Colorado Technical University Program Development in The 21st Century Questions

Community Resources

In relation to the social problem you identified in previous assignments, in your initial post, identify and investigate three existing local community resources you might use in your own program development project. Use the Community Resource Snapshot in Chapter 7 of your Program Development in the 21st Century textbook to provide your recommendations. Address the following questions for each resource:

• Exactly what type of relationship will you pursue with this resource?
• In what ways will your program benefit from this relationship?
• How will you maintain communication with this resource?

Chapter 7 pg 197-218

Identify and Engage Community Resources

Learning Objectives

1. Discuss the importance of community resource development in comprehensive program development
2. Explain how community resources can be used to augment the service array, build advocacy coalitions, and garner funding
3. Explain the relationship between community resource development and program sustainability planning and strengthening communities
4. Discuss the relationships between the results of the asset map, community demography assessment, market analysis, and logic model to community resource development efforts
5. Investigate and identify relevant community resources by completing the community resource development exercise

WHY ENGAGE THE COMPETITION?

Ryan and Adrienne recently celebrated the third anniversary of their outreach and shelter program for female survivors of domestic violence. Their shelter program had consistently remained at 95% capacity over the past 2 years—unfortunately, reflecting the continued scope of the domestic violence problem in the region—and they had expanded their outreach program to include a domestic violence prevention program for high school and college students. In addition, the programs had recently gained accreditation through the Council of Accreditation—something they were very proud to have attained.

While Ryan and Adrienne had become familiar with some of the staff of the local hospital as well as an attorney’s office, they had had only brief encounters with the other two major providers working with domestic violence survivors in the area. Moreover, Ryan and Adrienne had taken few steps to identify other resources that existed in the community, believing that they would be better off trying to address the needs of their clients directly rather than referring their clients to other providers. Their fear, of course, was that if they referred their clients to other providers, they might put their own program at risk of losing its relevance and potentially going out of business. So far, this method had served them well—their business was thriving, and they successfully expanded their core business—demonstrating that they could be involved not only in shelter services but also in primary prevention efforts.

However, not soon after they celebrated their 3-year milestone, their shelter contract was up for bid. Whereas the original contract focused primarily on the services provided on-site at the shelter, the contract had been significantly modified with a new emphasis on the creation of linkages to an extensive community network. The contractor’s intent was to more effectively support the long-term needs of the client population by assisting them in accessing various resources. As such, applicants interested in applying for the contract were required to identify a community network, consisting of multiple organizations that offered adjunctive services (e.g., vocational development, housing) and extended core services (e.g., domestic violence support). With the proposal due in 3 weeks, Adrienne and Ryan had to quickly begin speaking with various leaders of community organizations (i.e., resources) in an attempt to get them to participate as part of a community network. They began by approaching their two main competitors; however, they quickly learned that these two organizations had worked collaboratively for the past several years, using each other as a referral source to augment their own services as well as working together to pass new legislation on behalf of domestic violence survivors. The competitors further shared that they were also planning to pursue the contract and would be doing so in a partnership with several other community organizations with whom they had previously done business.

Without being able to establish a key partnership with one of the two providers offering core services, Ryan and Adrienne knew their chances of securing the contract were slim. And after spending a considerable amount of time trying to line up potential adjunctive partners, Ryan and Adrienne consistently received the same message: They were simply not known to other community resources, and therefore, there was no desire for others to partner with them, particularly given such a short time frame in which to make a decision.

They were able to get the attorney’s office to provide a letter of support, and they were able to secure a letter from one of the high schools where they provided outreach services, but they knew that their proposal was weak—not demonstrating their ability to offer an extensive community network. Needless to say, when they received notice that they did not win the contract, they were not surprised. Rather than wallow in this failure for long, Adrienne and Ryan decided to put their energies into getting to know their competitors in domestic violence prevention, as well as developing relationships with other community resources—having directly learned the significance of these relationships.

CONSIDERING ADRIENNE AND RYAN

1. What mistakes did Ryan and Adrienne make, and how could they have prevented them?
2. Beyond gaining a letter of support, what other benefits might you receive from developing a relationship with your competitor?
3. Are relationships between competitors in human services different from those between different types of for-profit businesses? Why or why not?

About This Chapter

This chapter focuses specifically on community resource development and the key role that community resource development can play in program development efforts. In the comprehensive program development model, there are two steps involving community resources—identifying and engaging community resources and building and preserving relationships with community resources. This chapter covers Step V of the model and involves the initial work with community resources—resource development and, specifically, identifying and engaging community resources.

The chapter begins with defining community resources and discussing the role of community resource development in program development efforts. Further highlighting the significance of community resource development, we will examine five major purposes related to community resource development that include augmenting the service array, developing an advocacy coalition, garnering funding, planning for sustainability, and strengthening communities. In order to illustrate how this step builds on work previously completed in the preplanning and planning stages of program development, we will revisit the results of the community demography assessment, asset map, market analysis, and logic model for use in identifying community resources. In addition, we will initially discuss the need to not only engage but begin to preserve community resources, particularly as this need links to Step XI (Build and Preserve Community Resources). Finally, the Community Resource Snapshot tool is provided for use in community resource development, and an exercise is provided to further reinforce the topic.

STEP V: IDENTIFY AND ENGAGE COMMUNITY RESOURCES

Community: Defined

A discussion about community resources must begin with a discussion about community and exactly what is meant by the concept of community. Providing a focused definition of community, Bookman (2005) views it as a “real geographical community that shapes family life and work” (p. 144). In contrast, according to Lewis, Lewis, Daniels, and D’Andrea (2003),

The word community means different things to different people. To some it may refer to people living in a specific geographic area (e.g., rural versus urban community). To others it may mean a group of people related by their unique cultural, ethnic, or racial background, such as the Asian American community. Still others may use the term to refer to the interdependence each has to one another as members of a much broader “global community.” (p. 6)

Taking the concept of community a step further, Homan (2004) offers the perspective that a community is similar to an individual, insofar as a community may have strengths and limitations, specific challenges that it faces (e.g., ethnic conflict, crime), feelings of powerlessness, unique skills that come from its members, and the ability to engage in collaboration/supportive activities. Whereas these definitions reinforce Gareis and Barnett’s (2008) assertion that there still is not a well-established consensus definition of community in the mental health professions, for the sake of the discussion on community resource development, an even more focused definition of community will be used. Community will be defined as the geographic region in which client populations reside—consistent with the concept of a target region discussed in Chapter 2.

Community Resources: Defined

Community resources are assets that the community possesses. Or simply, “resources are what a community has going for itself ” (Homan, 2004, p. 55). As discussed in Chapter 2, resources can include services, other treatment providers, knowledge, and other assets that are available within the community. Because the strength, self-preservation, and sustainability of a community are often based on the degree to which a community can be self-supporting, the resources that a community has are integral to achieving this. In fact, communities themselves often play a critical role in helping individual community members overcome major stressors and successfully adapt in the face of severe challenges (Yoon, 2009). However, it is not simply the fact that a community has available resources that makes it healthy but, rather, that the community fully utilizes its available resources in order to achieve greater health and self-sufficiency.

Community Resources: Brief Review of the Literature

Unfortunately, research in the area of community resource development has been scattered and noncumulative (Gareis & Barnett, 2008), with the bulk of the literature still in its infancy. Studies that have been conducted in this area have focused on the peripheral issue of needs assessments in identifying service needs for specific populations, such as elderly African immigrants (Darboe & Ahmed, 2007); the use of neighborhood mapping techniques to identify community assets and other community characteristics, including specific resources (Aronson, Wallis, O’Campo, & Schafer, 2007); and the resilience of particular communities as a result of various existing community assets (Maybery, Pope, Hodgins, Hitchenor, & Shepherd, 2009).

In addition, one recent study sought to move into new territory by investigating perceived community resource fit compared with individual community members’ needs and by developing a quantitative tool by which to assess this (Gareis & Barnett, 2008). In this work, the authors examined a residential community of employed families, exploring community members’ satisfaction with their personal values, desires, or goals as matched with the community’s existing resources. Their findings illustrated the significance of effective community resource fit in school and work in particular and its relationship to overall well-being, reinforcing previous findings (Gareis, Barnett, & Brennan, 2003; Voydanoff, 2004). As such, the greater the perceived satisfaction with work and school resources, the less family conflict and psychological stress there is. This work also resulted in the development of a standardized measure to assess community resource fit that has promising psychometric properties (Gareis & Barnett, 2008), which may be instrumental in future studies in this area.

Whereas research in this area is beginning to evolve, much more attention will need to be paid to ensure that studies related to community resource development focus on all types of communities, particularly those facing serious challenges (e.g., working poor and impoverished, largely unemployed, high-crime areas). It is often these types of marginalized communities that provide the context of work in human services, and therefore, it is precisely these types of communities in which we need to better understand the role that community resource development plays.

Community Resource Development

Mental health professionals and individuals with chronic needs typically know precisely what resources exist in their communities. This is because they have an innate need to know. The former know because their success as clinicians often rests on this knowledge, while the survival of the latter often depends on such information. In fact, I have often thought the measure of a truly effective clinician can be found in his/her awareness of and proximity to an array of community resources. Clinicians today must not only know what resources are available, but they also must be able to skillfully ensure that access to such resources is unrestricted. More often than not, that means that they have to have already developed strong working relationships with the individuals managing the resources. Whereas resource coordination is a core part of the clinicians’ job, individuals with chronic needs are motivated by sheer survival skills to identify and access necessary resources for themselves. As such, individuals with chronic needs are often the most incredibly resilient people, with an enormous amount of knowledge and skill related to available resources—not to mention inner strength and perseverance—from which we all can learn.

The availability and array of community resources are integral to any community’s health, required for community development, and indicative of a community’s sustainability. Because of this, community resources are a necessity for any clinical or human service program’s development efforts and must be viewed as a key ingredient of comprehensive program development.

Community resource development refers to three main issues:

1. The existence of resources within a community to meet specific needs
2. The ability to access needed existing resources
3. The development of new resources designed to address existing needs

The Sooke Navigator project (Box 7.1; Anderson & Larke, 2009) provides an excellent example of the need for comprehensive community resource development.

BOX 7.1

THE SOOKE NAVIGATOR PROJECT

The objective of the project was to improve mental health and addiction services to individuals in a rural region in British Columbia. Led by a collaborative team of mental health professionals and community leaders, the project focused on identifying and engaging existing community resources in order to increase access to available services in the region.

After a thorough investigation of all the existing community resources, two Navigator positions were developed that would function as direct links to needed community resources. One Navigator was assigned to youth, and the other Navigator was responsible for adults.

Navigators were mental health workers that were responsible for

• conducting a strengths-based assessment and initial plan,
• connecting individuals to necessary resources,
• providing focused support and guidance to individuals in need,
• educating community members and other professionals about the existing community resources, and
• following up with individuals to determine the outcomes related to community resource linkages.

In addition, Navigators were required to have specialized knowledge of the primary treatment issues, collaborate with both the individuals and participating community resources in the development of the initial assessment plan, and provide or coordinate ongoing linking services to ensure that the individual could indeed access any necessary resources.

By implementing the Navigator system, the region was able to increase community member access to necessary mental health and addiction treatment.

One of the key factors that motivated the Sooke project was that even though the region had various resources, individuals in need of the resources often were unable to access them because they were not aware of them or because other barriers stood in their way. Unfortunately, this problem is in no way unique to British Columbia, but rather it is a highly common problem that many, if not most, communities face. However, through a coordinated planning and action process, the Sooke Navigator project demonstrated that it was able to produce a significant impact in linking individuals in need with existing community resources. And it is precisely these types of linkages on which community resource development efforts are based.

Objectives of Community Resource Development

In addition to ensuring that individuals in need are able to gain access to necessary community resources, there are several other purposes for utilizing community resources in comprehensive program development. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Augmenting the service array
• Building an advocacy coalition
• Garnering additional and/or new funding
• Promoting long-term sustainability planning
• Strengthening communities from within by recognizing and utilizing existing resources

Because each of these issues is of particular significance to program development efforts, each will be discussed further below.

Augment Service Array

As you have likely already witnessed in each of the previous steps of the program design process, a tremendous number of needs must be met when addressing a clinical or social issue. This is because no clinical or social problem exists in isolation, but rather each is connected to a highly complex individual—moreover, a highly complex individual who is multifaceted and who interacts within a broad social context. For instance, treating depression relies only partially on treating the clinical symptoms of depression and should address all aspects of the individual’s lifestyle (e.g., work, hobbies, family, friends), social systems, and intra- and interpersonal aspects, among other issues. Because some of these issues can be addressed therapeutically and others require additional types of intervention, it is necessary to coordinate additional services to ensure that the problem is truly addressed in a holistic manner.

Therefore, achieving a comprehensive approach to program development requires not only directly addressing a host of related issues and treating the whole client but also demonstrating the ability to provide enhanced services and treatment through the use of other available resources. This was one of the key factors related to the Sooke project (Anderson & Larke, 2009)—the need to ensure that residents could take advantage of the various resources that existed within their community. From the program developer’s perspective, the ability to tap into existing community resources allows for augmenting the service array, thus enlarging the continuum of services for use by the target population. In doing so, the program developer is able to focus more specifically on the core treatment program since other providers are able to offer enhanced treatment options.

In addition to being a smart business practice—using what already exists rather than re-creating what is already there—this approach provides the added benefit of strengthening the community by recognizing its existing attributes. Doing so ensures not only an effectively encompassing treatment approach but also greater potential for sustaining treatment gains as a result of tapping into the community’s existing riches.

Advocacy Coalition Development

Equally important to utilizing existing community resources in program development efforts is engaging existing community resources as a means to begin building an advocacy coalition. An advocacy coalition refers to a group of individuals and organizations dedicated to a specific treatment issue or social need that works collectively to increase awareness and knowledge of the issue. Advocacy coalitions may become involved in lobbying efforts—efforts designed to increase funding—and/or may engage in other methods that seek to increase recognition of specific issues and in other activities designed to ensure that the issues can be most effectively addressed. In addition, advocacy coalitions may organize public forums or campaigns to garner support for specific issues, and the work of advocacy coalitions may result in increased pressure on elected officials (Roberts-DeGennaro, 2001). Developing an advocacy coalition may prove essential to sustaining a new program, as the coalition can function to ensure that attention is continuously paid to the types of issues being addressed by the program.

Lewis et al. (2003) outline the coalition-building process as one that includes three stages of development:

1. Planning: In the planning stage, counselors must identify those constituency groups that might link with their organization to address an issue of common concern. This task includes making sure that those invited to attend the first coalition-building meeting really do have a common interest and stake in the given issue(s).
2. Consultation: Coalition building involves more than simply presenting an issue to each organization in a way that makes the members appreciate its importance and value. During the consultation stage, representatives from various organizations must discuss the ways in which joining a coalition with other groups will benefit each constituency.
3. Planning and implementation: The planning and implementation stage of the coalition-building process determines the level of interest and commitment that individuals genuinely have regarding the issues of common concern to them. This is critical because individuals will likely demonstrate an increased commitment to a coalition when they feel they have been directly involved in the planning and implementation of beneficial strategies. Given their training and expertise in human relations, counselors are well equipped to deal with the challenging task of facilitating group discussions that involve all participants during the planning and implementation stage. (p. 238)

By simply utilizing and working collaboratively with existing community resources in initial program development efforts, you have an opportunity to begin to develop your own advocacy coalition. And it is through this work of getting out and ensuring that you are aware of all the existing resources that you can begin to build your resource knowledge base. In addition, this work allows you to meet and engage your neighbors and potential business partners on a meaningful level. Moreover, by developing close relationships with competitors that offer mutual benefits, you can decrease the possibility of operating at cross purposes (Homan, 2004)—thus, keeping your competitors with you serves to also ensure that they are not working against you. The role and function of advocacy coalitions is further explained in Chapter 13 as part of the broader discussion related to preserving community resources.

Garner Additional and/or New Funding

Now more than ever before, collaborative efforts in mental health and human service programming are demanded. In fact, rare is the call for proposals for new programs that does not require collaboration between at least two organizations. Two program proposals on which I recently worked might be helpful in illustrating this current trend.

The first Request for Proposal was for a contract to provide an array of children’s mental health services and required that the applicant organization identify an established panel of community providers that could provide additional and enhanced services to the target population. The second, from a federal funding agency, required that the applicant organization identify two primary partners—one psychiatric care provider and one medical health provider—that would provide necessary linkages to clients to ensure the availability of comprehensive treatment. In addition, this particular proposal required identifying two additional support service providers (e.g., employment, education) that could be used to further complement the core services provided by the applicant organization.

Both of these sets of requirements outlined by the funding sources accurately reflect the current climate in programming—a climate that is highly focused on developing broad-based systems of care. This is largely based on the notion that by developing a broad-based system of care through collaborative efforts, communities can further develop their internal abilities to respond to the needs of their residents, thus strengthening communities from within.

Whereas developing such comprehensive systems is often necessary to effectively treat individuals, without established relationships with a variety of community resources, such systems are almost impossible to build. Pragmatically, organizations that do not fully appreciate the need for developing relationships with other existing community resources may find that they have been effectively eliminated from potential new funding. However, with appropriately developed community resource partnerships, programs/organizations can find that they are well postured to seek additional and/or new types of funding—thus, possibly allowing for new opportunities and opportunities that may have a direct impact on sustainability.

Sustainability Planning

Whereas both of the above issues have already alluded to long-term sustainability planning, this notion also deserves mention on its own. Sustainability planning refers to the ability of any organism (e.g., program, organization, community) to continue its existence well into the future. This term has come to be a critical part of our vocabulary in the 21st century, particularly as it relates to sustaining the earth that we inhabit. However, thoughtfully focusing on sustainability has been a primary business objective throughout history since, arguably, all new businesses begin with the hope of lasting well into the future and, more so, of experiencing continuous and vast growth.

Since mental health and human services are indeed businesses, program developers must design and implement programs with an initial focus on long-term sustainability. Doing so is often a result of multiple factors that will be discussed in detail in the final part of the text, specifically with regard to the importance of evaluation, information sharing, and accreditation. However, sustainability is another significant benefit related to community resource development. That is, by initially engaging and determining how community resources can be utilized in new program development, you are in fact moving toward ensuring that your program can be sustained over time. This is because any program that utilizes existing and alternative resources—not drawing solely from within the program itself—has greater staying power simply because it draws its strength and support from multiple sources rather than relying only on its own. This is no different than individual health and wellness—the richer one’s social support network, the more resilient one is when dealing with hardship.

Strengthen Communities From Within

Developing relationships with community resources, further developing community resources, and maximizing the relevance of existing resources each have the potential benefit of strengthening the community from within, as was previously noted. Indeed, the more available resources are at the local level, the greater the likelihood that the needs of community members can be addressed at the local level. This type of relationship between a community and its resources serves to empower community members as they realize that they have a community infrastructure within which their needs can be effectively met. As you can imagine, this has tremendous significance to most of us—after all, at the most basic level, we all want to know that we have immediate access to needed resources.

Strengthening communities from within is akin to making a community more resilient. And in fact, there are three types of resources that are believed to contribute to a community’s resilience:

1. Social assets—relationships with neighbors and/or affiliations or ties to schools, places of worship, and other community-based organizations
2. Service agency assets—human service organizations that have an institutional rather than a social focus, such as child welfare organizations, hospitals, etc.
3. Economic and neighborhood assets—includes such aspects of a community as family income and employment opportunities (Mowbray et al., 2007)

By utilizing community resources in new program development, you are able to reinforce the value of existing community resources to community members. In addition, you have the opportunity to develop new support networks that can be accessed and that may more effectively serve community members. As a result of engaging in community resource development, you have the potential to strengthen communities from within, thus increasing the community’s potential for resilience.

Identifying Community Resources: Revisiting the Asset Map, Community Demography Assessment, Market Analysis, and Logic Model

Identifying existing community resources is the obvious first step in community resource development. But this is not necessarily an easy task, and it really depends on the program developer’s ability to cast the widest net in exploring existing community resources. Fortunately, if you already completed the preplanning activities as part of the initial step in program development—including an asset map, community demography assessment, market analysis, and logic model—much, if not all, the work has been done by this point. As a result, the task now becomes revisiting the results of each previous activity to determine how to move forward in community resource development.

This begins with reviewing the community resources listed on the asset map to become more familiar with each of the existing resources and delve deeper into gaining more specific information

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