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Organizations, and individuals in those organizations,
have to have the ability to do their job.
The role of technical assistance is to give them those knowledge, skills,
resources, and relationships so they can do their job properly; providing them with
the best knowledge, hopefully based on some sort of research or evidence, to show
what works within a certain context.
There's been a lot of advancement on the research front in terms of what works in prevention.
And it's not necessarily intuitively obvious
to folks who really want to make some positive change in their communities.
So I think its the province of
training and TA to bring that information to the communities
in a way that they can understand and use.
This work is very complex. It's very dynamic; it changes all the time. And trying to kind of manage and
stay focused on so many planning processes and research and details is very
difficult work. Never mind staying focused on the communities and the
constituencies that you work with.
There are certainly general capacities that prevention people need, and other
providers that provide services -- whether it be how to establish better
relationships in the community, how to collaborate more,
how to think about getting increased funding or different funding streams.
There are other more specific capacities, whether it be how to
develop an environmental strategy,
how to implement an environmental strategy,
how to implement a particular program, how to effect a certain policy change.
I've heard lots of very dedicated
prevention practitioners, administrators, say things like
"Let's just get some resources out to the communities and let 'em do what they do.
They know what to do. They know their communities." I couldn't disagree with
that more, other than they do know their communities and they know the resources
they have to work with. They know their people. But they do not know what to do
in terms of preventing or intervening on alcohol use or drug use
with youth and families.
Without training and technical assistance, things would stay as they are.
There wouldn't be an opportunity for growth and innovation.
People tend to do what they know best. And when there's not evidence
supported, they continue to do what they know best.
So when you build the capacity of providers, when you teach them how to do specific skills around
needs assessment, resource assessment,
developing realistic goals and objectives,
identifying initiatives and implementing programs,
they do their work better. So there really is a nice continuum of
building the capacity and then seeing improved,
higher quality prevention.