Prevention toolkit

Prevention Lens 2 – Prevention through Community

Taking a community lens means using prevention tools in a way that recognises that outcomes are shaped not only by individuals, but by the places, networks, and social contexts in which people live.

This approach emphasises that risks and protective factors are often concentrated geographically and socially, and that prevention can be more effective when designed and delivered at a community level.

Applying a Community Lens across the Toolkit

Taking a community lens means using prevention tools in a way that recognises that outcomes are shaped by varied circumstances and events within their community or place. This reflects place as an anchor for positive or negative outcomes, and that assets in a place (public services, community hubs, shops, recreational spaces, etc) can have a significant role to play in prevention at a local level.

Looking at different sections of this Toolkit, this means:

• Defining prevention - Applying a community lens to defining prevention means supplementing the definition of the “levels of prevention” (primary, secondary, and tertiary as defined in Tool 1), with additional concepts and frameworks around community prevention. This includes recognising the role of community networks, relationships, and local assets, and how they contribute to building resilience, supporting wellbeing, and reducing risk.
• Understanding drivers of demand - A community-focused approach to understanding demand looks at how different drivers can combine to drive outcomes in a community. This recognises that drivers impact the community at different levels, from the individual to wider society. For example, Scotland’s Violence Reduction Framework draws on the World Health Organisation’s social ecological model for thinking through different levels of risk and protective factors, including individual, relationship, community and societal levels. This helps identify opportunities where strengthening community capacity could reduce demand upstream, for example by preventing crises through informal support networks or early community-based interventions.
• Preventative budgeting and outcomes - Using a community lens for preventative budget tagging could involve adding additional criteria or factors to tag budgeted spend against to ensure it is reflecting community investment in prevention. This could involve tagging budget lines against other factors such as whether spend brings delivery closer to communities, or whether community experience is involved in the spending decision. This allows for an assessment of how resources are directed toward strengthening community capacity and early support, and whether there is scope to shift investment from reactive services into community-based prevention. These are criteria that are being explored in future versions of the Preventative Budgeting Tool.
• Evaluation and appraisal - Applying a community lens in evaluation and appraisal could mean capturing the broader and often less tangible impacts of community-based prevention, such as increased social connectedness, trust, and resilience. Practically, it could be ensuring that distributional analysis and place-based appraisal and evaluation methods are used in analysis. For example the Green Book includes a section on distributional analysis and place-based analysis. Assessing impact of place-based initiatives could build a stronger case for investment in community-led prevention.
• Decision support tools – Thinking about prioritisation frameworks through a community lens can support decision makers to explicitly value interventions that strengthen community capacity alongside more traditional service-based approaches. Additional criteria could be included in multi-criteria analysis to capture community engagement, empowerment, or reach into underserved groups, alongside cost and effectiveness. Weighting can reflect the importance placed on community-led prevention, ensuring these benefits are given due consideration in decision-making. This helps ensure that options which build stronger, more resilient communities are not undervalued compared to short-term, service-driven solutions.

What this adds to prevention analysis

Applying a life course lens could help nuance and strengthen the case for preventative investment. For example, it could

• increase focus on place-based prevention – by highlighting how needs and opportunities vary across areas, supporting more targeted and locally responsive interventions.
• Highlight the importance of social networks and assets - emphasising the role of social networks, environments, and local systems in shaping outcomes.
• Strengthen system-wide impact – by illustrating how interventions can generate collective benefits beyond individual recipients.
• Support integration and collaboration – by encouraging coordination across local services and partners to address interconnected drivers.
• Address inequalities - helping target communities where disadvantage is concentrated, supporting more prevention strategies that reduce inequalities.

More information and support

The Prevention Unit are looking to develop this guidance to support community prevention analysis and will update this section of the Toolkit in future. Contact: PreventionUnit@gov.scot.

Additional resources

• See Scotland’s Violence Reduction Framework for how different frameworks are used to think through prevention
• The Violence Reduction Framework above draws on the World Health Organisation’s social ecological model which can be a useful framework for thinking through different levels of risk and protective factors, including individual, relationship, community and societal levels.
• The Improvement Service developed guidance on prevention in Community Planning