Peterborough Community Knowledge Network
The Peterborough Community Knowledge Network is a diverse group of collaborators serving the Peterborough community and includes organizations dedicated to service delivery for people experiencing homelessness, healthcare professionals and researchers. Our project focuses on setting up community-driven data collection in Peterborough to address needs identified by a working group of community organizations.
As a member of the PCKN, the RSCL oversees and manages the group’s website, while the group itself is collectively owned by all participating community organizations. To learn more about the project and its conception, read our Project Summary.
For more information on what was learned and some of the patterns recognized during the process, click here.
Interested in doing something similar in your community?
View our Community-Driven Data Collection Project Playbook here.
Project Workstreams
The PCKN decided to focus on two specific workstreams that addressed their collective needs and capacities: Mortality Tracking and Pulse Survey. These workstreams were selected to directly address the needs and challenges of the various member organizations in the group.
Mortality Tracking
The Mortality Tracking project aims to understand and address the critical issue of mortality in those experiencing homelessness. The project aims to create a system that will allow the community to collect and report on data related to the deaths of people experiencing homelessness in the community. Similar projects track deaths in the homeless community in Toronto (through Toronto Public Health) and Hamilton (through a community coalition of physicians). Learning from these projects, the Peterborough Community Knowledge Network has established a similar system to report on deaths within the Peterborough homeless community on an ongoing basis.
This overview provides a more in-depth look at the Mortality Tracking project, including details on our approach to data sharing, privacy measures, and the collaborative efforts to understand homelessness mortality in Peterborough.
Contact Information:
Jocelyn Qualtrough, Health Promoter at Peterborough Public Health
Pulse Survey
The Pulse Survey aims to deepen our understanding of the gaps in the current system in serving Peterborough's population of people experiencing homelessness.
Create documented supporting data for the anecdotal knowledge of frontline workers regarding the needs of their clients and the gaps in the current system that can be used to inform operational strategies and support advocacy efforts.
Supplement the Point in Time (PiT) count, which provides a snapshot of the population experiencing homelessness every two years, with more frequent and qualitative data collection that can provide deeper insight into current conditions and needs.
Streamline data collection done by frontline service organizations on an ad-hoc basis into a consolidated framework for regular, consistent data collection.
Improve existing informal data collection practices by community organizations.
For more information on the Pulse Survey and to view the results, click here.
This project was approved by Trent Univerity’s Research Board of Ethics (REB File Number: 28843)
Contact Information:
Christian Harvey, Co-Executive Director, One City Peterborough
