Western Region Housing Services – A Toolkit
for Family Enriched Public Housing
From May to November 2003, Horizons worked with staff and stakeholders
from Housing Services and the Regional Housing Authorities in western
Nova Scotia on the Toolkit for Family Enriched Public Housing. Our primary
task was to work with the Project Working Group (made up of staff from
Housing Authorities and people who live in or have lived in public housing)
to develop a process for Housing to implement its vision of working with
tenants and the community at large for healthier communities. Together
we developed Working for Healthy Communities: A Toolkit for Family Enriched
Public Housing and its companion document, Working for Healthy Communities:
A Toolkit for Family Enriched Public Housing Toolkit Appendices.
The Toolkit developed by the Project Working Group is intended for use by Housing staff to engage people living in public housing with the broader community at large. The materials in the Toolkit have been drawn from a number of existing best practice resources (many developed in Nova Scotia), and will be useful to any community group working to improve the health of their community.
The Toolkit describes the type of process a group goes through when organizing to make their community healthy. The main steps in this kind of process are: bringing people together; assessing community strengths and needs; getting a picture of the community’s starting place; identifying priorities and developing an action plan; implementing the plan; evaluating the work; and starting the cycle again. The Toolkit is organized around these main components of working for healthy communities.
