This week I want to start by offering a big thanks to the 161 local people who completed a community safety survey. The survey closed on the 7^th August and I have now been working on collating the data, carrying out some analysis and starting the process of confirming the local community safety priorities. The consultation will now move onto a more interactive phase and once I am able to do so, I will be holding some Focus Groups in order to get further details about the relevant Community Safety issues and the actions we will need to take to address the various concerns. The survey results have provided a clear indication of what are the important issues in the community and where there clearly needs to be positive action. The future will be a success if we are able to involve all sectors of the community and the various organisations to work in partnership and we are able to tackle matters collectively and in a coordinated way. If you are interested in looking at the detailed report with my initial interpretation of the responses, then please visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-6MCXY5PD/

I know that people don’t have the time to read long detailed reports, although they will be of great assistance when we come to later apply for funding and resources , so I thought I would break the survey results into much smaller sections and highlight a couple of themes each week on the blog, so please go to the link below:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-5NYR3T5D/

The Future is unwritten

Alone we can do so little: together, we can do so much

Hellen Keller

I am putting out a request in this week’s community safety blog: I need your help and your active participation with making Camelon and Tamfourhill a safer, better, and happier place to live and work. If we are to achieve this bold aspiration, then we will need to recognise the challenges that we face and acknowledge that the best chance of success is if we all come together and work with a common purpose.

The first part of the community safety consultation was concluded on Friday 7^th August with the closure of the online survey. I would therefore like to once again offer my congratulations to Jacqueline Hannah on wining the Tablet through the survey Prize draw, and I hope that she gets lots of pleasure and enjoyment from using her new device. I was also incredibly pleased to have 161 completed survey responses, with 92 local people expressing both an interest with being informed about the future plans for community safety and in also taking part in a community action planning day. I therefore will be contacting those relevant individuals to bring them up to date with the results of the survey and inviting them to take part in the next stages of the consultation. It is vitally important that the community safety priorities are identified by the local community and in this respect, it is also critical that local people agree to the appropriate and relevant actions that are necessary, if  the local plans and activities are to be successful and effective.  

The Kemlin Kin Group are a partnership of local people with representatives from organisations and groups who are already active and delivering services and activities in the local area. I would like to encourage others to join with this Group and therefore take an  active role with driving forward the community safety plans for the area and also in supporting the work of the Community Coach Dan Rous with  his remit of building the resilience and the capacity of the local area. I fully realise that people get fed up with committees and steering groups and endless talking in meetings, however I would want to assure you that this group will be different. Dan and I will endeavour to make this an enjoyable experience with lots of hands on activities, opportunities to volunteer, learn new skills, develop existing interests, and potentially gain accreditation and recognition for your community involvement. We will also be looking to start up a Young Community Safety Volunteers group and they will get opportunities to learn about peer education and will have loads of activities to get involved with. This approach will be equally concerned with facilitating new support networks and hopefully forming new friendships throughout our neighbourhoods and an important aspect of this group can also be about families coming together for the betterment of the local area. I do not want to be too prescriptive as the agenda and programme of the group would be developed in accordance with the views and ideas of the group themselves, with the support of myself and Dan. The key to the success of this group will be in its ability and effectiveness for putting plans into place and having responsibility for implementing positive change in the local area. Please if you are interested in any way please get in touch with either me or Dan at communitysafetyengager@tamfourhilltro.co.uk or communitycoach@tamfourhilltro.co.uk  

I will briefly highlight some of the key findings and indicators of what issues might be community safety priorities for Camelon and Tamfourhill. I will also in the coming weeks go into greater detail about the survey results and focus on specific themes. There are a number of Focus Groups and Workshops that I will be facilitating when it is safe to do so and these activities should assist with putting some meat onto the bones of the results of the survey. The three most significant community safety themes on the survey have been recorded as: Anti-social behaviour, Substance misuse and problems with crime and disorder and traffic/roads. Within these broader themes specific issues have been highlighted, and most notable are the problems of litter, fly -tipping and dog fouling, drug dealing and the consumption of drugs, the level of reoffending are all of considerable concern. The feelings about the fear of crime and a lack of reassurance about community safety issues are noted as being especially important to local people.

I have in previous blogs highlighted some of the possible campaigns and plans that I would hope will be supported locally, these have included: Keep Camelon and Tamfourhill: Tidy, Clean and Green campaign and linked with Keep Scotland Beautiful , similarly we have an active bid to be a community clear up host also with Keep Scotland Beautiful, Restorative justice approaches in dealing with issues around disorder and vandalism,  public art projects in partnership with Camelon Arts, promoting bio diversity and sustainability through community gardens, wild flower meadows and edible borders, young community safety volunteers project, the further redevelopment of Easter Carmuirs Park and we are one of the lead groups in a consortium bid for a creative communities grant award from Inspiring Scotland.  If you are interested in any of these themes and potential projects then please get in touch, these are the types of initiatives you would be supporting and developing through being a member of the Kemlin Kin Group.

If you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.

African Proverb

https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-93MRD8ZD/

So, what would we consider to be a living street? What gives it life and makes it a vibrant, safe, and sociable place which we all enjoy being about? In this community safety blog, I am going to highlight some of the key features and attributes which can contribute to making our streets alive and safe for everyone in the neighbourhood.

The Covid lockdown has offered us a glimpse into a more greener living environment, there were less motor vehicles and with their decrease in noise and exhaust fumes, we experienced an increase in people and families going out for walks and a similar increase in people travelling by wheels, including bikes, skateboards and scooters. The air was cleaner, the birds chirping much more noticeably, and the grass and undergrowth were left to grow, flourish and bloom without their regular cutting and maintenance.  The notion of prioritising pedestrians over cars is seldom a popular approach to designing our streets and shopping areas, people like the convenience of shopping by car and often travelling to shopping centres on the outside of their communities. This however has a negative impact upon the quality of our own streets and in the decrease of local shops catering for local needs and which are often owned and run by local people. The priority when planning and managing our streets always seems to be about how we move cars or motor vehicles about, and marginalised groups are often discriminated against and consequently are excluded from our streets and public places. This effects our older people , those with physical and unseen disabilities and other vulnerable groupings who are discouraged and alienated from walking their streets , going to local shops or hanging about socialising due to the intimidating designs of our streets and the dominance of the motor car. I recently was made aware of the Living Streets Scotland organisation and their Walking connects Project. I learned from them about how our public places often act as barriers to vulnerable groups like those with disabilities and how these so-called public spaces can make individuals and groups feel unsafe. I was made aware of how peoples human rights were being undermined and how they were being discriminated against and in fact how few people actually were aware of how their social spaces were being used to oppress and alienate them.

https://www.livingstreets.org.uk/about-us/scotland

Our communal spaces can be made safer and less intimidating if we include certain features, for example public seating. This provides a resting spot for those who might not be fully fit due to age or illness. Install benches with some plants and shrubs then we have created a comfortable social area, people will feel safer and they know they can rest and not be harassed and stressed as they go about their daily business. Clearly, we need to ensure that local people are involved with the design of their public spaces and this must be an inclusive process. Those whose needs are currently discriminated against need to be brought into this process as a priority and they will require support and positive encouragement to engage and participate effectively with that design process.

We often think back with nostalgia to when we could safely play football in the street, children were not at risk from motor cars and it was commonplace for people to gather and socialise at street corners. The motor car is here to stay so the main challenge now in making our streets alive and safe is how we manage the tension that exists between cars and people. How do we negotiate a positive outcome from this conflict which could convert our streets back to being the focus of our communities? A solution might be to agree days when cars are not allowed on certain streets and these spaces can then be converted into social and community spaces. This approach has been successfully developed and deployed by the Living Streets Organisation, with their pop up parks and Parklets. This can then be progressed through including mobile sports equipment and possibly a performance area and providing a temporary meeting construction with seats and cover from the weather.  

Beyond the pop-up parks and mobile social spaces, we can convert some of our litter and fly tipping hot spots into biodiverse planting areas or redevelop them into edible borders. This is an approach that I would like to develop as part of our Keep Camelon and Tamfourhill Tidy, Clean and Green campaign. This approach would take us beyond the litter picking and clearance of industrial refuse stage and onto making a positive contribution to addressing the climate emergency and provide a relaxed and enjoyable place to sit and socialise with your family and neighbours.

I believe that this approach and these examples are achievable locally, I would acknowledge that they are not a quick remedy to the issues, but they are a sustainable and viable approach. I would welcome your comments and thoughts on these ideas so please leave any opinions or thoughts in the boxes below, or contact myself directly at:

John R Hosie

Communitysafetyengager@tamfourhilltro.co.uk  

Repairing the Harm and rebuilding relationships in the community.

In this week’s Community Safety Blog I want to touch very briefly upon 2 interrelated methods or approaches which could be relevant to our own local community safety strategy. Firstly is Restorative Justice, this has many and varied definitions depending upon the context and the agency or service which is utilising the approach. The Scottish restorative justice consultancy process facilitated by the Scottish Government describes this model as:  “being a voluntary process that engages those responsible for and harmed by a criminal offence in constructive dialogue about the harm caused and what can be done to set things right.” This then is a model that can be deployed in a variety of contexts, including: Youth Justice, problematic environmental circumstances, within schools and other educational settings and in addressing anti-social behaviour. My attention was drawn to a recent act of local vandalism that involved some garden furniture being broken. After the culprits voluntarily owned up, they were given an opportunity to repair the damage and enter dialogue with the victims of the breakage. The young people responsible are now carrying out some voluntary work with the organisation who were affected by the initial vandalism. A positive outcome then for everyone involved, a common understanding reached, and a resolution was found that has avoided the involvement of the police and the criminal justice system and indeed any punitive measures and is a win, win for everyone. The key feature to this process has been empathy, all parties are able to consider how it might have felt for the others effected by their actions and also in this case the clients of the organisation where the vandalism happened. A better level of understanding has been facilitated and an appreciation for the value of others and sometimes the challenges they face has been reached. This is an approach which could be more widely deployed locally, we potentially could adapt and adopt a restorative method when agreeing our action plans to addressing the local community safety priorities. Clearly a working agreement would be required by all the agencies , stakeholders and the local community, before this approach could be viable. SACRO have described using Restorative Acceptable Behaviour Contracts in appropriate circumstances with the aim “to address offending behaviour in a way which empowers the people harmed, those responsible and wider community members to resolve the conflict in a meaningful way”   Another significant feature is that the person responsible is given an opportunity to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The person affected for example by the anti-social behaviour or Offence can also have some say as to how the case is resolved and where relevant and appropriate the wider community can be involved with the dialogue.

The essence therefore of Restorative Justice is to make a positive contribution to community safety through using constructive methods of addressing anti-social behaviour and Offending behaviour.  The underlying principles are that crime causes harm and that justice should focus on repairing that harm and the people most affected by the crime should be able to participate in its resolution. Restorative methods are imbedded to the notion that the community is responsible for the wellbeing of all its members both victim and offender.

And so to the second strand I want to highlight and which can be described as Environmental Restorative  Justice and this has been described as: “being a philosophy much more than a set of techniques for doing justice for the environment in a more relational, more emotionally intelligent fashion. It is about healing earth systems and healing the relationship of humans with nature and with each other.”(earthrestorativejustice.org) OK that sounds a bit like tree huggers jargon but in terms of our local community safety strategy it can be relevant to how we go about tackling our litter and fly-tipping problems. If we view the locations that are litter or messy hot spots as areas of environmental damage, then we can implement restorative projects like turning them into wildflower meadows or edible borders or convert them to community vegetable plots. The solution to clearing these locations can become more than a group litter pick or getting the council to remove industrial sized refuse that has been dumped in the community. Potentially it can develop into an environmental project, encouraging biodiversity, reclaiming lost land, and contributing to greater community cohesion and the sense of feeling safe. I have also been looking into Parklets and Pop up Parks which can be deployed to different locations throughout the community and provide a safe and enjoyable place for local people to meet and socialise.  Another pertinent example is from Keep Scotland Beautiful who run an annual competition called “it’s your neighbourhood” where groups develop a project which must address the three pillars of: Community Participation, Environmental responsibility  and gardening achievement, the winners get £13,000 for their project. Getting involved in Projects like these can be an empowering process and enables us as a community to contribute to the climate emergency and make our neighbourhoods a safer and better place to live and work. 

https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/projects/2019/scotland/pocket-places-scotland/

John R Hosie

Community Safety Engager

3^rd August 2020

A worrying trend highlighted in the survey results has been the level of concern raised about substance misuse and in particular drug dealing. 73% of respondents have indicated that they are either greatly or fairly concerned about drug dealers. This presents an enormous challenge for the local community safety strategy and requires the attention of our statutory services, voluntary & community organisations, and the problematic drug users themselves. The conundrum between supply and demand will continue at both a prevention and at an enforcement level whilst also acknowledging that the manifestations of the selling and purchasing of drugs are many and complex. Where a local community led safety strategy can play a significant role can be with the prevention of our young people getting drawn into problematic drug use in the first instance. This may be achieved through supporting and developing in partnership with them, appropriate educational resources and prevention activities through providing youth work approaches that  promote resilience, social skills and the confidence for our young people to make the right choices in often difficult and challenging circumstances. There can be a role for Falkirk Council and our local community hubs with delivering quality youth work provision and there can be direct workshop inputs and projects delivered by community volunteers and the community safety engager It would be naïve to expect the demand for dangerous drugs to reduce in the short term through a programme of education and preventative activities however this requires to be an important strand to any strategy that is developed with the local community.

Finding oneself in a situation where you have developed a problematic dependency upon drugs must be devastating for the user, their family, friends, neighbours and indeed the local community. The social costs of drug dependency are significant: through the legal and criminal costs and through the impact upon our health and care services. The emotional and mental health impacts will resonate beyond the user and will have negative effects upon others through the dealing of the drugs and the consumption of the drugs within the local community. Clearly a local strategy will need to take into consideration these associated factors. I will therefore endeavour to involve the specialist drugs agencies, Falkirk Council and also charities like the Cyrenians and SACRO who carry out invaluable work locally with people touched by the criminal justice system and through providing support to those with dependency and ongoing offending problems. I feel we need to be able to see beyond the labels and stigmatisation of being involved with problematic drug use and simultaneously living often challenging and chaotic lifestyles. We need to be able to actively involve everybody with the solutions to making our community a safer and better place to live and work.

Any local Community Safety Strategy addressing this concern will be reliant upon the enforcement of the law. This will represent a significant strand to reducing the negative impacts of local drug misuse and the problems arising directly from the selling of drugs. I have been in communication with the local community police officers and clearly, they will play a key role with developing and confirming our local strategy. I can see from the SIMD data for the local neighbourhoods where the problems are likely to be and I believe that there are specific locations that are of local concern. Off course the Police rely upon the reporting of crime and I understand that this is an extremely sensitive and complex issue. I fully appreciate why local people may be reluctant to report issues relating to drug misuse, especially if it involves your immediate neighbours and places you go and use yourself.  

The challenge ahead is significant and fraught with problems, however with the right partners involved and crucially the willingness of the local community to get  involved  then we can implement an  effective community safety strategy that will address some of the local concerns about substance misuse.   An important aspect of this will be to form and possibly constitute a local community safety forum which has local people , community groups and agencies all working together in order to develop programmes and activities which will go some way to addressing the local priorities for community safety. I will look at this notion of a local community safety forum in a future blog but again this approach will only be effective if it is driven forward by the local community for the local community.    

To conclude this week’s Blog I will highlight the work of an organisation called Fearless, I believe some of their approaches and  community based initiatives   can be replicated locally and can be adapted and adopted to our own  particular set of circumstances. What we often see as problems can become part of the solution and the resources and skills to deal with issues at a community level often lie within that community itself.

www.fearless.org/en/professionals/news/thank-you-scotland

Please could you complete a local survey, the responses are of great assistance in identifying and confirming the local community safety priorities and our future activity will be developed around these priorities. If you complete a survey by Friday 7^th August, then you can be entered into our prize draw and you can win yourself a brand-new Tablet.

https://tinyurl.com/ycbes5qw