Community Development Framework (CDF)

Introduction

The Community and Protective Services (CPS) Department of the City of Ottawa has built consensus on a Community Development Framework (CDF) that moves the city to a new approach of supporting a focused, coordinated and strategic effort to align services and resources. 

The goal of the Community Development Framework (CDF) is to create healthy and safe environments and provide accessible, integrated and holistic services to communities in need.

The Framework brings together funders, community organizations, residents, researchers and city services to share information and leverage opportunities to support neighbourhood-based initiatives in a strategic and coordinated fashion. 
The Community Development Framework is based on the four key guiding principles –  Collaboration, Coordination, Community Participation and Leveraging of Resources – which are inherent to the No Community Left Behind strategy and demonstrative of the CPS direction.

Structure

The structure includes multiple components working together at the neighbourhood, community and system levels.
At the neighbourhood level, related Community Health and Resource Centres initiate Framework implementation. The designated neighbourhoods work closely with service providers and various agencies through Local Steering Committees.
The community level includes a coordinating function to connect what is occurring at the neighbourhood to the systems level.  The Coalition of Community Health and Resource Centres lead the Community Table that facilitates the sharing of approaches and good practices across No Community Left Behind sites in neighbourhoods. 

At the system level, Municipal Services, Resource and Knowledge Transfer Tables contribute and provide support to the Framework.

The Municipal Service Table brings together Staff from across the municipal services of the City. Members of this Table work collaboratively to share community intervention strategies, knowledge and assets, and identify and breakdown organizational barriers with a goal to contribute to neighbourhood outcomes. 

The Resource Table brings together stakeholders with specific funding mandates to work together to identify various resource leveraging opportunities to support the Framework. 

The Knowledge Transfer Table endeavours to identify and share research results and standardize evaluation tools for use at the neighbourhood level. Researchers from this Table conduct research that guides and supports implementation of the Framework.

The Community Development Roundtable works as a “community leadership team” to promote, guide and facilitate the implementation of the Community Development Framework within the City of Ottawa.

Community Developers coordinate the implementation of the NCLB Strategy development process at the local level.

The CDF Coordinator represents Community Health and resource Centres, act as a resource to the CHRCs and represents CHRCs in consultations with the City and other agencies to establish consultative frameworks, to broker solutions, and ensure successful implementation of the strategy development process at the grassroots level.

The CDF team coordinates system level action planning and interaction among various tables.”

Process

Two simultaneous processes are taking place: one at the neighbourhood level and the other at the over-all system level. At the community level, residents, community associations, businesses, front-line city staff, and community developers are engaged in putting the No Community Left Behind Strategy Development process in place, which is a standardized approach to community engagement, assessment, prioritization, planning, implementation and evaluation.

At the broader level, the process started with neighbourhood action planning moves to the next step of assessments and recommendations to the system level. Action planning at system level leads to action planning at the community level, followed by implementation and participatory community based evaluation.  

Summary

The Community Development Framework creates a new way of working beyond the Community and Protective Services Department and into the community.  This model is built on community development principles and community-based problem solving for place-based interventions.

© 2005-08 South-East Ottawa Community Health Centre
Centre de Sante Communautaire du Sud Est D'Ottawa
Tel./ Tél: (613) 737-7195 Ext. 2403  Fax/Télé: (613) 739-8199

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