Social and community development

In this issue

• Establishing food cooperatives in rural areas with poor geographic access to nutritious foods.
• The food cooperative as a response to collective needs for improved access to food and local services, as well as community vitality.
• The steps required to set up a food co op, in short.

And answers to the following question

• • What are some of the facilitating factors and difficulties encountered in the process of establishing a food cooperative?

Violence in youth dating relationships is a concerning public health issue. It affects a significant number of young people and negatively impacts the health and well-being of its victims. Young people’s increasing use of technologies means that violent behaviours now occur via social media, messaging services, cell phones, and other technological devices. Youth cyber dating violence, defined as the use of these technological means to control, monitor, or harass a partner or ex-partner, is prevalent in the adolescent population and becoming increasingly well-known. The characteristics that distinguish cyberviolence from “offline” violence, such as its lack of temporal, physical, and geographical limits, underscore the importance of examining this type of violence specifically to better understand the issues associated with it. It is therefore essential to document the practices that aim to prevent youth cyber dating violence in order to determine their effectiveness and issue recomm…

Promoting safety and preventing crime through a setting-oriented approach requires a structured procedure for planning the various activities to be carried out. The procedure involves mobilizing the population and intersectoral partners, making safety diagnoses and drawing up action plans. The Safety Diagnosis Tool Kit for Local Communities was prepared to assist with this procedure. It comprises several tools, including the Safety Diagnosis Handbook and six methodology guides. The document Turning Safety Diagnoses Into Action Plans: A Guide for Local Communities was prepared in addition to the tool kit, to facilitate the process of translating diagnoses into effective action plans.

To make sound decisions as to what should be done to improve safety and prevent crime in a particular life setting, it is useful to have access to a safety diagnosis for the setting concerned. A rigorous safety diagnosis will enable you to identify the problems and the social and physical conditi…

In recent years, several tools based on a setting-oriented approach have been developed to support safety promotion and crime prevention initiatives. This approach advocates the use of a structured procedure for planning and implementing prevention measures in life settings. The procedure involves mobilizing the population and intersectoral partners, making safety diagnoses and preparing action plans. The present document, Turning Safety Diagnoses Into Action Plans: A Guide for Local Communities, is one of the tools that follows this setting-oriented approach. It is designed to assist people who are working to develop coherent, integrated action plans that propose feasible, acceptable and effective actions based on safety diagnoses.

It is taken for granted in this tool that 1) local safety promotion and crime prevention initiatives aresupported by a cooperative mechanism, 2) the communities concerned are mobilized around the issues of safety promotion and crime prev…

In Québec, an integrated health and social services centre (a Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux CISSS) or an integrated university health and social services centre (a Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux – CIUSSS), along with its area network (réseau territorial de services – RTS) partners, is responsible for improving and maintaining the health of the population it serves. It must offer the best possible services to the clients who consult with it and, at the same time, anticipate problems relating to health and well-being. For that reason, it is called on to play a role in addressing several health determinants, including housing conditions, education, social support, access to employment, etc.

Community development support is an essential response measure in doing so. In addition to helping a CISSS/CIUSSS carry out its mission, community development support encourages CISSS/CIUSSS stakeholders to adopt practices that reflect populatio…

This report presents a community development project carried out from 2009 to 2013 at the Institut national de santé publique in collaboration with the Community Health and Social Services Network (CHSSN), an organization devoted to improving the lives of English-speaking Quebecers. The project objectives were three-fold:

• to increase knowledge on English-speaking communities in Québec;
• to develop tools for mobilizing theses communities;
• to support English-speaking communities in implementing a community development approach.

Community portraits were completed with six English-speaking communities in different areas of Québec, representing very different socio-economic, demographic and geographic realities.

After presenting the background to the project, including an overview of the situation of English speakers in the province, we will discuss the conceptual framework for the project as well as the methodology used. We will then…

To do a safety diagnosis for a particular life setting, you have to get to know the setting. You will thus obtain a good understanding of its specific characteristics, as well a frame of reference for data collection activities. The present guide describes the main steps involved in developing a life setting’s general portrait.

Although many parameters can be used to characterize a life setting, some warrant special attention in a process aimed at improving safety or preventing crime; for example, the setting’s geographic, human and economic characteristics and some of its physical characteristics pertaining to housing. Gaining insight into these characteristics will enable you to:

• share in general knowledge about the life setting under study;
• clearly define the setting in relation to the surrounding area and according to zones of interest;
• ensure that all segments of the population are well represented;
• frame requests for informati…

A focus group is a group discussion led by a facilitator. Participants are asked to share their thoughts on a particular topic, based on their personal opinions and experience. They are also encouraged to react to the views expressed by other participants and to say where they stand in relation to those views.

In the model proposed in this guide, focus group participants are selected on the basis of criteria that ensure the life setting under study is well represented. This approach guarantees that the groups provide a wide range of viewpoints and perceptions, and can thus help to shed light on the different opinions and degree of consensus that exist on a given topic, such as the feeling of safety in a regional county municipality (RCM) or a municipality. In safety diagnoses, focus groups are used primarily to gather the opinions and perceptions of a population about the following safety-related topics: the safety of a particular life setting, the feeling of safety, and pro…

Like discussion groups, direct observation and literature reviews, semi-structured interviews can be used to gather qualitative information. Interviews of this type are suited to working with small samples and are effective for studying specific situations or for supplementing and validating information derived from other sources used for making safety diagnoses. In addition, since they provide access to perceptions and opinions, they are useful for gaining insight into problems that are not perceptible immediately or are more difficult to observe, but that nonetheless cause concern in certain areas or in certain segments of the population.

During safety diagnoses, semi-structured interviews should be used to explore crime and safety problems perceived by representatives of the population, safety experts or other key informants. In planning the interviews, it is essential to take into account decisions about your vision and objectives, the life setting under study, the targe…

Generally speaking, surveys are used to obtain three main types of information:

• information on the characteristics of individuals, including their personal characteristics (age, marital status, level of education, etc.), behaviour (amount of time spent doing certain activities, etc.) and living environment (workplace, housing, etc.);
• information on the opinions of individuals (how safe or unsafe they feel, what they think about certain facts, ideas, programs or events, etc.);
• information on their past personal experiences (victimization, etc.).

The data gathered during a survey can be grouped and analyzed to detect trends or associations, such as whether certain groups within a population (e.g. the members of a particular age group, men or women) or people in certain areas share a particular opinion to a greater extent than other groups or people do.

Surveys conducted as part of a safety diagnosis are aimed at painting a portrait…