Pathways to Well-Being: Community Safety and Well-Being System Map

How do various organizations, institutions, and collaborative tables in Hamilton intersect with the priority areas of Hamilton’s Community Safety and Well-Being Plan? How might we leverage these existing connections and/or create new pathways to support community safety and well-being?

This is a full year project extending into Winter 2023: https://www.citylabhamilton.com/winter-2023-project/2023/1/16/pathways-to-well-being-community-safety-and-well-being-system-map

Hamilton’s Community Safety & Well-Being Plan (CSWBP) aims to ensure all residents in the community feel safe, have a sense of belonging and can meet their needs for education, healthcare, food, housing, income, and social and cultural expression. This plan supports safe and healthy communities through a community-based approach to address the root causes of complex social issues. In creating this plan, the team seeks to achieve a proactive, balanced, and collaborative approach to community safety and well-being across four key areas: social development, prevention, risk intervention, and incident response. Hamilton’s CSWBP has identified six local priorities where opportunities for action —including: hate incidents, violence, mental health and stigma, substance use, housing and homelessness, and access to income. The plan is guided by principles related to equity, diversity and inclusion, community engagement, data and evaluation, sustainable funding, and system collaboration.

The goal of this challenge is to develop a system map to illustrate the relationships between various organizations, institutions, and collaborative tables in Hamilton that have a common goal to improve safety and well-being related to the plan’s priority areas. The map will demonstrate how these groups interconnect, relate, and act in a complex system. This information and insights will be used to inform the actions and implementation of the Community Safety & Well-Being Plan, including developing interventions, shifts, or policy decisions that help change the system in the most effective way. 

This challenge will include survey design, data analysis, report writing, and communication/knowledge translation tool development.

City staff name: Chelsea Kirkby, Senior Project Manager, Community Safety & Well-Being

Instructor name: Shahad Al-Saqqar & Jen Pearson, HTHSCI 4DE3, 4D06, 4D09, 4D12 

Project Agreement