The Rise of Community Safety Partnerships – by Lorraine Gillies, SCSN Chief Officer

Over the last few weeks, SCSN have made contact with a number of CSPs and community safety practitioners to find out how they have been coping under the strain of COVID-19, the immediate effect of this unprecedented situation and the key emerging themes so far.

We have managed to make contact with 20 local authorities and 5 other partners. We have, as yet, been unable to make contact with a number of local authorities, which we believe is indicative of their redeployment into front line work as well as issues around IT and system accessibility at this time.

Over time, there might be implications for information flow if these important link roles continue to be deployed to the frontline for the foreseeable future.

It’s a concern to us at SCSN that we are struggling to contact the Community Safety Leads across Scotland. It’s vital that we are able to use a range of channels to create a feedback loop of local intelligence to share across the country at National and local level about what’s happening in communities. The information we have and evidence from other countries at other stages of Covid – 19 infection tells us that we are likely to experience an upscale in Violence Against Women cases and anti social behaviour. Its essential that the light stays on in CSPs so that they can respond appropriately and timely.

There is a key role for elected members in this – we are preparing to work with COSLA to understand more about the activity in local communities by elected members – they can support community mobilisation and support resilience.

However, our survey tells us that in the CSPs we have managed to reach, excellent work is happening. Of course it is and it’s likely to be happening in the areas we haven’t reached. Lets hear about it. Let us know.

We will continue to collect as much feedback as we can in the coming weeks and update you on this changing national picture and emerging issues as they unfold. As always, we continue to offer support, assistance and help making connections at this time.

Read the report in full here.