My Safer Bournemouth is more than a website……..
My Safer Bournemouth and My Safer Dorset is a set of principles and activities that listens, understands, and responds to the concerns of the local community. It informs, advises, and empowers the community to take action to ensure Bournemouth is a safe place to live. Every quarter the issues highlighted are identified by the community ensuring the initiative focusses on what matters to local people.
As well as dealing with incidents, My Safer Bournemouth and My Safer Dorset deals with the root causes of crime and anti-social behaviour, by seeking to put in place changes to environments and community behaviours that can be embedded to reduce the risk of recurrence.
A key part of My Safer Bournemouth and My Safer Dorsetis encouraging people to report accessing support services and information. We do this by focussing on the issue and clearly communicating.
- Who a person needs to contact about the issue? (right first time reducing failure demand in public sector organisations and reducing frustration on the part of the caller)
- What information will they need to effectively deal with the issue? (have this information ready to enable public sector organisations to make operational decisions that will increase the chances of success)
- What will happen once they have reported it? (manage people expectations, under promise and over deliver the key to raising trust and confidence in the police and Local authorities)
- What can I do to help myself? (what action can a person do to reduce the risk, or increase detection)?
- If I am not happy or the issue is not going away – what next? (Who else can I turn to for support)
The community does not always know who deals with what, what are their limitations e.g. legal, financial, political, environmental, social) – They just want to be listened to. understood, be kept informed and feel that people are protecting them and keeping them safe.
If a person with a concern calls an organisation, a department, or a person who can only “influence” a resolution and not “control” a resolution, it can not only be frustrating for the person taking the call who has empathy and would like to help but can’t – but annoys the person making the call who feel the effort was a waste of time.
Our communities can become disengaged if the feel that nobody is listening and nobody cares. People start to think” what’s the point of reporting why bother” they tell other people the same thing. As a result, the recorded crime figures drop, and the police use data that suggest that the issue has gone away, where in reality, it is increasing and having a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of the community. This can manifest itself with residents feeling disempowered and totally socially impotent to put things right. The situation if left unchecked may have wider impact on issues such as health, economy, and local social activities.
My Safer Bournemouth provides a point of reference all we ask is that.
The police and local authority support this by
- Providing information on who to contact and ensure that the person is someone who can deal with the issue.
- What information they need to effectively deal with it and explain what cannot be done without the right information.
- What will be done once they have been notified of the issue.
- Where can the community get wider support?
We want to continue to develop the My Safer Bournemouth and My Safer Dorset Principles – the website provides the communication tool, but the approach, ethos and partnership working provide the results.