Final Report - RI Department of Children, Youth & Families

CHAPTER 2: COMMUNITY-STATE PREVENTION PARTNERSHIPS
making process. It will be responsible for assisting communities with identifying
research-based programs and services, coordinating funding streams, developing
program outcomes and measurements, and evaluating the success of state and
community efforts in the area of prevention.
Many stakeholders have advocated for a formal mechanism by which families, providers,
and advocates can present regular feedback on how the system as a whole and the various
sub-components are operating and to gather feedback on ideas to increase the system’s
effectiveness. The Prevention Planning Subcommittee will serve this purpose. It will also
serve as the principal forum for planning and implementing statewide universal and
selected prevention initiatives.
In order to implement this recommendation, the Children’s Cabinet must review its
current committee structure with a focus on merging committees which have similar
missions and responsibilities. For example, the Youth Success Cluster, in existence for
four years, has been successful at moving forward on issues such as youth employment,
reducing juvenile delinquency, and out-of school time programming with a youth
development focus. The Children’s Cabinet also recently endorsed a new subcommittee,
the Statewide Prevention Planning Committee, in response to the State applying for and
receiving the State Incentive Grant Award from the Center for Substance Abuse Programs
(CSAP) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Rather than
attempt to support the work of multiple subcommittees which may often be duplicative,
the Cabinet must review them and determine the most effective subcommittee structure
for the future.
Given DCYF’s designation as the state agency principally responsible for the
implementation of the recommendations of this report, it is reasonable that DCYF be
called upon to administer prevention planning and implementation for the Children’s
Cabinet in collaboration with its sister state agencies.
3. $ The Children’s Cabinet agencies, through the Prevention Planning Subcommittee,
must review the State’s prevention funding streams with the goal of blending
funding as permissible under state and federal guidelines and increasing the level of
collaboration in regard to funding decision-making.
There currently exists numerous funding streams managed within multiple departments
that are principally and sometimes solely focused on prevention activities. Examples
include the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program and the Healthy Kids, Healthy School
Program administered by the RI Department of Education (RIDE); child abuse prevention
funding administered by DCYF’s Children’s Trust Fund; underage drinking prevention
and the new State Incentive Grant Program administered by the RI Department of Mental
Health, Retardation and Hospitals (MHRH); teen pregnancy prevention administered by
the RI Department of Health (DOH); and juvenile delinquency prevention administered
by the RI Department of Administration’s (DOA) RI Justice Commission (RIJC).
Although efforts have been made to increase the level of blending of these funds as
permitted by state and federal laws and regulations or to increase the level of
collaboration in decision-making processes, much more progress must be made in this
area. The Prevention Planning Subcommittee of the Children’s Cabinet is an ideal venue
for further analysis and the development of a collaborative plan.
System of Care Task Force Report (January 2003) 26