10:07:39 (KARIN) 
So, we began the project to develop this toolkit with a survey of its member libraries, to really try and understand the approaches and solutions being used in public libraries .
A total of 37 Libraries from 8 provinces responded to the survey and there were some common themes in the responses that helped to guide our areas of focus for the resulting toolkit.
So for example, the most common types of incidents at libraries across the country are related to drugs and or alcohol, hostile, or harassing behavior, and trespassing by banned or suspended customers.
And while incidents across each library represent less than 1%. Of all visits to the responding libraries, the frequency and the intensity Of incidents and the level of staff concern about those incidents has been rising in many libraries.
Another theme is the tremendous impact of the opioid crisis. And in addition to the survey, we had discussions with community partners and other groups such as the Canadian Network on Crime Prevention to help inform our process.
 Finally, the expertise of external, 3rd party public engagement firm and Temple Scott Associates, a leading public relations and government relations firm, helped us to consider the data, resources and best practices into a format that could be shared with the library community.
10:09:48 
So this shows the working group that's been in place for, over the past year. Heather Moe and I were members of this group working on developing the toolkit. And with the official launch of the toolkit at, in January, this working group has been replaced with an ongoing safety team.
The safety team is chaired by Mo and co chaired by Heather and me and new members have joined us to continue the work of improving this resource and further developing some of the aspects such as the advocacy piece. 
So that's just to show you who is involved to this point. 
And now I will ask Mo to take, take over the agenda.

10:10:41 (MOE)Thank you, Karen. And thank you, Kathleen, if we could just jump to the next slide.
So it's probably no surprise, why, you're all here. You signed up for this session.
And it really goes back to, libraries, across Canada, North America are facing, as, as Karen mentioned, series of issues around customer behavior, whether it's violent, inappropriate behavior, trespassing, etc.
And as public libraries, we are one of the most resilient organizations in our societies.
We continue to adapt and evolve to the services that meet and address the changing needs of our communities.
We're also positioned at the heart of the community and have demonstrated a commitment to creating a safe and welcoming dynamic spaces.
As our communities are changing, we really need to ensure that we adjust to continue to be able to provide welcoming spaces to all both staff and public and within our mandate as public libraries.
So part of the work that we did, and, the safety and security working group did, is really to survey libraries all across Canada to find out what they were doing.
And it's, you know, no surprise to anybody that, you know, we're all facing these issues, but it's also good to see that, there are libraries that are addressing these issues.
And Karen mentioned some of the issues issues with housing homelessness, mental health, loss of social service supports that existed in the community before opioid addictions, etc.
And the idea for pulling together this group and it took the leadership to do that, was really to, try to promote learning support, and collaborate around safety and security, issues in public libraries and the share our resources.

10:12:28 We'll mention that sharing, it is one of our superpowers and libraries.
We love to share with one another, and really kind of raise all boats to the same level, so to speak.
We also want to make sure that it's clear that, the toolkit is, really kind of a listing of best practices, including training, staffing, and approaches to customer conduct expectations.But it's also not a silver bullet. 
It's not, you know, this is what you *should* do - and if you do this, things will get better. It is, it is a kind of a collaboration and gathering of information, from different libraries from different communities, different parts of the country.
And no single solution is gonna work in every single community. So what you're gonna take out of this toolkit is hopefully a few ideas that help out maybe a few more ideas that help with your situation.
But we're not saying that every single, idea or approach in here is gonna work in every single community.
So again, just wanna make sure that, when we're, when you're looking at the toolkit and we'll again, part of this session is really to kind of quickly run you through some of it.
 And, explain some of the content that's there, hopefully get you excited to maybe delve a little further into it.

10:13:52 If the toolkit, if you haven't seen it, it is on Safety.ca website. Culc is hosting it.
 And as I said, it brings together in one place the diversity of ideas, strategies and best practices. And, it's just perspective from as Karen said, about 37, 38 libraries across Canada. One of the things that the safety and security team wants is to keep the toolkit updated as information, becomes available as things change as approaches change. We learn from other libraries, who may not have participated initially, to, add additional content to it.
So what you have here is about 12 months worth of time that we spent, pulling together what we could.
And, and really, again, it's, it's a combination of that content. And there's 11 areas, as you can see on the screen there.
And as I said, we'll run through some of them, but these are the 11 areas that we felt, grouping, the content made sense, with respect to how it could be presented to libraries.
And  hopefully, you can take advantage of that and, use that information, to address issues in your libraries.
Part of what we're going to do today also is get some feedback that, breakout session at the end is also to get some feedback or use out of the toolkit. Are there things that you've already done? We always love to as a part of these sessions gather more information about what people are doing and feed that information back into it.
10:15:27 I should also mention that we do have a listserv setup. 
So if you're on that list serve, you can actually have access asked questions too and it's it's basically access to everybody who has signed up to that on that list serve to be able to share ideas on how to move things forward and what works and what doesn't work in your in your branch.
 One of the approaches that we took when pulling together this toolkit, is putting everything through this lens of a journey map.
And the idea here is we wanted some kind of framework or context through which to look at how individuals within our spaces interact with our spaces, how they, perceive the spaces, and how you kind of move through that space depending on, who you are and what your, purposes, for, accessing the space.
And, through this journey, the way we've laid it out, there are 6 different stages of the journey.
There's the customer experience, which describes what happens in the library on a daily basis. And what that looks like to the various individuals.
And I'll show you a kind of a draft example so you understand what I mean when I say various individuals.
There's a social service and development stage which are activities or initiatives that are designed to support community safety and well-being.
 And these are things that you're either doing in your library or your partnering with someone in the community, who you can be to, in terms of social and service   development to assist individuals that are in the community.
There's the incident preparation stage and this is proactive implementation of programs strategies that you've put in place whether you've already got them in place or you get some additional ideas as you look through this toolkit.And really they're there to and designed to help reduce risk factors. 
So that's the incident preparation portion of this. The incident prevention, identifies and responds to current situations, of risk.
And again, in with the eye to mitigate, reduce the risk factors. Then there's the actual incident response and this is an incident has happened it's then your urgent and reactionary response to that incident based on the previous stages in terms of how you respond and what things you have in place to be able to, address the situation. 
And then there's the post incident recovery, which is providing support and recovery for the people involved, both your staff and customers and and debriefing on those learnings.
10:18:01 So the toolkit was really developed with this kind of journey map in mind. 
And it's just something we had actually started doing at TPL.
So it may be a little, more, a little simpler, depending on the size scale and scope of your organization, of your library system. And that's the other thing I should have mentioned is the, the ideas that we have, they may need to be adjusted based on, again, the size scale and scope of, your, library system and your community as well, depending on what your, dealing with.
So you'll see references to this journey map as, as you're going through the toolkit.

10:18:40 This is the example that I was talking about: So on the left hand side, we've got customers, we've got staff, we've got, library, safety specialist, which is, which are a type of staff that we have at TPL.
We've got security guards further on this list. And as I say, this is the example as we've worked it, and built this out.
We've got management, you know, immediate managers, directors. And, and again, it'll depend on your, structure and also who's in your space, that once you list these, individuals' or groups of individuals, then you start to look at those stages and really kind of build out what that experience looks like depending on that stage so I'm not gonna get into any more detail than that just to give you a sense still that that's the way we've approached it and looked at how we see our spaces and how individuals that are in that space interact with and and experience that space.

10:19:46 So, now we're getting into, one of the 11, areas.
 So one of the areas that we covered is, a patron customer expectations. So this is one of the focus areas, the 1st focus area and the toolkit.
 And as I say, we're not going to run through every single one of them. We're going to be here all day if we do that but just to give you a sense. 
And so, this, focus area really focuses on, the expectations or guidelines. And considerations on, on how and really the tone and how we kind of explain to our staff and our customers what acceptable behavior looks like in our spaces. And so you're going to see a variety of examples of guidelines that are provided both for customers and for staff with respect to you know responsibilities or their responsibilities and what the potential consequences are for those who are potentially breaking those expectations or contributing the expectations.
10:20:45 And depending on your library, you may have something already in place. Possibly called the code of conduct, the rules of conduct, visitor guidelines, customer service promise, whatever you call it, really this is kind of the foundational principle, that, generally similar across all libraries, regardless of what we call them, but they are really, the, the way in which we kind of organize these principles and communicate them out. And it's good to have that in place and to refer to and also have it posted, and make sure that people are aware of.
So you want to be very transparent about these expectations. And you know, some examples that we've seen included and again these are just 3 but there's many many and depending again on your library system you may communicate these differently but 3 general ideas, being furious and respectful of others, or other customers or patrons, staff and library property, being mindful of personal hygiene and wearing appropriate attire, using library resources for their intended purposes. And as I say, there's other expectations.
 So these guidelinescan really help to communicate to our customers and patrons the kind of environment we want to establish, one that feels, both safe and welcoming.
 And it's also a way to create a shared, commitment for how we engage, in a space together, a commitment from both, the library, the staff, and our visitors, and for our visitors, to our staff and each other in terms of how, that interaction is gonna look and what the expectations are for behavior.
And, and the idea of having clear guidelines, they're more effective both in fostering and understanding from a visitor perspective and helping staff communicate and enforce expectations.
 And I'm going to repeat this a few times, you have to be transparent about them. Otherwise they they're not going to be effective because the 1st time you show up to somebody and explain it to them, you know, they've got to be out there for people to see, and to understand what is expected.
And you've probably seen examples of this, in stores now, actually through COVID, there's a whole lot more of these, that you'll see in stores that, at provincial offices, at anywhere where the public is entering that space and, and libraries, we've had that over the years, but we're probably ramping that up a little more.
And so on the screen, what's on the right hand side is actually a banner we made it at Toronto Public Library that's at the entrance of every single, branch that we have, that really explains what the expectations are for those that are entering that space.

10:23:15 It's also important that, when you're developing these guidelines, you include and think about the legal perspectives, the privacy considerations and the human rights and trauma-informed approaches because you don't want to put something in in place that can't be that's not defensible from a legal perspective.You have to consider people's individuals' privacy also human rights because again it's quite easy to potentially run into issues with that so those are the considerations you wanna take when you're developing these.
 And as I said, it's important to have them posted, in a place where everybody can have access to them.
10:23:58 The Other thing too is, it could be on a sliding scale. So this is going back to the idea that each, library system, each community is different.
And you will see examples where, library system, each community is different. And you will see examples where, in some, libraries, the, may feel a little more harsh as, you know, compared to another library system, you'll have to decide what fits and what's best, in terms of how you, present that in your library system and in
your community. 
And just again, an example, Halifax Public Library, for example, outlines 4 key areas, in their customer conduct policy. And those are consideration for others, respectful communication, intentional use of materials in space and respecting privacy when filming in photography in the library.
Greater Victoria Library frames the responsibilities in their code of library code of library. As a series of "I" statements. For example, I agree to not engage in disruptive behavior such as excessive noise or misuse of library property.

10:25:10 Moving on to the next section, suspensions and other consequences. And this area really is, once you've kind of set those expectations, this is what happens if, someone, you know, breaks or is, taking, or behaving it appropriately or, not, you know, behaving in the expected, manner that you've set out.
So these are kind of the, consequences for not following the rules of conduct. And again, when you're developing these guidelines, you want them to be progressive in that you're not immediately going to jump to excluding someone for you know the rest of their life. Now there are situations where that might happen. 
So you want it to be progressive. You provide a verbal warning potentially. You, you know, provide a 1 week exclusion, 2 month exclusion, a 6 month exclusion, 12 month exclusion.
The idea here is we want to give individuals every opportunity to, continue to use the library in its services, but at the same time, we have consequences in place if you're not, abiding by the expectations of, that space and we will reinforce those expectations by applying some kind of consequence.
And as I said, you know, progressive is the best way and also the most defensible because again if you run into and we have in several situations where you have someone actually that goes in deeply to the human rights, and we have in several situations where you have someone actually that goes, in, to the human rights, you know, and complains that, you know, the rights of using the library has been taken away from them.
And, when we can show that, you know, we went through a progressive approach in terms of responding to the behaviors, it's way more defensible than, you know, immediately excluding someone for, the rest of their life from, from the library.
And so if you can show a pattern of we've tried everything we can within our, abilities to allow someone to maintain, access to the space.
10:27:05 You're able to kind of defend that, if it gets to that level. And the key is really building trust relationships in the community. Both those who violated the code of conduct and those impacted by the appropriate actions or behaviors in our spaces. So, you know, I don't know how many times I've seen someone turn around and say, you know, this person behaved this way : What are you gonna do to address that? 
And of course we're never gonna get into a conversation to say this is what we're gonna do to this person, but we do have rules of contact in place to say if someone behaves this way, these are the things we, we do and we can do.
And that really this transparency helps people to feel informed and empowered to pursue options if they find themselves in a situation where they've broken the guidelines.
And it also shows those impacted both the staff and our customers that we do and will take actions if there's and it'll be in direct proportion of the behavior if there is an infraction. And as I say, the ultimate goal is to, try to make everyone feel welcome and that they belong in the space.
But also that, you know, we're not going to allow, you know, mayhem to take place.
We have, expectations for behavior. And, and really, you know, it does include those who may have expectations for behavior.
 And again, depending on what you've done with in your library system, you do have people who, you know, stumble and they've broken a guideline. You do have people who, you know, stumble and they've broken a guideline. And, you know, we do want to, and we want to be able to offer them the ability to come back and welcome them back. And so having, this kind of, process in place really provides, both, guidelines, a way to communicate, and options for reinstatement and appeal should there be an appeal necessary.
 And just a couple of examples, Edmonton Public Library and Hamilton Public Library use, a kind of a code of conduct. The example that's on the screen is from Edmonton and they use that matrix to differentiate the level of consequences. And the actions associated with each type of consequence. I'm here at Toronto Public Library.
10:28:59 We manage the consequences. 
I'm here at Toronto Public Library. We manage the consequences through exclusion and appeal of reinstatements through exclusion and appeal, and although we don't have a matrix under each of those, so a verbal warning, a 2 month exclusion, a 6 month exclusion, we have kind of an extensive list of, what behaviors, will, result in that kind of an exclusion and how we actually, move through that.
We have a process for being for being able to appeal and being asked to be reinstated and so we've got a process in place that is clear to both our staff and our customers when they stumble and they run into a situation like that.
 I'm now going to pass it over to Heather who's been to look at, facilities and space design and talk to you about that.

10:29:50 Over to you, Heather.Okay, so good morning everyone and thanks very much for joining us.
 (HEATHER) I will talk a little bit about facility and space design now. So as you probably know, space influences how welcoming a library can be factors such as how welcoming a library can be.
Factors such as paint color, lighting, windows, natural light, seating, etc. Space can also influence the of paint color, lighting, windows, natural light, seating, etc. Space can also influence the management of safety and security in libraries.
Layout can play a significant factor on things such as sight lines, blind spots, problem areas, etc.
And finally, space can influence how people act and interact when in a library. When we think about this design of bar or the setup or the renovation of our facilities, considerations can include shelving height and layout.
So lower shelves at similar heights across your library location would create more consistent site lines and enable easier monitoring and engagement with staff and patrons.
The location and types of washrooms, you know, I have to say when I was in library school, I never thought I would spend as much time as I do thinking about placement of washrooms, but it's so important because it's a 1 of the core services in some areas of our libraries and we want to make sure that there is a safe and well welcoming space as much as our service points.
And there's lots of things to consider in where we place our washrooms and how we design them considering no doors, open doorways, placing them within clear sight lines from staff service points, etc.

The other thing to think about is use of cameras and mirrors. If you don't have a security camera system, there are lots of other ways to, help staff keep an eye on spaces including mirrors which can provide insight into spaces that might be tucked away or, spaces that might have a site line barrier such as a column.
And then also thinking about doors with sidelines or glass inserts so for example at Calgary we when we built our new central library all of our meeting rooms have glass glass walls and boss doors and that's great it provides this transparency this building of transparency in the space lots of ability to monitor and manage the space. It encourages engagement. People want to be to get involved in the things that they're seeing in the spaces.

10:32:05 However, when we when we during COVID decided that we wanted to implement something called the Wellness Desk, which was a drop in counseling service for people in crisis or in need. We realized of course that you know a glass box is not the ideal place to meet and have a private conversation or a conversation where someone is in a space where they're needing a bit more mental health support. 
And so we have to adjust our space in that way and provide some frosting so that we can balance the need for privacy with also the need for for sightlines into the space and other considerations too is when you have a space like that, where do you place it?
Do you place it in a corner or do you place it closer to a service point? 
And then finally things like seating and workstation distancing too you can see in the image on the screen here there are different ways to set up study carols and or desktop computer spaces long lines and then there's pods again depending on your space they can influence how people interact and help people feel within the space.

Conducting a risk assessment in house or through the support of an external vendor and utilizing the principles of crime prevention through environmental design  can be helpful in identifying strategies to design spaces in more effective ways that promote safety and security and seek to create that feeling of ownership or community involvement in the space.
Some examples of this within the toolkit: Kitchener Public Library conducted an assessment and it led to recommendations that they applied across their system, including a standard of turning library stacks perpendicular to public corridors and circulation desks, rearranging study carrols from an unbroken continuous road to independent units to maximize natural surveillance.
 Can also be used in more targeted applications. So, Winnipeg public library turned their coffee shop in the lobby of their downtown, the Millennium Library into the community connection space where visitors connect with information and social services directly. 
Other considerations when we think about facility and space design comes with library branches, that are co located with or within other facilities, and this presents different opportunities and considerations, including information sharing agreements or regular meetings to share observations and trends between the spaces within a collocated facility.
There could be an opportunity for shared security infrastructure. So things like security cameras access and alarm systems might be shared without each entity separately having to administer, administer their own and this can contribute to cost sharing or potential cost saving.
Also sometimes \ security personnel are hired for the whole facility rather than the individual parcels within that facility. And while this can create our opportunities for consistency in terms of safety and security across monitoring and, incident response across the facility, libraries often have to take a consideration in this whether security personnel understand the unique values and mission of a library sometimes when we're in a collocated facility the library is welcoming and open to everyone, but we might be in a facility where there's more closed or membership early access. And so each person within that collocated facility might have different approaches to how they welcome guests and how they treat and understand, incidents within their spaces. And so it's important to consider what additional training or information those security personnel may need in order to make sure that they understand the unique nature of the library environment and can support the application of those values in a safety and security sense.

10:35:40 So turning, over a little bit to our staff and thinking about training and professional development.
And this is a 360 approach and relevant at all stages of the library journey. Training can build staff competence and confidence.
 And it can also be about how to prepare and respond to an incident, how to support staff after an incident might have occurred or how to effectively manage the emotional labor that comes with working with the public.
There are a number of great online resources through digital platforms like LinkedIn Learning and organizations that offer excellent training opportunities in all of our communities.
 Some of these courses are more canned presentations that a healthcare, social service, or community organization might offer to multiple organizations.
And other times there's opportunity to work collaboratively with that external partner to develop or tailor content that would meet the specific needs of the organization or library setting.
Emergency response plans are also tools to provide guidelines and procedures for how staff can respond to an incident in progress.
 So within the toolkit there are a number of different examples included things like online training courses, Crisis Services Canada has an online resource called the Plan for Resilience, Workplace Edition for leaders, employers, and self-employed that a number of libraries use.
 Workshops can be used locally but also nationwide and in the survey that we did with members many libraries provided that Ryan Dowd's librarians guide to homelessness training was something that they did offer to their staff.
 In terms of thinking about customized content, Toronto Public Library worked with the Canadian Mental Health Association to develop and offer a session called face-to-face serving library customers with mental health challenges that brought in specific examples for the Toronto Public Library Library Environment.
 And there's other things, such as creating more of a package or training pathway. Calgary Public Library, for example, just finished and launched a psychological safety and security learning path for our staff and leadership that it includes curated content or a curated courses both online provided by internal and external experts in person experiences and self-directed activities that can be applied at different levels of our staffing model. 

Next slide, please. So when we think about our staff, of course, training and development is one angle of that, but also equally, if not more important, is health and wellness.
 Mental health and psychological well-being are important or impacted by many factors related unrelated to the work that we do when we did the Coke number survey many of the libraries indicated that they have staff reporting stress anxiety and burnout as a result of the changes in frequency and intensity of safety and security incidents that we're seeing.  So with this this in mind, bringing awareness to strategies that support the health and wellness of library employees is a critical area of focus within the toolkit.
It's a topic that's applicable throughout the library journey in safety and security and it covers ideas and approaches related to mental health: Equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, incident debriefing, internal communication, and aspects of the journey from incident preparation to post incident support and debriefing.
Ensuring that staff have the knowledge of and access to supports in this area is really important as is providing library systems the opportunity to share ideas and best practices so that collectively we can enhance employee engagement experiences.
Some examples from the toolkit: There are workbooks to support mental health and psychological safety, a handful of tools currently used at libraries are included and cover topics such as strategies for enhancing psychological health and resiliency.
Crisis, Trauma and Resource Institute, offers a crisis response checklist that identifies what needs to happen as part of the initial response responding to the emotional needs of those impacted and what to do after the initial crisis response.
And then libraries are also starting to dig into different tools and strategies to support debriefing exercises, particularly when staff have faced, very impactful, serious or critical incidents in our library spaces.

10:39:51 So, the important thing to think about when we think about safety and security is that we are not alone when we're dealing with these challenges as Moe and Karen mentioned at the beginning of today's webinar, safety and security incidents, mental and health addictions, drug, drug use, all of those things that we're seeing that across our communities and as the library being in the heart of the community we're experiencing at our front doors and inner spaces. And we already work with and and collaborate with many partners to expand our capacity while ensuring that we can stay true to our mandate.
And it's great to keep this up top of mind when we explore other opportunities to partner and share and extend our resources.
Examples of partnerships can include partnerships with local municipalities, things around like washroom attendance, prevention teams, partnerships with social workers, housing supports, local health experts, youth programs, newcomer services through settlement practitioners, etc.
Partnerships and or community-based initiatives can also be about the hiring of nontraditional library rules such as social workers, about 45% of the responding library systems to the Culc survey indicated that social workers as a strategy they were employing and examples included a range of approaches from in-house social work staff partnerships with social work agencies and internships with social work students or practically students.
Some systems also reported that the intent for this type of partnership work can be both for internal capacity building with in working with vulnerable populations or externally focused about connecting patrons with the key resources they need as well as a combination of those 2.
 When we think about partnerships, it's as much about prevention as it is about managing incidents. That quote that was shared with us is partnerships enable us to keep people from falling into the stream that is can be much more effective than dealing with them once they've fallen in.
And some examples of the types of partnerships that you'll see in the toolkit; Kingston, Frontenac Public Library has a community partnerships policy that provides staff with the guidelines to assist in the identifying prioritizing developing of partnerships with community agencies, as well as a policy that helps to inform the public about the principles and criteria by which they make decisions regarding community partnerships.
Libraries including Regina, Edmonton and Calgary all have various forms of drop-in counseling services available, providing onsite and often on-demand access to train staff from partner agencies who can support and help better Mental health and addictions issues. And Edmonton Pickering and Surrey Public Libraries all host service hubs within their facilities co-locating social service agencies and their staff within a library space to increase access and create more collective impact.

10:42:36 So with that, I'm going to turn it back to Karen to, bring us home and into the breakout sessions. Thanks, everyone.

(KARIN) Thanks, Heather. So incident tracking and reporting, in any safety incident, of course it's important for library staff to know what to do, who to call and how to report. So for reporting, we need a user friendly and robust system to capture and track incidents and also to help us make decisions with respect to consequences for unwanted behaviors. It's also important to track patterns of incidents so we can plan mitigation strategies and be better prepared going forward. 
Depending on the size of the, library number of branches, sharing incidents across a library system is critical to ensure consistency and application of policy and procedures and to uphold bannings across the system.
 So an incident management system, whether it's paper or electronic, needs to be easy to use 1st and foremost.
And there are different software, solutions on the market. But a commercial product is not always required.
The Safety toolkit has examples of systems that you can consider putting in place to ensure that you have the information that you need about incidents in a timely way.

 So all of us know that public library services evolve with the needs of our community. Libraries need to consider and adjust staffing models and recruitment strategies as society and societal issues change around us. Orientation and training are key to ensuring staff start out on a strong footing and have the appropriate skills to manage incidents successfully.
And this is key for, libraries with security related roles so some libraries have dedicated training or contract security guards to ensure that those guards understand the specific values and context of the library and its mandate.
Many libraries are introducing new staff roles to address today's environment and some examples of those new roles are community safety host, which is a position that we have at WPL now, Library safety specialist, manager of welcoming spaces is a new role at TPL, community service officer, safety coordinator, Community crisis worker. That's the job title for social workers at WPL. So just a few examples of the new roles.
1And that means that part of our challenge is balancing the use of the resources that we have between traditional library positions that we obviously require to deliver our core services as well as the increasing need for these new role to ensure the library is  a safe community space for customers, and a safe workplace for employees. Even when hiring for the traditional library roles, safety and security is a consideration. So it's important that job postings and job descriptions reflect the reality of the skills and qualifications needed to prepare for respond to and recover from incidents.
Communications and advocacy is a section in the toolkit. And that's communications and advocacy around, safety and security issues. It's, it's so essential because the problems that we're talking about are complex problems -many of which, as has been mentioned, are rooted in chronic poverty, homelessness, addictions, untreated mental health conditions. And the only solutions really are multifaceted solutions. 
So advocacy begins with building a narrative, a narrative particularly for policy makers, funders and decision makers around the value of libraries for a vibrant democracy, a strong economy and thriving communities.
And of course we know libraries do this by supporting lifelong learning, digital literacy, workforce development, Health and wellness. And so much more. 
And along with that narrative needs to be included how we are seeing issues of safety and security pulling resources, meaning time, money and also staff, because some of us, you know, lose staff.  
 So the toolkit provides ideas for increasing government awareness, through media campaign and direct engagement with provincial and federal ministers.
And this is an aspect of a resource that the safety team will be working on in future. 
The Overdue report pictured on the slide from the Canadian Urban Institute describes how libraries provide essential
So we know that it is not the library's role to address directly the root causes of social disorder, mental health and addictions issues, however, we can work with community partners and experts who are qualified and do have a mandate to provide direct support in these areas. 
There is no one size fits all solution, as we said. The most effective strategy is the one that works best at your library for your team and in your community. 
We hope that the toolkit offers a range of ideas to consider for improving safety at your library. 
As mentioned, sharing is our super power and it certainly is - over time sharing iswhat works at different libraries through ongoing updates to the toolkit and also through forums like this. And this can be a beginning.
I would welcome any, any interest in future meetings to discuss ideas sharing helps everyone create safer community spaces and it just reminds us that we're not alone in this challenge, which is very important with the weight of the work that people are doing per library safety. 
So the next slide is to take us to our breakout questions and break out rooms so that we can.