TOGETHER!/ Rochester Organization of Families of Thurston County are one of
eighteen recipients of the Washington State Incentive Grant (SIG). SIG funds are
allocated to communities to prevent the use, misuse and abuse of alcohol,
tobacco, marijuana and other drugs by Washington State youth. Community grantees
are expected to make their local prevention system more effective by
establishing prevention partnerships, using a risk and protective factor
framework for data driven needs assessments, and by implementing and monitoring
science-based prevention programs.
Project Site TOGETHER! is a community mobilization organization located in Lacey,
Washington, a suburb of Olympia. Both the director, Earlyse Swift, and the board
of director's were recognized for their prevention efforts when they became
recipients of the 2001 Drug Free Washington Month Governor's Recognition
Award.
TOGETHER!'s SIG project is in the unincorporated town of Rochester, located
about thirty miles southwest of Olympia in rural Thurston County. Community
members in Rochester have over a decade of activism behind them, forming the
Rochester Organization of Families (ROOF) ten years ago and opening the ROOF
Center in its present location six years ago. The ROOF Center is a multipurpose
community center that houses a food bank, alternative high school, and space for
the Kids Place elementary school students to meet after school for SIG- and
other funded activities. About 40% of the Kids Place participants are of
Hispanic descent, and many of these children come from families where English is
a second language. Teen Zone SIG programs are provided at the middle school.
Prevention History Rochester has a ten-year history of providing prevention services for youth
through the countywide TOGETHER! organization. Rochester was one of the initial
Thurston County communities to do prevention planning using the Communities that
Care model. Prior to SIG, services were provided only for elementary school
students; SIG allowed expansion of prevention programs to include middle school
age youth. It has also provided motivation to include more science-based
prevention programs and evaluation tools.
Progress toward SIG Community Level Objectives Objective 1: To establish partnerships...to collaborate at the
local level to prevent alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drug use, misuse,
and abuse by youth.
SIG enhanced ROOF's relationships with Rochester schools, especially the
middle school. There are few other organizations in Rochester with which to
partner. ROOF and TOGETHER!'s decades long experience with community
mobilization around prevention has taught them that consistent, motivated, and
informed local leadership is essential for a community to maintain its momentum
and make progress toward its long term vision.
Objective 2: To use a risk and protective factor framework to
develop a community prevention action plan...
and...
Objective 3: To participate in joint community risk and protective
factor and resource assessment...
After over a decade of work in the prevention field, both TOGETHER! and ROOF
staff are aware of and use the risk and protective factor model. They
collaborated with all available prevention partners around both needs and
resource assessments.
Objective 4: To select and implement effective prevention actions...
The SIG process encouraged the choice of programs shown through published
research to be effective in different locales and with multiple populations.
These are known as research-based programs. ROOF and the Rochester School
District choose a systems perspective, rather than focusing on individual
prevention programs. They view ROOF's prevention efforts as a system of
helping children mature in a safe and healthy environment that teaches them to
make appropriate decisions. However, they value the firsthand experience they
received through SIG with research-based programs, a concept they had been
exposed to at trainings but never implemented. The challenges involved in
budgeting, training, unplanned expenses, and monitoring will be useful in future
endeavors.
ROOF staff looked beyond prevention programs to the contexts in which they
are presented by addressi/ms/rdang language needs: a Spanish speaking assistant is
available as 40% of their elementary age participants are from Spanish speaking
families; Spanish language parenting classes are available at the primary
school; and ESL classes are provided.
Objective 5: To use common reporting tools...
Common reporting tools include the Washington State Survey of Adolescent
Health Behaviors (WSSAHB) and the Everest program monitoring outcome system.
WSSAHB data provide cross-sectional substance abuse prevalence rates and
measures of risk and protective factors among 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th
grade students. Rochester School District has participated in the WSSAHB since
its inception. The staff measured Kids Place and Teen Zone Tutoring programs
with Everest pre- and post-tests. Other programs used evaluation instruments
that were developed by program designers or alternative methods of feedback,
such as teacher data, staff observations, attendance, reading scores, and class
grades.
Conclusion
The prevention project at Rochester became stronger with SIG. SIG improved
coordination with prevention partners, allowing ROOF to move beyond serving only
elementary school children to addressi/ms/rdang the needs of middle school youth, as
well. Teachers and school administrators are now more aware of the effects of
ROOF on the behavior, literacy levels, and academic achievements of students who
participate in their programs.
ROOF staff became aware of what works and what doesn't work with
science-based prevention practices, which they feel is important now that so
many funders are requiring them. SIG taught them about having a target
population. SIG changed the immediacy of evaluation. With other three-year CSAP
grants, they never saw preliminary results before the end of the grant. They
didn't have feedback on results along the way
Although not SIG-sponsored, part of the prevention infrastructure that ROOF
has created is English as a Second Language classes, held at the primary school.
Since those classes began, teachers have reported an increase in
Spanish-speaking parents' participation in school conferences and meetings.
TOGETHER!'s SIG project has shown progress toward meeting its internal SIG
goals and objectives, and toward achieving the community level objectives
established by the Governor's Substance Abuse Prevention Advisory Committee.
During the third and last year of SIG community funding, TOGETHER! and ROOF
intend to move toward institutionalizing some of the changes they achieved in
the system of prevention planning, funding, implementation, and monitoring that
they developed under SIG.
Download Community Report
Click on the PDF symbol to the left to download the brief description
to the achievements and challenges experienced in implementing science
based prevention in this community: "TOGETHER!/ROOF,
Thurston County Executive Summary of Community-Level Process Evaluation
Reports." Publication Date: 04/2002. Report Number: 4.43-16a (135 KB)
Click on the PDF symbol to the left to download a
description of the prevention activities and the main community
partners: "Community Project Description for Thurston County
- TOGETHER!/ROOF." Publication Date: 04/2002. Report Number: 4.43-16b (144 KB)
Click on the PDF symbol to the left to download the components of
the community plan: "Project Action Plan for Thurston County
- TOGETHER!/ROOF." Publication Date: 04/2002. Report Number: 4.43-16c (503 KB)
Click
on the PDF symbol to the left to download the report of the first
year activities: "TOGETHER! /ROOF,
Thurston County Washington State Incentive Grant 1st year Community
- Level Evaluation 1999-2000." Publication Date: 11/2000. Report Number: 4.43-16d (210 KB)
Click
on the PDF symbol to the left to download the report of the second
year activities: "TOGETHER! /ROOF,
Thurston County Washington State Incentive Grant 2nd Year Community
- Level Evaluation 2000-2001." Publication Date: 04/2002. Report Number: 4.43-16e (248 KB)
Click
on the PDF symbol to the left to download data on changes in risk
and protection factors for prevention program participants: "Program
Outcomes." Publication Date: 04/2002. Report Number: 4.43-16f (104 KB)
Click on the PDF symbol to the left to download
data on changes in trends of risk and protection for the entire
community: "Community Outcomes Report - Thurston County
- TOGETHER!/ROOF." Publication Date: 04/2002. Report Number: 4.43-16g (75 KB)
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Related Information
Link to
website providing additional
information
about Thurston
county
For more ways to get in touch with the Department of Social
and Health Services, go to
the DSHS Contact
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Copyright 2004 Washington State Department of Social and Health Services.
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