Preventing Youth Violence:
Communities Take Action
Getting to Outcomes: A Strategic Planning Model
A strategic planning model is a comprehensive planning and evaluation process, framed around a series of questions that incorporate the basic elements of program planning, implementation, evaluation, and sustainability. The model shown here is called Getting to Outcomes. It is adapted from a model developed by SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (see Resources). Its 10 questions cover all the aspects of an initiative. If you and your colleagues are just starting out and have not yet engaged in a strategic planning process, this model can guide you. If you have already begun but have yet to put your strategic plan on paper, the model can help formalize your thought processes and capture your completed and contemplated actions. If you have a strategic plan already, you might check your plan against the model to see if you have considered all the key elements of a violence prevention initiative.
THE LOGIC MODEL FOR GETTING TO OUTCOMES
THE GETTING TO OUTCOMES PROCESS INVOLVES ASKING AND ANSWERING THIS SERIES OF QUESTIONS:
1 - Needs: Comprehensive Definition and Framing the Issue/Problem or Condition. What are the underlying needs and conditions that must be addressed? Researchers and practitioners advise that both needs and resources should be identified at the outset and throughout a program to help the coalition members know where they are, where they are headed, what resources are available, and what resource gaps exist.
2 - Goals and Objectives. What goals and objectives will address the needs and change the underlying condition? Goals and objectives must be clear. They may be modified along the way, but all partners (including evaluators) must know and agree on their goals.
3 - Best Practices. Which science- (evidence-) based models and best practice programs can be used to reach the goals? The program must be carefully chosen. Review the literature to learn what has worked and where, and what has failed and why. Select those programs and practices that target the youth violence-related risk/protective factors you have identified and most closely match the resources you have available.
4 - Fit: Program’s Prevention and/or Intervention Strategy. What actions need to be taken so the selected program “fits” the community context? In order to select from the programs available, assess the extent to which a program fits the community context and what adaptations might be made to improve the fit. An appropriate program should suit the reality of the community, including its culture and readiness for implementing the program, and should augment, not duplicate, existing services.
5 - Implementation Plan. What is the plan for the program? Collaborations need two plans: The over-arching
plan guides the organizing and maintaining processes; the program plan tells how to implement and sustain the intervention.
6 - Organizational Capacities. What organizational resources are needed to implement the plans? In other words, what resources does the collaboration possess that will enable it to operate as an entity and to direct and sustain the prevention program?
7 - Process Evaluation. Is the program being implemented with quality? The extensive research conducted on science-based programs has documented their effectiveness in causing significant changes in behaviors and attitudes with regard to problem behaviors.
8 - Outcome Evaluation. How well is the program working? Coalition and community outcomes, as well as individual outcomes, must be ascertained. Implementers want to know whether the program worked, and, if so, why, and if not, why not. They also need to ask whether or not to continue the program and what might be modified to improve the program. Finally, they ask what evidence funders might need to decide whether or not to continue supporting the program.
9 - Improve. How will continuous quality improvement strategies be included? A systematic assessment and feedback strategy should provide an ongoing stream of information which implementers can use to improve the program (and, of course, the coalition).
10 - Sustain: Measurable Indicators of Immediate, Short-Term, and Long-Term Outcomes. If the program is successful, how will it be sustained? First ask, “Should the program be sustained?” Not all interventions, and not all collaborations, should be. They might, for example, be so successful that they have solved the problem. On the other hand, the intervention might be a failure that does not warrant continuing. Or the program might become an integral part of the school system’s curriculum, so there is no need for a dedicated coalition. In this case, the group can either disband or move on to address another problem. Plans to sustain the program, however, must be developed during the earliest days of the collaboration, not when grant funds are running out.
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