Facilitating the Process | School and Community Collaboration

Facilitating a Multi-step Process for Prevention Planning

"If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else."

-- David Campbell, Ph.D., author and senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership

As a middle school coordinator, you are in a challenging position. You have been asked to spearhead a complicated reform process that involves working alongside school and community partners to establish a comprehensive approach to the prevention of substance use and violence among youth.

Prevention planning is at the core of your work. It involves combining what you know about the needs of youth and prevention practices to make informed decisions about the programs and activities you will bring to your school and community. Ultimately, a well-conceptualized design can facilitate both the implementation and evaluation of your prevention program.

This event will look at the first critical steps in determining the direction of your prevention initiative. These steps include the following:

• Establishing a set of prevention priorities that are consistent with sound academic practice

• Determining desired outcomes based on these priorities (i.e., the long-term results you would like to achieve through prevention activities)

• Selecting proven strategies (or combinations of strategies) that will help you achieve your desired outcomes

• Developing a mission statement that "puts it all together" and reflects what you have learned about both your community and the research.

These steps, when completed in collaboration with key decision-makers from your school and community, will help you to articulate not only the intent of your prevention program but also the shared philosophy behind it.

The Importance of School and Community Collaboration

The success of your prevention plan hinges on your ability to engage others in your work and create a truly collaborative process. A collaborative planning process offers you the opportunity to achieve many goals, including the following:

• Strengthen the connection between prevention and school reform. Education is the central mission of schools, but no one can deny that problems such as drug abuse, violence, or poor health interferes with student learning. Use the prevention planning process to articulate how safe and drug-free schools will enable effective teaching and learning. As a middle school coordinator, work toward finding ways to incorporate prevention goals into overall school reform efforts.

• Deepen relationships developed during your needs assessment. One of the benefits of conducting a needs assessment is that it connected you with a variety of school and community members committed to prevention. Build on these connections and include these people in the design of your prevention plan.

• Create a shared understanding of your school and community needs. Use your assessment findings to help people in your school and community move past denial and into action as you raise awareness of the critical problems facing local youth.

• Create school and community "readiness" for change. When people are engaged in the planning process, they feel a greater sense of "ownership." They are motivated and better prepared to make decisions about which prevention strategies or programs should be selected to meet school and community needs. They may also become change "agents" who can, in turn, motivate others to work for change and reform.

• Obtain key community support and "buy in." Gaining the support of key stakeholders will go a long way toward ensuring that both planning and program implementation proceed as smoothly as possible. It is particularly important to obtain support from school administrators as well as buy-in from individuals who will be directly involved in program activities.

Prevention planning can also alert you to potential barriers to implementation. Click the icon to hear more. (Click here to read these comments.)

Most schools have at least one -- if not several -- school planning teams dedicated to increasing student achievement or related reform agendas. Connecting with these groups may provide you with important insights and relationships that will facilitate your team's planning efforts. Ultimately, the success of your prevention plan hinges on your ability to successfully "marry" your initiative to programs that already exist in your school.

Many of you have already formed a school-community planning team to guide the needs assessment process. This team should also play an integral role in future phases of prevention planning. If you have not yet developed a team, now's the time! In addition to school partners, consider involving representatives from systems throughout the community, including public health, law enforcement, criminal justice, social services, municipal government, neighborhood associations and families, cultural centers, faith-based organizations, business, media, and sports and recreation. The more involvement school and community members have in the design of your prevention plan, the greater the likelihood that your plan will be implemented in ways that are true to your vision and compatible with the local culture.

References

The materials in this section have been adapted from Chapter 3 of your training manual, "Key School-linked Strategies and Principles for Preventing Substance Abuse and Violence." Please visit the manual for a complete set of references.