Stay informed with the LNN Daily Newsletter

Online survey aims to identify Lethbridge’s social needs

Nov 7, 2018 | 10:55 AM

LETHBRIDGE – The public’s input is being sought as part of work on a community development strategy by the City of Lethbridge.

The process includes assessing the needs, through an asset mapping project, and engaging the community and stakeholders. A short survey has been put online. Project assistant Brittany Bishop explained while there are questions about urgent issues like drug addiction and housing, they’ve also been pulled out into their own strategic planning.

“Originally, the community development strategy was going to be including substance abuse and housing as well as all the other social issues in our community,” Bishop said. “But due to the pressing nature of the substance abuse and the housing, council decided to create separate strategies for both of those, and take a deeper vertical on those, which we are much in support of, as this will give us a deeper breadth of information on those topics.

“And then, we will take the development strategy, the community drug strategy, and the municipal housing strategy and we will weave that together into a Lethbridge Social Well-Being Strategy, as kind of a comprehensive road map on what the priority issues are in Lethbridge and how the community can best tackle them together.”

The community development strategy will cover a five-year period and is expected to be complete by March 2019. Bishop said the substance abuse and housing strategies should also wrap up around that same time.

“Within the survey, we’ve included housing, we’ve included substance abuse. We want to hear what the community sees as social issues, and that will help inform our broad community development strategy. But then, that will also be used in tandem with the community drug strategy that’s being developed, as well as the housing strategy. So, they’ll work in tandem, but also this will work to figure out what else our social issues of the community is finding,” she said.

Bishop added the city can’t do it alone – it will need help from partners and stakeholders, but how and where is what they hope to find out from the strategic plan.

The survey is open until Nov. 29.