Community engagement takes many forms, whether it is communicating what the force is doing, ensuring there are plenty of ways for the public to have a say and get involved, influencing policy or supporting communities to take an active role in their communities.

Understanding your citizens' wants and needs

It is important to recognise that some people may not wish to take an active part in their community. Others will have a limited amount of time to get involved, and there will be a proportion of people who are very interested in participating in their communities. Some forces have begun to use Customer Insight techniques and resource-based technology, such as Mosaic, to help them segment citizens and gain a better insight into the communities they serve.

The best way to find out what members of communities want, of course, is to ask them how they would like to be engaged with, and to provide them with a number of opportunities to make contact with the police and get involved, such as Partners and Communities Together meetings, Street Briefings, regular attendance at venues such as supermarkets as well as fetes, high visibility patrols, volunteering opportunities, a range of contact methods and digital engagement.

It is important to ensure that there is close alignment between engagement work, communications and contact management and, where possible, a good understanding of engagement by other partner agencies.

Digital engagement and the 'second society'

The importance and use of digital engagement has increased in recent years, through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other so called 'Web 2.0' (interactive) websites. Forces have started to increasingly look at digital engagement methods to work with the public.

The 'second society' is a concept that highlights that the boundaries between so-called traditional engagement methods and digital engagement is blurring. It is important that forces understand digital engagement as well as continue traditional engagement methods and to decide how this fits with any overall engagement.

Supporting the public to get involved

There are numerous ways for members of the public to work directly alongside the police, whether as Special Constables, Police Support Volunteers, or working with the police through a voluntary or community group. Many ideas are outlined in the Online Resource outlined under 'Ideas and resources'.

Ideas and resources

With the advent of the Big Society agenda, it has never been more important to work alongside our communities to tackle local problems with local solutions. There are many examples of good engagement ideas by forces. For an overview you can contact Mark Roe using the link on this page.

• The Local Policing and Confidence Resource can be found at: http://cfnp.npia.police.uk/lrg/localpolicingandconfidence.pdf
  The Online Resource includes chapters on working with voluntary sector organisations, volunteers, faith communities, incoming communities, the business community as well as broader information on community cohesion, digital engagement and neighbourhood profiling. The Resource can be easily navigated online and has hyperlinks and video clips embedded. Chapters can also be printed as necessary.
• The 'Youth Intervention' guide for managers and 'Youth Intervention' guide for practitioners provides a definitive outline of the criminal justice system for young people as well as some engagement case studies being used by police forces and other agencies.
• The Engage guide outlines digital engagement methods used by police forces and some tips for using social networking websites: http://www.neighbourhoodpolicing.co.uk/1398.aspx
• In response to the increasing number of street patrols by members of the public, the NPIA published a paper on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in early 2010. The paper outlines the potential benefits and challenges of volunteer street patrols. There are already several examples of volunteers patrolling the streets across the country, including Street Pastors and Street Angels. The paper looks at some current examples and outlines issues that need to be considered. The paper is available here.

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