Tools for an Inclusive Ontario

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10: Community Engagement Strategies

The Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse attempts to direct more professional and organizational actions toward conditions that influence health and well-being in communities. Our bilingual services assist people and organizations to increase their capacities and mobilize their communities through a process of community engagement. We help increase local capacity - building support systems through consultation, training, and information services and resources. OPC recently helped to plan and facilitate the formation of a regional coalition of multi-sectoral stakeholders to address issues about healthy body image.

Community Engagement has become a significant part of public health and social development practice over the last decade. The State of Minnesota has been one of the pioneers of community engagement strategies in public health practice. They define community engagement as follows:

Community engagement is a process of involving community members and the reliance on a community's own resources and strengths as the foundation for designing, implementing, and evaluating solutions to problematic conditions that affect them. As such, community engagement involves interpersonal trust, communication and collaboration. Such engagement, or participation, should focus on, and result from, the needs, expectations, and desires of a community's members.

They advise that this new way of thinking involves adopting a new set of assumptions:

• Professionals within public institutions must understand that under the right conditions, people can deal with complex issues, and that they are willing to take the time to do it thoughtfully.
  
• People think about public concerns not in isolated bits, but in inter-related webs of concerns; and that there is a wisdom in communities that needs to be tapped in order to truly make sense of data and decide what actions to take.
  
• People need to learn from one another-have room for ambivalence and time and space to test ideas, explore, and listen-so they can sort out what they believe and learn together.
  
• People need a sense of possibility to engage in public discussions-a belief that something worthwhile might be produced from their efforts and involvement.
  
• It is essential for those engaging the community to adhere to the highest ethical standards. Failure to act ethically is not an option. Ethical action is the only hope for developing and maintaining the trust of communities.

Toronto Public Health used Community Engagement Strategies to re-establish Local Health Committees across the city, following a similar philosophy described by public health officials in Minnesota. There are two simple strategies which may help us introduce the SEI Toolkit project into the Demonstration Communities.

Introducing the Project using Community Engagement Strategies

Local Working Groups (LWGs) may wish to introduce the concept of testing indicators to the Demonstration Communities using two simple strategies:

• Town Halls may be used by the LWGs to share information about the SEI Toolkit Project with the public and to gather their impressions about social and economic inclusion. Town Halls will allow the LWGs to listen to the thoughts, ideas, and perspectives of others, contributing to a common understanding of social and economic inclusion in their community.
• Community Roundtables are a second kind of forum that LWGs may wish to convene. Roundtables are multi-sectoral, bringing together representatives from agencies, community services, and community organizations, to discuss the project. They should assist the LWGs in identifying agency and organizational perspectives on social and economic inclusion.

Operating the Project using Community Engagement Strategies

A social and economic inclusion project should make every effort to include those directly affected in the operation of the project. This deeper means of community engagement involves the populations who seek to be included in society directly. In this case, developing indicators becomes a participatory process: those who are excluded become involved in developing and testing indicators as much as possible, giving those indicators a better chance to track real change in people's lives.

A recent example is a unique project in downtown east Toronto, sponsored by the Open Door Centre, the largest drop-in for homeless people in the city. The project, entitled Asset Mapping: Building Capacity at the Open Door Centre, is based on the idea of 'asset based community development' popularized by John McKnight and John Kretzmann from Northwestern University in Chicago. These community development researchers have a 'glass is half full' view of poor inner city neighbourhoods in the US, based on their research. Community and social change is from the 'ground up' and, as such, starts with an accounting of the skills, abilities, and gifts of individuals, community associations and locally based institutions.

Following this example, the Open Door decided to train drop-in users as 'Asset Researchers' to map the skills, abilities, and aspirations of fellow drop-in users. These 'capacity inventories' aided in referrals to local job and training openings and contributed to a community economic development strategy for downtown east Toronto.

The Open Door used a four phase community engagement strategy: Recruitment, Training, the Work, and Follow Up.

Recruitment. The main principle of recruitment was inclusiveness, allowing as many homeless people as possible the chance to participate in the project. This was done by:

• Outreach to drop in users through posters, liaison with neighbouring agencies, word of mouth and information sessions
• Interviews to determine interest, basic literacy, communication, social and other skills
• Encouraging participation by individuals traditionally marginalized by gender, race, religion, class, ability, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, housing status, etc.

Training. The main principle of training was comprehensiveness to ensure that the Asset Researchers had adequate and appropriate training to carry out their role successfully.

• Workshops included Interview Skills, Developing the Capacity Inventory, Harm Reduction and Employment, Anti-Discrimination, Code of Conduct for Asset Researchers

The Work. The main principle of the work phase was support to assist the Asset Researchers to connect with and interview as many fellow Open Door users as possible.

• Nine Asset Researchers conducted 75 capacity inventories with close supervision and support from the program coordinator.
• The same methods and principles outlined in the Recruitment Phase were used to connect with drop-in users to be interviewed.

Follow Up. The main principle of this phase was balance in planning, not only for the future of Asset Mapping at the Open Door, but for the individuals involved in the project.

• Asset Researchers were actively involved via the steering committee in planning for the future of the project after the one year funding ends.
  There was a focus on individual planning for the Asset Researchers to move on to other training and/or employment opportunities.

This community engagement strategy balances the need for three concurrent streams of activity and outcomes at the individual, organizational, and community levels.

The Open Door's community engagement strategy may be transferable to other settings where the involvement of traditionally marginalized people is desirable. The principles of inclusiveness, comprehensiveness, support and balance that underlie each phase can inform work in other projects with other purposes, for example developing local social inclusion indicators. It is important that projects like this balance the need for tools like 'social and economic inclusion tool kits' while, at the same time, providing real world and present day opportunities (like casual or part time employment, training, referrals, etc.) for the participants.

Researched by Krissa Fay, Catherine Turl, and Mary Martin Rowe.
Written by Michael Fay and Krissa Fay.

June 1, 2003

The opinions expressed in this project do not necessarily reflect the official views of Health Canada, Population Public Health Branch, now the Public Health Agency of Canada, or the Laidlaw Foundation.

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