ENGAGEMENT MODEL

The Project Steering Group adopted the four localities to participate in the research in 2021-22 and an approach to engagement, consisting of 7 steps, was endorsed prior to commencing fieldwork in the first locality (Letham, Perth).

The Project Steering Group agreed that for the purposes of the Project, personal data would be handled by the Authority and not Police Scotland, and would therefore be subject to the Authority’s Privacy Policy. It was agreed that fieldwork across the four localities would take place on a staggered/phased basis to align better with resource availability of the Project Delivery Team, and to enable the fieldwork approach and overall engagement model to be tweaked throughout the Project lifecycle based on ongoing learning and feedback.

Step 1

The first step involved making contact with the relevant local authority for each locality, contacting Chief Executives who then referred the Project Delivery Team to the most appropriate local point of contact.

Initial online meetings were used to discuss the aims of the CCAR Project and the plans for working in the local area, seeking advice on points of contact within the community. Introductory online meetings also took place between the Project Delivery Team and local Elected Members (usually via dropping into an existing local forum), and between the Project Delivery Team and the local policing team for the area, including the local area commander and member of the senior Divisional Management team.

Step 1 also entailed the Project Delivery Team making an initial visit to the area, to meet with local groups to discuss research tools (e.g. surveys and community conversations) and dissemination /communication channels. Introductory meetings also took place with local police officers, who
assisted the Project Delivery Team in carrying out an environmental visual audit of each locality.

Step 2

The second step involved issuing a community questionnaire survey among local people, including an adapted, shorter version for completion by children and young people via local schools (where this was possible).

The surveys typically began about 6-12 weeks after the initial introductory meetings in Step 1, although for Letham in Perth, there was a longer lead-in time, with Steps 1 and 2 lasting for almost 6 months.

They were available for people to complete online and in paper form (with a pre-paid envelope) for a period of about six weeks. Social media and paper posters displayed locally were used to raise awareness of the surveys, and local community groups and the local policing teams used their existing networks to promote them.

The initial community questionnaire survey asked people for their thoughts on the local area, whether there was a strong sense of community and where people help and support one another. People were also asked about their views on local policing, and what they thought could be done to raise levels of confidence in the police.

728 people completed this initial survey across the four localities, including 347 adults completing the detailed survey, and 381 persons aged under 16 completing the shorter survey. Among adults, more than three quarters of respondents said that their main reason for being in or visiting the particular locality is because they live in the area. The age profile of adult respondents was balanced, although two-thirds of respondents identified as female. Just over a third of respondents said that they had experienced some kind of contact with the police in previous 6 months.

People under 16 attending local schools were not asked these particular questions.

Step 3

The third step involved running a community conversation in each locality. These were usually held as one session taking place within a local community building.

The purpose of the conversation was to discuss the findings from the local community survey and consider suggestions for how the local policing time might introduce small-scale initiatives or ‘tests of change’ in response to points raised.

The sessions ran for about 2.5 hours and included inputs from the Authority about the purpose and scope of the project, and an input from Police Scotland (PPCW and the Local Policing Commander) about local community and response policing and the types of challenges and demands that local policing teams face on a daily basis.

Participants could sign up for these community conversations via the Authority’s Citizen Space portal (using a QR Code), or could contact Project Delivery Team staff via email or through two dedicated mobile phone numbers. Participant information (personal data) was held by the Authority and not shared with Police Scotland.

These first community conversations were well attended by local community groups and local residents, and local partners, and although some sessions were better attended than others in terms of numbers, some of the smaller sessions also yielded high quality and focussed
conversations.

The largest of all the initial conversation sessions took place in Letham (the first locality), with around 35 people in attendance at the meeting. The smaller sessions typically involved between 8 and 20 people attending and had a ‘focus group’ feel to them. The Project Delivery Team believes that the longer lead-in period for the work in the Letham community meant that awareness of the CCAR project was greater, and therefore resulted in more people attending the first community
conversation.

Apart from an input on community policing arrangements and current demand, local policing teams attended these community conversations in listening mode, and committed to taking away the points that had been raised and coming back to community with proposals for feasible and sustainable initiatives for testing (see Step 4).

Step 4

The fourth step involved running a follow-up community conversation in each locality. These community conversations were shorter in length, and this allowed the Project Delivery team to
organise multiple sessions over the course of a day in some of the localities. Feedback received at the initial community conversations at Step 3 had mentioned that the timing of the events during the working/school day, may have led to some people feeling unable to participate. Some sessions
therefore took place during the early evening, with the latest schedule conversation taking place
between 6 and 8pm in one of the localities.

These shorter community conversations mostly involved the local policing team presenting their
suggested initiatives to the local community and seeking feedback on the proposals prior to their
implementation as ‘tests of change’. The Project Delivery Team observed that in some cases, the
proposals being put forward by the local policing teams were not received as being innovative by the community, or especially substantial in nature. By way of example, references to introducing a
community newsletter evoked comments that there used to be a regular newsletter.

The Project Delivery Team noted that sign-up and attendance at these second community conversations in each locality was lower than for the first set of community conversations. The largest of the sessions typically involved up to a dozen participants, whilst some sessions only attracted between 3 and 5 participants. However, the quality of the conversations was high, and the PDT observed that some participants from the first conversations were in attendance at the second set of conversations, in all four of the localities, and therefore there was evidence that interest in Project had been maintained, if to a lesser degree than had been envisaged.

It is possible that because the second conversation was pitched as being a follow-up to an earlier community survey and community conversation, that some people who had not taken part in that prior engagement activity felt that they could not join in the Project’s activities at a half way point.

Most of the proposals made by the various local policing teams across the four localities related to improving communication and engagement, being more present at community group events and becoming more embedded in communities and therefore more accessible to local people.

The proposals had the support of most participants, although PDT members observed that initial expectations around what the CCAR Project might do for the local community had required careful management.

Step 5

In each of the localities, local policing teams from Police Scotland a period of around 3 months introducing Tests of Change (initiatives), with implementation typically commencing within a month of the second community conversation taking place.

Detail on the various initiatives, and what people specifically thought of them after 3 months as part of ‘checking in’ (Step 6), is set out within each of the locality reports on the CCAR website. The following is a list of all of the tests of change from across the four localities. There is commonality among them: a focus on being more visible to communities, more embedded within in communities, and providing more enhanced communication, including information about the work that the police are doing locally.

Each local policing team implemented between 3 and 6 initiatives during the three month ‘tests of change’ period, although it was apparent to the Project Delivery Team, through ongoing discussions with the local policing teams during the delivery period, that in some cases, the initiatives were implemented towards the end of the 3 month period due to operational capacity.

Letham

• Introducing named community police officers
• Hosting pop-up events
• Developing links with local organisations
• Promoting the Police Scotland Youth Volunteers scheme
• Delivery of a presentation about policing in 2023

Irvine-Fullarton 

• Issuing leaflets and email communications to stakeholders
• Equipping local officers with quadbikes to assist with beach/dune patrols
• Campus officers giving more frequent school visits
• Delivery of a presentation about policing in 2023

Levenmouth

• Hosting pop-up events
• Supervisors walking the beat
• Hosting of a quarterly public forum
• Community leaflets and newsletter
• Revisions to the local social media approach
• Communicating more through the Improving Levenmouth Together partnership to reach more people
• Increasing community officer engagement
• Delivery of a presentation about policing in 2023

Wick

• ‘Coffee with a Cop’ community drop-in sessions
• Local policing bi-monthly newsletter “Caithness Community Update”
• More localised approach to recruitment to help retain officers
• Local policing marquee set up at local community events
• Delivery of a presentation about policing in 2023

Step 6

The sixth step took place at the end of the ‘tests of change’ period in each of the four localities. It was initially conceived to be a period when formal evaluation of each of the tests of change would take place. However it became apparent that many of the initiatives introduced by local policing teams had not had chance to embed or be observed by communities. For example, preparing a quarterly local newsletter would mean that there would have been only one newsletter in circulation at the time ‘evaluating’ its effectiveness at raising confidence. On this basis, Step 6 took the form of a ‘checking in’ engagement step, to see whether local people had noticed some or all of the initiatives that had been introduced in their area, and to gather their initial views.

A community survey (the second of such) was used at Step 6 and ran for about six weeks in each locality. This asked similar questions to the initial community survey, but specifically asked people about their awareness of the named initiatives in their communities, and whether they felt they
could help to improve confidence in local community policing.

The questionnaire surveys were administered both online and in paper form, and were disseminated locally via community groups and with the support of local policing teams. Schools were also used in an effort to reach younger audiences, however this was only possible in Letham
(Perth) and Irvine-Fullarton (North Ayrshire) due to the timing of the surveys in relation to holiday and exam periods.

202 people completed Step 5 surveys (including 37 primary school pupils in Letham and 9 Under-16 pupils in Irvine-Fullarton). This overall response represents a marked reduction from response to the initial community survey and was consistent across all four localities.

The Project Delivery Team monitored completion rates over the course of the six weeks survey period, and noted slow uptake. The Team took the decision not to go to additional lengths to boost participation beyond the promotional methods already used at Step 2 for the initial community
survey.

This decision was taken in recognition that a key part of the CCAR Project’s purpose and guiding principle was to achieve the best response and impact within the available resource envelope, working within time constraints and documenting/recording such challenges as part of the CCAR Project’s learning and overall test of trying to deliver the Place Principle in practice i.e. ‘doing things with communities rather than to communities’.

Step 7

The final step in the engagement model entailed bringing the community together for a final meeting, focussed on the insights generated via the ‘checking in’ survey at Step 6, as captured in an evaluation report for the area and final report.

At each final meeting, the Project Delivery Team summarised the CCAR Project’s overall footprint and impact over the course of the fieldwork and delivery of the engagement model, explained next steps, and thanked those attending for their contributions along the way.

The final ‘project closure’ events took place in a similar way to the previous community conversations, although they were much shorter in duration (around 1 hour long), and were less conversational in nature. Attendance at these final meetings was much more limited than at previous community conversations, with numbers varying between 3 and 6 people.