It is not enough for a community to understand the underlying theory of change. A community must also possess the skills necessary to implement change. To help communities execute the transition from theory to action, the Community Prevention Grants Program is built upon four key implementation stages, illustrated in Exhibit 5, each following and building upon the previous stage. At each successive stage, communities acquire skills and achieve certain goals that are designed to ultimately strengthen their capacity to implement and sustain comprehensive delinquency prevention strategies.

This next section details the following four general implementation stages, outlining the specific activities and goals of each stage:

Stage 1: Community Mobilization
Stage 2: Community Assessment and Planning
Stage 3: Implementation of Prevention Efforts
Stage 4: Institutionalization and Monitoring

Stage 1, Community Mobilization—This stage consists of two phases. In this first phase, key community leaders and high-level executives are brought together to participate in community team training. Bringing local key leaders together is designed to gain local support for a comprehensive, community-based prevention strategy by introducing key leaders to the principles and benefits of risk- and protection-focused delinquency prevention and long-term prevention planning. In the second phase, members of the community Prevention Policy Board (PPB)—designated by the key leaders—attend a 3-day workshop focused on community data collection and analysis. The community data collection training is designed to train community members to conduct a community risk and resource assessment, including data collection and analysis.

Stage 2, Assessment and Planning—This stage includes two key components. First, applying skills learned during the community data collection workshop, members of the PPB conduct a risk and resource assessment to identify local risk and protective factors, existing prevention program resources, and resource gaps. Next, using the results of the assessment as the foundation, PPB members work together to develop a comprehensive, three-year delinquency prevention plan that outlines the community's risk- and protection-factor profile, strategies the community will implement to impact risks and strengthen protective factors, and a plan for how the community will obtain and coordinate financial and program resources. To help communities to choose effective prevention strategies PPB members attend a 2-day community delinquency prevention plan development training. This training presents communities with a wide variety of programs and strategies with demonstrated effectiveness in reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors. Once completed, the three-year delinquency prevention plan will serve as the community's application to the State for a Community Prevention subgrant.

Stage 3, Implementation of Prevention Efforts—After receiving a Community Prevention subgrant, communities are ready to implement their delinquency prevention plans. Because each community assessment yields different needs and resources, the type, scope, and combination of programs and services implemented varies from community to community. For example, one community risk and resource assessment may indicate a need for new after-school recreation services and youth leadership development activities; yet another community may find a need to better coordinate existing resources to more effectively serve a target population. In line with its guiding principles, the Community Prevention Grant Program does not emphasize the development of new services. The program instead encourages first the integration and coordination of existing services and prevention efforts and then, when necessary, the development of new programs and services based on strategies with demonstrated effectiveness in reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors.

Stage 4, Institutionalization and Monitoring—Once prevention programs, resources, and data collection systems are in place and operating, communities need to monitor program activities and their resulting impact within the context of the 3-year delinquency prevention plan. In order to track progress toward chosen goals and objectives, communities need to have in place an evaluation plan that includes methods for periodic re-evaluation of their risk and protection factor profile as well as on-going assessment of program activities and system change efforts.

It is during Stage 4 when communities begin to focus their attention on additional resources, both financial and in-kind, to support, enhance, and sustain their prevention efforts. The Community Prevention Grants Program is structured to foster the leveraging of other resources in several ways. First, local grantees must provide a 50 percent match of the Federal grant with State or local funds or in-kind services (translated into dollars) or a combination of the three. Second, grantees are required to develop prevention plans based on empirical data. Empirically sound prevention plans lend validity to community requests for local funding to various public and private sources. Third, the Community Prevention Grants Program begins with the buy-in of local key leaders (e.g., mayors, county executives) who frequently are positioned to secure local public and private financial backing.