Appendix 3: Rationale for Community Social Planning Council (CPSC) to Serve as the Host Organization

Appendix 3: Rationale for Community Social Planning Council (CPSC) to Serve as the Host Organization

CSPC’s History and Positioning in the Region

The Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria (CSPC) is a longstanding regional umbrella organization for the broader social service sector in the Capital Regional District. With a mission to advocate equity and better quality of life for everyone in the region, CSPC’s work helps to ensure that ongoing and emergent social and health-related issues are well understood, and that our community has the tools needed to develop solutions to these issues. We do this by providing community-based research and engagement processes that bring people together to inform decision-making across all sectors in support of broad-based well-being. We also provide timely, accessible services for low-income households and other marginalized groups that fill key gaps in community resources. Through CSPC’s community-based research and service delivery, we work in close collaboration with local municipalities, member and partner organizations across the health and social services sectors, Indigenous and other impacted communities, and people with lived/living experience.

The benefits of having CSPC serve as the backbone organization for MLAT include:

• CSPC is a neutral, non-partisan, regional organization that has worked collaboratively with all levels of government, the health and social services sectors, and people with lived/living experience in the Capital Regional District for over 90 years.
• CSPC can leverage our extensive experience and connections gained through leading important community initiatives including current and past work in the region (e.g., Complete Communities, administering the Point-in-Time Count for the region for multiple years, updating CRD’s Regional Housing Affordability Strategy) to the benefit of MLAT and children, youth, and families across the West Shore-Sooke Region
• CSPC is community-led organization whose work touches on all aspects of health and wellbeing for the citizens of the Capital Regional District.
• As a community-led nonprofit with insider knowledge of the systems that affect all of us, we are tapped into the wisdom of the community and build trust and ownership in solutions.

Given our substantial history of community-based research and analysis, policy development, and multi-disciplinary and cross-sector community engagement, CSPC is well positioned to support the MLAT initiative. CSPC’s core leadership including the Executive Director and Chair of the Board of Directors see an important alignment between CSPC’s work and the priorities of the Municipal Leadership Advisory Team (MLAT), and as such, are highly supportive of CSPC providing this role.

CSPC is a certified living wage employer (CSPC does the living wage calculations for Greater Victoria every year), and our staff are provided with extended health benefits that are fully covered by the employer. In addition, staff are provided with a monthly bus pass to support them with their transit.

The coordinator role for MLAT adds to our existing capacity through the addition of a consistent function that is reasonably predictable year-over-year, by strengthening our reach in the West Shore-Sooke region, and through the provision of a unique professional development opportunity for a CSPC staff member.

The reporting structure will be developed in close collaboration with the MLAT and its Executive, including how information will flow on a day-to-day basis and what will go to the whole committee versus members of the Executive.

The position and the MLAT will be set up for success through the following practices:

• Ensuring predictable, regular updates in a format that is most easily received by members.
• Facilitating open and respectful communication, including ensuring that all members have an opportunity for input.
• Sending out information well in advance of meetings to allow time for review.
• Keeping meetings productive and on track and having a consistent format for meetings as well as the minutes from meetings.