Where Do You Fit in Prevention?
Leadership, resources, policies, efforts, and time must be committed to the process of prevention planning, implementation, and ensuring accountability. Creating safe, stable, and secure families and communities where children can thrive cannot be done by any one profession, agency, or community alone. Collaboration is essential.
- Planning
- Programs
- Sustainability
You can help your community plan or strengthen its prevention strategy.
Communities interested in developing a prevention strategy should include representatives from all community systems and sectors and involve families as well. Developing a prevention strategy takes time, creativity, and patience. Commitment over time is essential.
By deploying strategies at each level communities can provide comprehensive supports to improve the lives of all Texas children, youth, and families.
You can offer or fund programmatic services for children and their families.
No single program, strategy, or approach will be enough to prevent child abuse in your community. Many different services, programs, practices, and strategies need to be put in place at once. Programs need to do the following:
- Be available and accessible to all populations.
- Be initiated early.
- Cut across related problems.
- Recognize cultural differences and inequities.
- Build on family strengths.
- Provide intensive services to those most at risk.
- Be appropriate to address different types of abuse and neglect.
- Be evidence-based, or at a minimum, have promising results.
- Be evaluated regularly.
You can help your community sustain or grow its prevention efforts.
Management of a prevention strategy requires ongoing monitoring of progress toward achieving the comprehensive implementation of prevention strategies in the community. Evaluation of prevention programs and activities is essential and should be an integral component of every prevention activity. It will be necessary to determine what group will be responsible for oversight of your community prevention plan.
