Connections First

NATURALLY SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENTS IMPROVE OUTCOMES

Evidence, including brain science, indicates that natural supports and naturally supportive environments can improve outcomes for vulnerable children, youth and families.

The intention of the evidence summary is to provide evidence the supports the case that strategic investments that can be put in place to enhance natural supports in community settings can mitigate the influence of adversity on children in the middle years and their families.

By describing activities that encourage engagement with others, develop cultures of reciprocity and inclusion, and build skill development can enhance the well-being and belongingness of children, youth and their communities. These are all outcomes of naturally supportive experiences and ones that we wanted to highlight in this summary.

Rapid Review

Rapid reviews are a useful research method to gather relevant evidence on an issue or topic within a limited time-frame. While rapid reviews provide a more limited scope of information than systematic reviews, they are especially effective for informing policy and practice.

A rapid review was conducted for the Connections First initiative to examine the current evidence on the effectiveness of various community-based natural supports in developing children’s life skills. Life skills for this review were defined as behaviours and skills that allow people to deal with everyday demands and stressors.

Recent literature was systematically reviewed to identify key characteristics of effective community-based programs and activities that promote development of life skills through the creation of natural supports. Key findings are presented in the infographic provided.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN SUMMARY

We know that communities themselves are the best at building resilience in their own children and youth by providing easy access to resources, activities, and programming that promote the creation of natural supports. In order to provide that access, communities need to understand where and what these opportunities are and how best to engage with them.

Our objective was to complete an environmental scan of perceptions of the facilitators and barriers in the development of natural supports within Calgary communities. We did so because we wanted to better understand why people felt more or less motivated to engage in natural support building in their own communities.

We invited City of Calgary Community Social Workers to participate in the scan as we felt that they were most directly involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of community events and programs.