Description: SRS Prevention Initiative Description

The Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) launched a process in August of 2005 to address prevention systemically and support the alignment of resources and program areas to position prevention as a priority in the organization.  This effort, the SRS Prevention Initiative, brought together representatives from all areas of the agency. This team began a learning process that explores systems thinking, knowledge (technology) transfer, and prevention science, and completed the scheduled learning sessions in March of 2006. Upon completion of this phase, the team began a comprehensive prevention assessment of the agency. This assessment focuses on both programmatic and budget processes and provides performance measures and progress toward those measures.  Upon conclusion of the assessment, this team will make recommendations to SRS Leadership regarding changes in policies, practices and programs to better achieve results from its prevention efforts.

SRS is utilizing a five-step process corresponding with the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) to evaluate organization-wide prevention efforts. The SPF contains five components:

• Assessment: the collection of data to define problems within a community (geographic or otherwise) emphasizing cultural competence, service gaps, existing prevention infrastructure, readiness and leadership;
• Capacity:  mobilizes resources within the community, convening key stakeholders, service providers and customers to assess capacity including fiscal, organizational, programmatic, evaluation and sustainability;
• Planning: results in a strategic plan which creates a logical, data-driven plan to address issues and gaps identified in the assessment;
• Implementation: focuses on putting the strategic plan into action; and
• Evaluation: measures the impact of the implemented policies, practices and programs.

By approaching prevention systemically the agency hopes to capitalize on efforts, resources, and capacity to address a wide variety of issues and behaviors before the need for expensive interventions and treatment episodes emerge.  Additional benefits to be garnered from this effort include increased efficiency and promotion of more effective utilization of resources, improved consumer service, and creation of more opportunities for cross agency collaboration. 

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