NATIONAL COMMUNITY
CRIME PREVENTION PROGRAMME
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Developing and implementing your
crime prevention project plan
How to do it
Key questions:
What can we reasonably tackle in the near future?
What will the main project activities be?
When and over what time frame will the activities happen?
Who will organise the activities?
What do we needpeople, money, equipment, vehicles, a building?
Who will keep an eye on things?
How will projects be monitored?
Project plan
After you choose an aim, you need to develop a plan of activities for the project. It should be clear how the selected activities will bring about the objective. Working out a plan, right at the start, will help guide the project.
Factors to consider when developing a project plan include:
How much money do you need to run the project?
Who will manage the project, including the use of funds?
How will you engage and communicate with key stakeholders?
Are there people available to help implement the project?
Is your area able to attract and retain appropriate staff for the job?
Are there people in the community who will support the project?
Can you afford to train staff?
Would the project be able to cope with staff turnover?
Will the project rely on a crime prevention grant as its only source of funding?
How will you respond to and cope with any unexpected changes?
What results do you expect the project activities to achieve?
Implementation
When working out what to do and how to do it, it is useful to be aware of some common problems that arise during projects. The following table goes through common problems and possible ways of avoiding these problems.
Set up a crime prevention planning group
Involve people eg, police, health, schools local council and business, youth services, NGOs
Use local knowledge and crime statistics to identify local problems
Consult with people, find out what else is happening
Find out about crime prevention strategies done elsewhere
Agree on main objective and key activities Work out length and timing of activities
How will you measure progress (this is the evaluation)
Cost these activities. This becomes your project budget
Implement project and review its success
| Issue | Why this is a problem | Ways to avoid the problem |
| Lack of community participation | In order for activities to work, they generally need to be accepted and supported by the wider community. | Propose good practice strategies that the community will want to get
involved
in. Make sure that community members have an opportunity to have a say in, and comment on, what is to be done. Make sure that no one group or individual dominates the proceedings or dictates to the community what is to be done. Have open conversations or consultations about what is to be done; don’t have one-off consultations with the community. Instead, consult regularly about the project (these consultations can be a useful source of information on whether the strategies are successful in the eyes of the community). Alert the community to the strategy through the local media (eg, local television guide or paper; local radio; community meetings etc). |
| Attracting skilled workers | Attracting experienced staff to short term projects can be difficult, especially in rural and remote areas. | Think of who is willing to participate in the project, and build a plan around the available skills base in the area, or build in training and mentoring. |
| Staff turnover | If staff leave during the project it takes time to replace them. New staff may take time to become familiar with the project. This can impact on the implementation of activities and makes it harder to determine how the project is progressing. | Look at ways of encouraging staff to stay with the project. Keep good records of the project’s activities so that a new person can pick things up quickly. Provide ongoing support to new staff. |
| Managing the budget | NCCPP grants are non-recurrent. Sometimes there is an expectation that projects will run for a long time but this may not be a realistic expectation. |
Always try to include in the budget all the resources required for the
project. Try and have more than one source of funding. Have a plan for continuing your project work once the funding has ended. Remember that some of the best projects are simple and only require limited resources. |
| Sustainability | Attracting local or additional funding and support can be difficult, especially if the local area is not wealthy or the project is seen as important to only one part of the community. | Additional local funding is also a great way for the community to take
ownership of the strategy. Highlight to key people in the local area how they will benefit from the project. |
| Unexpected events | Events such as droughts, economic factors and out-of the ordinary happenings can impact on the project. | You can not predict ‘unexpected’ events. However you can try and make the impact of these events minimal by making the project plan flexible. Don’t let the success of the project hinge
on one or two factors. |
| Finding you need to change project activities once it has started | It can be difficult to work out in advance just what might be required to achieve your main objective. Sometimes projects needs to change if you find a planned strategy is not achieving what it was supposed to. | Keep funding bodies informed about your progress
and discuss the need for changes in the project’s activities. Continue to consult the community ahead of making any project changes. Review the objective carefully and how the activities were originally linked to the objective. Find out about other crime prevention activities and what they have achieved. |