At Davis Pier, we believe strong plans are built with communities – not for them. This is especially true in the creation of effective Community Safety and Well-Being (CSWB) plans.
The most successful CSWB plans are grounded in the people, relationships, and priorities that make each community unique. A good CSWB plan approach emphasizes collaboration, prevention, and evidence-informed decision-making. Community engagement is a key piece to developing CSWB plans.
We go further by moving beyond standard consultation to design inclusive, effective engagements that ensure authentic community voices directly shape meaningful, measurable actions.
After all, the people impacted by community challenges are often closest to their solutions.
Based on our experience, here is what we believe matters most when designing and developing successful CSWB plans:
Who should be engaged?
We believe these plans work best when built together.
Collecting diverse perspectives ensures the community builds a shared understanding of local needs, strengths, and opportunities, while building actions together. This allows for shared ownership and leadership across all groups.
When building these plans, we work with municipalities to engage with:
- People with lived and living experience.
- Indigenous partners, equity groups, and populations whose voices are not always heard through traditional processes.
- Community organizations, frontline service providers, and partners across health, justice, education, and social services.
What is the focus of engagement?
A strong CSWB plan goes beyond identifying problems to helping the community understand why those challenges exist and how governments, community partners, and the public can work together to address them. The result is a plan that is practical, evidence-informed, and designed to create long-term impact.
We focus on helping communities identify:
- Strengths, opportunities, and protective factors for prevention focused actions.
- Community-defined safety and well-being priorities.
- Evidence-informed root causes, risk factors, and service gaps that contribute to priority issues.
How should engagements be conducted?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
We bring a flexible approach to engagements but maintain several core principles:
- We tailor our engagement methods to the individual community, using a mix of approaches to ensure participation is accessible, inclusive, and meaningful. This includes surveys, conversations, interviews, workshops, focus groups, town halls, etc.
- We believe in meeting people where they are. Our process creates opportunities to connect with community members in familiar and accessible spaces, such as community breakfasts, farmers markets, town halls, and other local events.
- We work with community partners to support community-led and community-facilitated engagement. This enables people to share their experiences and perspectives with those they already know and trust.
- We believe in closing the loop. Our team will ensure the process includes clearly communicating what was heard and how community feedback informed recommendations and decisions. Communities deserve to know how their input shaped the final plan.
When should engagements happen?
Early. Often. And continuously.
Engagement should not end once the CSWB plan is delivered. Communities are better served by engagement that is embedded throughout development, implementation, and ongoing evaluation.
We help organizations build lasting relationships with community members, encouraging them to remain connected between updates to CSWB plans. Staying engaged helps build trust, strengthen accountability, and ensure plans are responsive to evolving community needs.
From planning to action
At Davis Pier, we know that a successful Community Safety and Well-Being plan is more than another document for council to add to the agenda – it is a roadmap for partnerships, prevention, and lasting change. By prioritizing inclusion, accessibility, Indigenous reconciliation, and community voices throughout the process, we help clients develop CSWB plans that are actionable, grounded, and built for long-term impact.
Interested in developing or refreshing your Community Safety and Well-Being plan? Contact Davis Pier to learn how we can help create an inclusive, actionable CSWB plan that turns engagement into meaningful results for your community.
