2.2  The Community Prevention Grants Program: A Model for Systems Change

Designed as a "new way of doing business," the Community Prevention Grants Program requires that police officers, judges, probation officers, teachers, clergy, child advocates, parents, and youth work together to develop and implement comprehensive prevention plans to address community needs. In many cases, this is systems change. The Title V Prevention Policy Board often represents the first time these various groups have collaborated to find common ground and collaborative solutions to shared community problems. In many communities this process also exemplifies the first time empirical data, rather than experience and intuition, have been used to drive community planning decisions. PPB members across the nation view the increasing strength of their collaborative and the subsequent increase in resource sharing and service coordination as some of the most positive effects of their participation in the Community Prevention Grants Program. The following examples demonstrate the types of systems-level change reported by communities that have fully integrated its principles. They include enhanced or increased:

  • Service delivery including reduced gaps and duplication in services—"Organizations no longer seek funds or provide services in a vacuum. It's always a collaborative effort now...We are no longer duplicating services...We have better cohesiveness in service delivery, and a bigger picture of community resources" Peggy Seal, Grants Coordinator, Missoula, Montana.

  • Communication between key community agencies and systems—"There is better communication across agencies and systems... Better communication means better networking and better knowledge and that means better services...There's just more cooperation" Denise Hotopp, Project Coordinator, Polk County, Iowa.

  • Resource sharing—"[This project] has resulted in human service providers sitting around a common table and sharing resources. It's very unique. It's probably one of the largest collaborative, county-wide efforts that has ever gone on in this county" Ami Curtis, PPB Member, Holland/West Ottawa, Michigan.

These types of systems-level change strengthen the capacity of community members, organizations, agencies, and other institutional systems to work, collectively, to foster and sustain positive community change. And that's what the Community Prevention Grants Program was meant to do. Based on the examples above, that's what the Community Prevention Grants Program is doing. Sustaining positive community change, however, requires resources. The Community Prevention Grants Program is structured to foster the leveraging of other prevention resources. The following section addresses community experiences in leveraging additional support for the continuation of Community Prevention Grants Program activities and programs.


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