Assessing the Environment
Some of the areas to be considered in assessing the extent to which the system and community environment will support evidence-based practices include:
- Community willingness and consensus to implement new interventions
- Capacity of the provider system to implement and sustain evidence-based practices (i.e., type and number of providers)
- Interagency collaboration needed to support the implementation of evidence-based practices
Some of these questions can be addressed while conducting needs assessments, as shown in some of the examples in the prior section. However, the following is an example of a model that incorporates assessment of the larger environmental context and population needs.
The Partnerships for Success Model
The Partnerships for Success (PFS) Model is a statewide approach
in Ohio for building community capacity to prevent and respond to child
and adolescent problem behaviors while promoting positive youth development. The
PFS website provides extensive information about the model and tools for
building community capacity to improve outcomes, including:
- Community involvement
- Strategic planning for a broad array of prevention and intervention services
- Needs assessment
- Resource assessment (service capacity)
- Data-based decision making
- Training and consultation
- Selecting and implementing evidence-based practices
- Monitoring progress
Interagency Collaboration
Because of the multi-sector nature of children’s services, effectively
responding to the needs of children and adolescents requires interagency
collaboration. Projects demonstrating the implementation of evidence-based
practices repeatedly point out that interagency collaboration is a critical
component to appropriately identify needs of children and adolescents across
agency boundaries, to develop consensus for a wider system approach, to
explore joint financing, to coordinate service delivery, to cross-train
staff, and to deliver mental health evidence-based and promising
practices within schools, juvenile justice, and child
welfare settings.
A measurement instrument used to assess interagency collaboration, which is relatively easy to administer, has been developed and tested at the Florida Mental Health Institute. It can be obtained by writing to the author, Paul Greenbaum, Ph.D.