Summary of the Evaluation of the Aboriginal Community Safety Planning Initiative

About the program

• The Aboriginal Community Safety Planning Initiative (ACSPI or the Initiative) began in 2010 and was renewed in 2014 as part of the Action Plan to Address Family Violence and Violent Crimes Against Aboriginal Women and Girls.
• The Initiative helps communities respond to the issue of violence in a holistic manner. Through the development of a Community Safety Plan, Indigenous communities create tailored approaches to community safety that are responsive to their concerns, priorities, and context.
• There are two main components of the Initiative, the community safety planning process and funded pilot projects.

What we examined

• The evaluation assessed the continuing relevance of the Initiative, design and delivery, and the overall performance and achievement of outcomes.
• The evaluation covered the time period from April 2014 to March 2018.

What we found

• Combatting violence against Indigenous women and girls is a top priority of the federal government. The Initiative supports federal government efforts to address this ongoing problem.
• The ACSPI has been delivered as designed. However, the Initiative experienced challenges with delivery that were attributed to its holistic and community-specific approach.
• GBA+ considerations (i.e. gender, diversity and other intersecting identity factors) were included throughout the design and implementation of the Initiative.
• ACSPI has had success in supporting communities to develop safety plans and has provided tools and training to enable this process. Over the time period under review, 37 communities have completed safety plans.
• Federal and provincial partners are interested in, and supportive of communities that have undertaken safety planning. However, the Initiative has had limited success in aligning government programming and policy decisions with Community Safety Plans.
• Both Public Safety and Indigenous Services Canada fund broad community planning activities for Indigenous communities.  Coordination to improve synergies between these initiatives was limited.
• Overall, communities that have participated in the community safety planning process felt that their communities have benefited and that they were prepared to address community safety issues. Strengthened community relationships and focus were cited as the biggest benefits to the communities that have not yet implemented their safety plans.

Recommendations

The ADM of the Community Safety and Countering Crime Branch should:

1. Align existing tools and establish processes to assist communities in developing, implementing and monitoring actions from their Community Safety Plans. This could include examples of the measures of success as well as the provision of additional supports, such as the fostering of communities of practice and guidance on relevant funding opportunities from government and non-government sources.
2. Further develop and apply opportunities for collaboration and potential harmonization with other federal comprehensive community-based initiatives at both the regional and national level, including engagement at the senior management level.

Date modified:

2019-06-28