Partner Event Learning Reports

Communication to Create Change: Tackling the Environmental Crisis

On the 19 May 2022 SCSN attended the above event on how third sector organisations can use our communications to help create change & tackle the climate crisis.

We learned a lot from the event to augment our fomenting focus on the climate crisis as fundamental to community safety, including some practical steps we can take to reduce our carbon footprint.

Playing our part as an organisation

We’ve already held a climate change & community safety event, introduced this monthly section to our newsletter & committed to making the climate crisis a standing agenda item at our board meetings – as well as trying to eliminate waste and encourage staff to lead climate friendly working & personal lives.

Read this Brief Event Summary in full here.

Tackling the Climate Crisis: A joint SCVO & ACOSVO event

18 November 2021

With the climate crisis continuing to escalate and the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) having taken place in Glasgow this year, climate change and sustainability should be a topic on everyone’s mind. Voluntary sector leaders are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to be more involved in tackling this crisis regardless of your organisation’s cause.

This webinar aimed to raise awareness of why climate change is relevant to non-environmental organisations and open up discussion about what these organisations can be doing to respond to the climate crisis and mitigate its effect on their communities. It also aimed to identify some of the challenges facing organisations in adapting to the transition to net zero. 

Read the learning report in full here.

Webinar Learning Write Ups: May-June 2021

Please see below for SCSN writeups and key messages taken from webinars attended between May and June 2021. Click on the hyperlinks below for a more comprehensive write up of the webinar.

The Contested Public Space: Public Sexual Harassment and Women’s Safety Work webinar looked at the importance of the everyday and focused on the use of men’s violence and harassment as being routine and connected. Instead of looking at discreet categories of violence, its more useful to think of violence as a continuum where there is a basic common character that underlies many different events.

The Fly Tipping Webinar hosted by the Public Policy Exchange explored the multi-faceted problem of fly tipping and outlined the need for new and innovative solutions, including a comprehensive action plan and national messaging and communications strategy. New data shows a sharp rise in fly-tipping since the advent of the pandemic which has unfortunately maintained although restrictions have eased, meaning a huge cost for public authorities.

The Placemaking in Scotland: What is it and how will it be funded and delivered? webinar shared valuable information on placemaking in Scotland, in particular The Place Principle, 20 Minute Neighborhoods and Community Wealth building. It provided practical tools such as a place guide and place process to enable services to better engage and collaborate with their local communities in the co-design process.

The Public Health Approach to Gangs event had a number of high-profile speakers, including Niven Rennie, Director, Violence Reduction Unit and Sheldon Thomas, Founder and Chief Executive of Gangsline. Conversations and presentations focused on prevention as being the most effective approach to deter people from entering gangs. There are many positive factors that gangs offer young people, including a sense of love and care, money and status that young people aren’t getting at home. How do services and communities step up to offer a better alternative?

The Hate Crime Webinar hosted by the Public Policy Exchange explored a wide range of issues and solutions relating to hate crime. Some of the solutions include Solutions include recognising the iimportance of regulating and legislating social media, victim support and listening to victims concerns and ideas, training ‘hate crime champions’ and doing much more work around not being a ‘bystander’ to embed cultural change. Bystander training is very important.  Having people stay silent can feel almost as bad as the hate crime itself for the victim.

Webinar Learning Write Ups: March-April 2021


Please see below for SCSN write ups and key messages taken from webinars attended between March and April 2021. If you are interested or would like to find out more about a particular topic, just click on the hyperlink in the brief descriptions below. This will provide you with more resources around the topic and a more comprehensive write up of the webinar.

Happy learning,

The SCSN Team

*****

The Cyber-Scotland Conference explored the importance of cyber security and how people from different groups, places, and times think about cybercrime and cybersecurity in different ways, having implications for government and police awareness raising campaigns. Policy recommendations include having a strategy that assumes some of these phishing attacks work, not just educating staff not to click on suspect emails.

‘The Knot’ webinar by Revolving Doors launched a new collection of eight essays that explore how poverty, trauma and structural disadvantage create and perpetuate multiple disadvantage. This webinar featured contributions from a range of speakers, including some of the authors of these essays to this topic. In the SCSN manifesto, we called for a continued dialogue on poverty and its’ harms, and chimed with ‘The Knot’ essay collection by calling for cross sector action to eradicate poverty. The evidence base is already there, we need to start taking action!

In the Conversation 16: The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 in 20th Century Scotland webinar, issues around the Act were explored such as, although it is well drafted and well understood, it is not fit for purpose if we are taking a public health approach. People cannot be punished out of addiction and convicting people trying to get their lives back together is counter-productive.  The use of language is also counterproductive with terms such as junkies, scum, neds etc only serve to ‘Other’ people who are in addiction. 

The Social Justice in a Brave New World webinar by Community Justice Scotland brought together two experts in social health and justice to discuss what’s next for us as a society after the Covid 19 pandemic. Sir Harry Burns and Gregory Boyle said that whilst the Covid pandemic has affected all of us, it has not affected us all equally, and has exposed many of the weaknesses and existing inequalities and injustices in our societies. Panellists discussed the importance of breaking down barriers that exclude people from participating in society, with Harry Burns commenting that we need to do things with people and not to people.

Webinar Learning Write Ups: January-February 2021


Please see below for SCSN write ups and key messages taken from webinars attended between January and February 2021. If you are interested or would like to find out more about a particular topic, just click on the hyperlink in the brief descriptions below. This will provide you with more resources around the topic and a more comprehensive write up of the webinar.

Happy learning,

The SCSN Team

*****

The Health Inequality Theory and the Alcohol Harm Paradox webinar examined the Alcohol Harm Paradox. This is the phenomenon whereby we see higher levels of overall alcohol consumption in the least deprived communities in Scotland but see greater alcohol related harms in the least deprived communities, despite lower or the same overall consumption.


The LGBT Experiences of Domestic Abuse webinar unpicked multiple issues including barriers to accessing support, creating inclusive environments and learning and training opportunities to help boost engagement with services for people from the LGBT community.

Tackling Crime and Delivering Justice in Scotland: The Scottish Government’s long-term vision.In this webinar a number of speakers from public and third sector organisations spoke around issues such as; Policing, Prevention and Rehabilitation; The Changing Nature of Offending – whose responsibility is prevention; Delivering Multi-Agency Justice Policy; Making Restorative Justice a Reality.

In Trauma informed approaches (Systems Leadership) talks were given about the lessons leant over 30 years in relation to trauma informed approaches. Key lessons from the webinar include that people inside organisations don’t talk to each other as much as they should and it is very important to understand staff perspective, systems and culture. People on the frontline see 100% of the problem and suitable solutions while leaders only see 4%. Its important to engage and include frontline staff in        all levels of decision-making.

The Unravelling the interwoven dimensions of geographic inequalities webinar explored spatial inequalities and how in the last 80 years. For example; deaths of despair (suicide, drugs and alcohol) have rapidly increased in the US since 2000; upward mobility has steadily decreased since 1940; there has been a dramatic rise in economic inequality since 1980; enormous poverty gaps have not narrowed at all; mass shootings are steadily rising; police killings have not decreased.

Public Health Approaches in Crisis COVID19 was a webinar that looked at the principles of a public health approach to policing. IN particular it looked at the ‘5C’ approach:

Co-production – that we are all on the same agenda

Collaboration – classic resilience work and strategic co-ordination

Co-operation – sharing data and intelligence

Community consensus – what is the problem from a public perspective?

Counter narrative – different strands of approach

Webinar Learning Write Ups: November-December 2020


Please see below for SCSN write ups and key messages taken from webinars attended between November and December 2020. If you are interested or would like to find out more about a particular topic, just click on the hyperlink in the brief descriptions below. This will provide you with more resources around the topic and a more comprehensive write up of the webinar.

Happy learning,

The SCSN Team

*****

  • The Conversation with the People of Scotland was an online session whereby members of the public and practitioner working in health and social care sectors came together to discuss their experiences of accessing healthcare services during the pandemic.
  • Preventing violence in economic recession whilst maintaining rights-based and trauma-informed approach? was a webinar exploring how the Covid-19 pandemic has badly affected household finances, some of which were already precarious. Added to this, the adverse economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may very well lead to greater wealth and income inequality going forwards. The webinar hosted by No Knives Better Livesconsidered how we might prevent violence in economic recession whilst maintaining rights-based and trauma-informed approach. Speakers shared their reflections on the complex relationship between economic stress and violence and what needs to be done to tackle the underlying causes i.e. poverty, inequality as well as the necessity for trauma informed systems and organisations not just trained individuals.
  • The SCSN hosted the The Scottish Picture of Antisocial Behaviour webinar to launch a significant piece of research on Anti-Social Behaviour in Scotland. Participants listened to how the research was done, key findings and emerging recommendations. The webinar gave people the opportunity to discuss the findings from the research and helped shape the next step in SCSN’s new dialogue for antisocial behaviour work.
  • In 2015 the Campaign to End Loneliness and Age UK published a set of promising approaches to tackle loneliness in later life. In 2020 they revisited this work and in this webinar they shared an update on this work. This includes a refreshed promising approaches framework and some new case studies of work underway across the UK. There are points of interest for community safety practitioners and those working in frailty and unintentional injury prevention in both the framework and the webinar.
  • Every year the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR) hosts an end of year conference. This year’s theme was ‘the future of policing’ and heard from academics and other partners from across policing in Scotland and the UK to talk about what the future holds for policing. Of particular interest to community safety practitioners may be the input from the College of Policing in England who have published a paper considering the Future Operating Environment for Policing – both the process and the outputs will be of interest for CSPs as they work closely with police colleagues.

Learning Reports – September/October 2020

Please see below for SCSN write ups and key messages taken from webinars attended between September and October 2020. If you are interested or would like to find out more about a particular topic, just click on the hyperlink in the brief descriptions below. This will provide you with more resources around the topic and a more comprehensive write up of the webinar.

Happy learning,

The SCSN Team

*****

Apolitical, Rethinking the Way we do Policy-Making reflected on what has Covid-19 taught us about policymaking, what this might mean for traditional policy models and theories and how we can incorporate these lessons and insights into the future of policymaking.

Changing Inequality in Exposure to Crime explored the links between crime, poverty and displacement of people from urban areas into suburbs. Conversations and data around inequalities in exposure to crime show that, although crime is generally on the decrease, frequent victims of crime continue to experience the same levels of crime.

Talking Shops, or Conversations for Systems Change? For many working in the public sector this means a place or group regarded as a centre for unproductive talk rather than action, with endless pre-meetings, meetings and papers. For others, talking is a key mechanism for understanding and change; indeed there are a range of therapies called ‘talking therapies’ widely used in the field of psychotherapy. 

The NESTA Impact Partnerships webinar focussed on the growing consensus that, to tackle the most pressing issues we need to use the unique resources, skill sets and power of multiple sectors. Impact partnerships unlock a significant untapped pool of resources for social and environmental good. They bring together the commitment, resources and expertise from across different sectors to tackle tough social challenges more effectively.

A wellbeing economy is one where the economy is in service of higher order goals, it isn’t an outcome in and of itself. The SCVO Building Scotland’s Wellbeing Economy webinar discussed how Scotland is doing well, but “A good society is one that knows it’s not yet good enough.”