police. I am working towards outcomes which will put Recovery at the centre of the local strategy but also activities which will build better community cohesion and provide opportunities for those individuals that are on the road to recovery to make a positive and constructive contribution to their local community. We should try and remember that we are all part of a community and it is through our support networks and positivity that we can make the difference to somebodies recovery journey and reduce the stigmatisation of those who have become dependent upon certain substances.

In the coming weeks in the community safety blog I am going to showcase some of the contributions made by our local drugs agencies’, I will endeavour to give some members of the recovery community a voice and I hope that colleagues from partner agencies will also write up some short narratives about their work and how they can all contribute to making Camelon and Tamfourhill a safer and happier place to live.

I found this overwhelming

In this week’s Community Safety Blog, I want to reflect upon community decision making and how as a model of active citizenship it can impact positively on all decision-making structures right up to national policy making in government. I have been reading the recently published Citizens Assembly Summary Report and as a model for involving ordinary people with the big issues of the day it has much to offer the practices of community empowerment. Citizens assemblies are new to Scotland, but they have been used successfully in many other nations, Australia, Canada France, Belgium, Poland and most recently the citizens’ assembly in the Republic of Ireland looked at issues including abortion, equal marriage and the opportunities and challenges of an ageing population.

Here are some very brief highlights lifted from our Scottish report:

6.

“The Citizens’ Assembly recommends that in order to

ensure that citizens can make informed decisions in

relation to rebuilding their communities the Scottish

Government and Parliament should:

establish community-based citizens’ assemblies

to assess what is happening in our communities

(including the effects of COVID-19), identify gaps

and recommend actions, including through digital

technology, that can bring people together and make

our communities more inclusive.

In my view this would work well in Camelon and Tamfourhill, it encourages localism and will ensure responses and activities really are appropriate to the needs and aspirations of local people. A local community -based citizens assembly of anywhere between 30 -100 members, they could be picked randomly within agreed demographics to ensure they are representative of the entire population and inclusive of all interests. I have a priority to support the formation of a community safety group for our local areas and this could easily be formed as an Assembly subgroup or community safety could be a key agenda item or theme for consideration by the wider assembly.  There is no reason why individuals could not be requested to participate on a similar basis as being called for jury duty, it could be treated as being a part of your responsibilities as a citizen, time of work would be guaranteed and of course a payment made to all Panel members. Alternatively, we could operate the Assembly in evenings or weekends and gift people for their time and participation.

37.

The Citizens’ Assembly recommends that in order to

overcome the challenges in relation to young people’s

health and wellbeing the Scottish Government and

Parliament should:

invest in and provide opportunities for all young people

to access extra-curricular activities, including sports

and the arts, with support and guidance for young

people to pursue opportunities that are right for them.

Through this national recommendation Young people can thus benefit though the provision of new leisure and creative opportunities, National government are now required to take notice and act upon this decision as agreed by the Assembly. Locally then this would operate along similar lines in Camelon and Tamfourhill, where Falkirk council, Local Community organisations and Statutory Agencies would be required to respond to the decisions reached by our own local Assembly.

I thought that was a particularly relevant recommendation:

55.

The Citizens’ Assembly recommends that in order

to overcome the challenges in relation to providing

equal internet access to all the Scottish Government

and Parliament should:

invest in infrastructure (and utilise existing

infrastructure) to widen mobile networks and remove

black spots, ensuring all communities have access

to the internet through free community hot spots

and publicly available hardware. Internet should be

considered as a basic need, free to all.

This really will address digital exclusion and providing a free phone service, especially for our elderly population would be a significant positive step to combatting social isolation and improving access to vital services.

59.

The Citizens’ Assembly recommends that in order

to ensure that citizens can make informed decisions

in relation to criminal justice reform the Scottish

Government and Parliament should:

undertake a full review of the criminal justice system

to improve outcomes for communities, offenders

and victims. This would include the reintroduction of

community policing, involving citizens in improving

local communications and services.

This could provide a big change to how we deal with criminality and anti-social behaviour and would work well in tandem with more restorative forms of justice and in directly involving the community with resolving the harm that has been done and remedying injustice in a smarter way. This is another area where a local citizens assembly could deliver big changes for the community.

The full Scotland Citizens Assembly report can be found here:

https://www.citizensassembly.scot/main-report

Dan our Community Coach recently in his blog was discussing free money and the Community choices programme, and this is another example of community decision making and an approach to improving grassroots and community democracy through participatory budgeting. We know about the role of community councils but there are other ways where we can enrich and extend local democracy. Oliver Escobar in his recent essay on the Futures in Common (Scotland after the Virus Gerry Hassan & Simon Barrow) discusses democratic innovations and describes processes where big policy-making decisions are conducted and made directly by citizens and not representatives or elected politicians. He lists: Mini-Publics (community assemblies), participatory budgeting (Community choices) and digital crowd sourcing (online decision making) He promotes the idea of Social commons, and this is a radical interpretation of models of community ownership, it has its origins in the common pastures and common lands that everybody once inhabited, enjoyed and utilised. These shared commons were in fact lands and resources held in common a form of community-based governance. We already have local community groups moving in the direction of asset transfers and taking back into community control buildings and facilities and this can be extended into parks and open spaces, canal towpaths, shops, and cafes. This is all about local democracy and community ownership and as we move towards COVID recovery and rebuilding aspects of our communities then this new democratic thinking provides a route map towards a more inclusive citizenship whilst encouraging greater communal responsibility.