Resources for Practitioners: Community and Cross-Agency Engagement
Community and Cross-Agency Engagement
Nurture feedback, referrals, and buy-in
Context: Effective response to people experiencing crisis and conflict does not fit neatly within the domain of just one local government or community agency – it requires collaboration across public safety and health and human services partners. Additionally, community voices are crucial to help ensure that what is being built is truly useful, respectful, and empowering for system users.
Challenges include: Local governments often lack effective cross-agency convening authorities and groups to do long-term system improvement work. And it can be challenging to involve community voices before decisions are made, with sufficient representation of the variety of perspectives within the community.
The Opportunity: There is significant learning and experimentation going on in the spaces of new first response partners and improved crisis care systems. If these programs have the support and participation of the community, of traditional responders, and a healthy ecosystem of referral partners, then the new best-fit response teams will be much more likely to have the call volume they need, as well as the financial and political will to sustain their operations, thereby allowing them to truly demonstrate and grow their impact.
Community Engagement Guide
To build or improve a crisis or conflict response program, cities and counties must convene a cross-agency working group empowered to co-design the effort. This chapter guides you in assembling the right partners, aligning around a shared vision, and creating momentum through meaningful collaboration. While originally written for launching a mediation response program, most elements of this resource apply to unarmed responder programs more broadly.
Cross-Agency Working Groups Guide
To build or improve a crisis or conflict response program, cities and counties must convene a cross-agency working group empowered to co-design the effort. This chapter guides you in assembling the right partners, aligning around a shared vision, and creating momentum through meaningful collaboration. While originally written for launching a mediation response program, most elements of this resource apply to unarmed responder programs more broadly.
Attribution: We provide editable resources so they can be maximally valuable, including adaptation to your local environment. If you edit one of our resources, please provide this attribution in a footer: “Adapted from materials by Dignity Best Practices.”
Selected Resources from Partners in This Space
Practices for Working as a Multi-Agency Team (OCALI)
Community Engagement and Collaboration with Key Stakeholders (Council of State Governments)
Community Engagement Toolkit (Collective Impact Forum and Leading Inside Out)
Comments on these resources, or another to suggest? We would love to hear from you at contact@dignitybestpractices.org