Mr. Shaw indicated he would contact the members and set a date. Mr. Gaspar indicated DJC has just recently received their third annual outcome evaluation report regarding youth served by the agency, which he indicated he would make available to the Committee members. He also stated the DJC will receive within the next 30 days a report on performance based standards tied to their institutional operations. Senator Smith asked Mr. Gaspar to give a copy of the report to Mr. Pyper. Prevention must become a community effort with the statewide coordinating committee to coordinate prevention activities.
Prevention needs to be considered as something that occurs prior to the onset of a problem.
Positive, meaningful outcome measures are necessary to assess the value of prevention programs, focusing on the concept of effective programs. Ms. DelPra noted there is a document called Promoting Effective Practices, Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention, developed by the Arizona Drug and Gang Prevention Resource Center, which is a compilation of all the research and analysis on existing prevention programs that have proven effective. Ms. DelPra indicated the Subcommittee does not have enough research to know about the effectiveness of all programs and emphasized caution in putting too much emphasis on the idea of effective programs. Ms. DelPra indicated if the Committee feels the Subcommittee is moving in the right direction, they will schedule another meeting. She stated the Subcommittee needs to expand its membership to include all affected agencies.