2.5  Community Capacity Building: Training and Technical Assistance

In order to ensure community acquisition of necessary skills and a smooth transition from theory to action, OJJDP offers technical assistance and training to States and communities across the country, for each implementation stage. State Juvenile Justice Specialists, who are responsible for administering juvenile justice grants at the State level, coordinate the provision of training and technical assistance to interested communities. Training and technical assistance are designed to increase the capacity of participating communities to effectively negotiate the four implementation stages.

A core component of this training and technical assistance is Communities That Care (CTC) (Developmental Research and Programs, 1994) which provides a risk- and protection-focused approach to community planning. Grounded in 30 years of research, the CTC training curriculum is designed to provide communities with the skills necessary to progress successfully through the four key implementation stages and mobilize and sustain a community planning board, conduct a risk and resource assessment, and choose programs designed to impact an individual community's risk-and-protective factor profile. Although communities are not required to apply the CTC strategy, it is well-suited to support communities to implement the Community Prevention Grants Program.

To help communities with the development of effective delinquency prevention plans, in 1999 OJJDP made available to States the Promising Approaches segment of the CTC training curriculum. Promising Approaches is designed to help community teams better match prevention approaches to their unique community risk and protective factor profile (Developmental Research and Programs, 1999). During this training session, community teams learn about prevention programs and system change strategies with demonstrated effectiveness in reducing risk factors while enhancing protective factors. They also learn to assess the suitability of these programs and strategies for their communities, and create action plans for enhancing existing resources or implementing new programs. Many States and community members agree that Promising Approaches has filled a gap that existed between the community data collection training and the development of effective delinquency prevention plans.

To assist communities with their evaluation activities, OJJDP developed the Title V Community Self-Evaluation Workbook. Published in 1995, the Workbook consists of easy-to-complete forms and step-by-step instructions that guide communities through evaluation activities in three key areas:

  • Documenting community mobilization efforts, planning and decision-making processes, organizational structure, delinquency prevention plans, and resource allocations.

  • Monitoring implementation of promising programs and community-change projects.

  • Tracking changes in community statistics that measure risk levels and adolescent problem behaviors.

The Workbook also provides information about how to analyze and use evaluation data to improve program operation and services to youth. It provides the framework and tools communities need to determine where they are in relation to their delinquency prevention goals and objectives and to measure their progress in decreasing risk factors and improving community conditions. The Workbook is available through the Juvenile Justice Clearinghouse and OJJDP's official Internet site in both paper and electronic formats. The Workbook not only assists communities in conducting local program evaluations, but it also provides communities with data collection instruments.

OJJDP also makes other technical assistance available to States and communities on an as-requested basis. Assistance is available to strengthen the conceptual understanding of the risk-focused prevention model that is presented in the training sessions, provide information related to other risk- and protection/resiliency-focused prevention models, and to help with technical aspects of planning, implementing or evaluating delinquency prevention strategies.



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Title V Incentive Grants for Local Delinquency Prevention Programs OJJDP 1999 Report to Congress