Making an impact
Unintended benefits
It is likely that you will be looking for specific outputs from community engagement activity. However, it is also likely that other aspects will arise from an engagement process. Some examples are given below
- information (for other services or areas of police work)
- intelligence (neighbourhood policing approach can provide links/ground level information etc)
- people (wanting to be involved or come to another meeting even if there is not one scheduled)
- ideas (for service improvement, further community involvement)
These benefits could well be experienced by community members, staff of your organisation or those from other organisations.
Using unintended benefits
You will have to plan how to make use of these outputs yourself; or explore how else they might be utilised. For example, can:
- other people in your organisation take forward an idea that has resulted from a community engagement process?
- other services/organisations address issues raised by your consultation processes (e.g. problems with lighting or graffiti) facilitated and supported by you?
- a person who has expressed interest in further community involvement be directed towards other ways of getting involved , for example, a standing community forum, neighbourhood watch, being a custody visitor?
- people work within their own communities to set up standing involvement structures, possibly supported by your organisation?
- people work as part of their own roles to support community involvement activity (e.g. staff from your organisations or others acting as champions for your work, developing their roles to meet your objectives, sharing resources or projects?)
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