Building and Sustaining a Methamphetamine Community Coalition
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Building and Sustaining a Methamphetamine Community Coalition A Resource Guide for California Communities Spring 2007 A Product of the California Governor’s Prevention Advisory Council Methamphetamine Implementation Workgroup Table of Contents Preface......................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................... 3 Section 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 5 Section 2: Building a Community Coalition........................................................................... 12 Step 1: Starting a Coalition ................................................................................................... 14 Step 2: Building the Collaboration ........................................................................................ 16 Step 3: Needs Assessment .................................................................................................. 19 Step 4: Developing a Plan .................................................................................................... 25 Step 5: Evaluation................................................................................................................. 31 Section 3: Approaches and Strategies................................................................................... 33 Strategy Profile 1: General Media Campaigns ..................................................................... 36 Strategy Profile 2: Focused Community Training Events ..................................................... 40 Strategy Profile 3: Create a Methamphetamine Ordinance .................................................. 41 Strategy Profile 4: Involve Youths in Public Awareness Campaigns .................................... 42 Strategy Profile 5: Drug Courts............................................................................................. 43 Section 4: Sustainability .......................................................................................................... 44 1. Loss of Focus ................................................................................................................... 44 2. Leadership Issues............................................................................................................. 45 3. Unequal Involvement ........................................................................................................ 45 4. Poor Planning ................................................................................................................... 46 5. Failure of Planned Efforts ................................................................................................. 47 6. Burn-Out ........................................................................................................................... 47 7. Coalition Structure too Bureaucratic ................................................................................. 48 8. Turf Battles/Issue.............................................................................................................. 48 Section 5: Resources ............................................................................................................... 50 California-Based ................................................................................................................... 50 General................................................................................................................................. 51 Spanish Language Resources.............................................................................................. 51 For Parents/Educators.......................................................................................................... 51 Youth-Related....................................................................................................................... 52 Drug-Endangered Children................................................................................................... 52 Treatment/Recovery ............................................................................................................. 53 Hotlines................................................................................................................................. 54 Law Enforcement.................................................................................................................. 54 For Local Governments and Community Task Forces ......................................................... 54 Gay Male Community ........................................................................................................... 55 Example County and State Initiatives ................................................................................... 56 Building and Sustaining a Methamphetamine Community Coalition Table of Contents 1 Preface The past two decades has seen an emphasis on initiatives designed to increase the capacity of local communities to address alcoh ol and other drug problems through community-wide collec tive actions. This movement has gained momentum through a variety of recent trends, including increased recognition of the importance of public-private partnerships to address complex social problems, the recognition that social problem s are embed ded in local conditions, and recogni tion of the need for more coordination in a fragmented helping services system. More recently, the use of communit y partnerships or coalitions have gained prominence as a n effective approach to deal with the growing methamphetamine (meth) problem. Success with this model has been documented in such state s as Washington, Oregon and Kansas as well as here in California, in San Diego Co unty. It was in recognition of the serious conseq uences as sociated with methamphetamine use in Calif ornia, and th e potential of community coalitions to abate the p roblem, that the Govern or’s Prevention Advisory Council’s (GPAC) Me thampheta mine Implementation Workgroup in conjunct ion with the Department of Alcohol and Drug Pro grams’ Technical Assistance contr actor, The Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS), prepared this guidebook for community coalitions. The material in this resource guidebook reflects current information about meth, and evidenced based approaches used by community coalitions to deal wit h the meth problem, representing a coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach to t he meth problem which int egrates prevention, early intervention, treatment, and suppre ssion efforts. It also in cludes a comprehensive resource di rectory to assist community members in seeking out additional information. Meth use represents a serious problem to our California communities. However, the concerned involvement of our community members, in partnership with appropriate agencies and organiza tions can make a differ ence. It i s our hope that this resour ce manual will assist y ou in your ef forts in dealing with this drug crisis in California. Nancy Matson Chairperson GPAC Meth Implementation Workgroup Spring 2007 Building and Sustaining a Methamphetamine Community Coalition Preface 2 Acknowledgements This Resource Guide was prepared as a result of the combined efforts of a number of individu als who came together under the auspices of the Governor’s Prevention Advisory Council (GPAC), a collection of state agencies and organizations wh o have joined efforts to reduce the problematic use of alcohol and other drugs by youth and adults in California. What began as a sugge stion by Deputy Director of the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs (ADP) Michael Cunningham to focus the Council’s efforts on the prevention of methamphetamine use evolved into the creation of a fact-finding Ad Hoc Co mmittee o n Methamphetamine. This group, und er the dire ctionof Lee Chamberlain, formerly of the Drug Enforcement Administration, met nu merous times between November, 2004 and March, 2005, to research the preventi on side of methamphet amine use. During this period, the Committee analyzed information on the current status of methamphetamine use and prevention efforts both state- and nation-wide and engaged the Community Prevention Initiat ive (CPI), t he technica l assistance contractor f or the Department of Al cohol and Drug Programs, to prepare a back ground briefing paper on these topics. The Ad Hoc Committee’s findings resulted in five recom mendations for Council action, issued through asummary report highlighting the Committee’s process, analysis, and recommendations. In March, 2006 the Ad Hoc Committee evolved into the Methamph etamine Implementation Workgroup, which was charged by GPAC with putting into action the Ad Hoc Committees’ rec ommendations. Under t he new lea dership of Nancy Mats on of the At torney Gen eral’s Office , and with new me mbership, the Meth Implement ation Workgroup created action pla ns for these recommendations, and selected initial goals for pursuit. The group focused on the recommenda tion to creat e Meth Action Teams at the locallevel (county) by first researching other action team models for lessons learned and guidelines, and th en focusing on how to imp lement this model across California. The Workgroup chose to create their own how-to guide for California counties on setting up action teams, and developing