ALAMEDA COUNTY VIOLENCE PREVENTION CORE GROUP:
DECEMBER 18, 2003 MEETING SUMMARY

Core group meeting participants: Joy Walton, Junious Williams, Robert Benson, Deane Calhoun, Dean Chambers, David Kears, Gail Steele, Tony Crear, Bill Riley, Arnold Perkins, Valerie Street, Mario Robinson, London Wright, Page Tomblin, Lucas Daumont, Paul Leonard, and Rodney Brooks.

On December 18, 2003, the Alameda County Violence Prevention Core Group had its second Phase II meeting related to the blueprint development process. The Core group is the body responsible for defining and shaping solutions to the recommendations delineated in Toward a Lifetime Commitment to Violence Prevention in Alameda County: Background and Preliminary Recommendations. In addition, members of the Core group serve as ambassadors of the project, spreading the word, obtaining participation, input, and buy-in.

RATIFICATION OF 10/30 MEETING SUMMARY
Core group members ratified the meeting notes from the October 30th meeting. They are available at http://preventioninstitute.org/alameda.html.

COMMUNITY AND YOUTH ENGAGEMENT
Core group members agreed that before the January core group and advisory board meetings community and youth members need to be identified, contacted, and oriented to gauge interest and availability. Core group members that volunteered to help in this process are Arnold Perkins, Tony Crear, Valerie Street, and Deane Calhoun.

PRIORITY RISK AND RESILIENCE FACTORS
The group reviewed the top risk and resilience factors prioritize at the October 30th meeting and affirmed the prioritization. Participants added detail to the list by sharing key elements of various factors that must be addressed as particular factors are addressed. In particular, the group emphasized lack of parental involvement and teenage parenthood as extremely important issues. The group so identified hopelessness as an important element as well, such as was highlighted in the phase I report and agreed that fostering hope must be integrated throughout the violence prevention planning and implementation phases.

It is of interest to note that the resilience-promoting factors identified as priority: developing economic capital, creating meaningful opportunities for participation, and supporting positive attachments and relationships are all means of countering the risk factors delineated.

The Spectrum of Prevention was reintroduced and core group members developed specific activities along the Spectrum that can foster economic capital, the highest priority resilience factor. The group will also develop activities for other risk and resilience factors in future meetings. The activities for economic capital are detailed in the following chart:

Level of Spectrum	Economic Capital
1. Strengthening Individual Knowledge and Skills	Job training/apprenticeships Literacy development Prepare everyone to work Develop independent living skills Provide range of career paths Teach youth how business works
2. Promoting Community Education	Raise awareness re: range of job opportunities Counter messages regarding "unappealing jobs" with the reality
3. Educating Providers	People in different career paths should outreach to community about their career See youth as a "commodity"
4. Fostering Coalitions and Networks	Involve business and educate them on their role in creating a healthy community Reach out to both currently engaged businesses and those not engaged and find roles Create a business advisory group for business recommendations
5. Changing Organizational Practices	Corporations and businesses should adopt four square blocks to present in. Put banks/businesses in community neighborhoods Corporate partnerships Attract investment & businesses to our community Training
6. Influencing Policy and Legislation	Local government should invest in violence prevention planning and programs Develop enterprise zones Implement a sustainable living wage Create enforceable subsidy agreements

DEVELOPING A STRUCTURE FOR VIOLENCE PREVENTION IN ALAMEDA COUNTY

The discussion then turned to the agreed upon need for shaping a county structure in order to move a long-term violence prevention plan forward after the core group ends in March. The group agreed that any structure must account for five key elements (which emerged from phase I and are from the preliminary report): centralized leadership, provision of a training venue, collaboration and coordination, public information, and coordinated data collection and analysis.

The draft Examining Potential Structures for Violence Prevention document was reviewed in preparation for a small group activity to develop some consensus on the structure options. Core group members explored some of the key issues related to development of a violence prevention structure for Alameda County. This process reiterated the need to answer the following questions:

• Where will leadership for this initiative reside?
• Who will be accountable and responsible for outcomes?
• What types of collaborations, partnerships, and linkages need to be developed and fostered?
• What is the role of government in ensuring that accomplishment of delineated tasks?
• What trainings based on best practices will be needed to move this process forward?

Presentation by Nancy Lyons of the Little Hoover Commission

Nancy Lyons, Deputy Executive Director for the Little Hoover Commission, presented about the Commission's findings in its study of youth crime and violence prevention. The Little Hoover Commission is an independent state oversight agency that was created in 1962. The Commission's mission is to investigate state government operations and -- through reports, recommendations and legislative proposals -- promote efficiency, economy and improved service. The Commission's most recent report is Back to the Community: Safe and Sound Parole Policies.

Nancy Lyons focused her presentation on shaping a vision for a county structure for violence prevention, the elements needed to ensure broad leadership, collaboration across departments and efforts, and effective training. Her recommendations included forming a high level coordinating council, and to ensure that this council functions properly, she felt that three things need to be in place. These are 1) political capital, which refers to attention from high-level policy makers that are often county department and agency heads; 2) financial capital, which refers to ensuring investment made into programs are getting the best bang per buck; 3) technical capital, which refers to access to information on best practices, and research science that works to address the problem of violence. This also refers to coordination and integration across efforts, departments, and disciplines.

This presentation also covered the importance of training, information sharing, and coordination as necessary aspects that will fall into place as a result of good leadership and is often more important than programming.

As the core group moves forward Nancy outlined the importance of prioritizing efforts so that certain problems are addressed before others. Developing a "soft structure" would help to determine who is doing what around violence in Alameda County. This also allows an inventory of programs to take place to help determine available resources.

She also identified four principles that support effectiveness of such a structure. These included 1) setting goals and developing community indicators to measure progress, and obtaining data to see what is working well and where changes need to be made; 2) deciding what specific issue to tackle first (and it may be important to tackle something relatively easy first); 3) ensuring that efforts include prevention, intervention, and enforcement and making connections with organizations carrying out these efforts; and finally, 4) ensuring that efforts are well managed and continuously improved.

Nancy offered her support of the process should it be helpful at a later date.

Describing the Outcomes and Impact of an Effective Violence Prevention Strategy

The core group went on to engage in an exercise in which each member was asked to describe in three words or phrases of what they would like to see in several years to know that they had been effective in their violence prevention planning. The responses covered markers such as having easy professional and community access to resources and tools that support violence prevention, readily available data and benchmarks that speak to progress being made in addressing community violence, clear and coordinated roles, changes in both policy and policymaker perspectives on prevention, and development of a sustainable coordinating body. In effect, these outcomes shape a vision for violence prevention planning efforts and are detailed in the following list:

• Data readily available that shows progress or lack there of around issues
• Coordinated body made up of NGO's, and government agencies that is staffed and under the County Administrator's Office (CAO)
• 24-hour hotline
• One stop shop for violence prevention resources
• Information kiosk
• Broad based coordinated body that's sustainable
• An understanding of who is doing what
• Identification of benchmarks and indicators
• A violence prevention office located in the community
• Change in perception of prevention by policy makers
• Standardized life skills program in the educational system
• Rehabilitation and remediation need to be included in strategy
• Violence prevention commission that monitors a countywide campaign
• Reduction in violence
• Violence prevention tool
• Clear policy goals

Specifying the Structure

Core group members then participated in a small group activity discussing possible structure options for housing and coordinating violence prevention in Alameda County. The discussion presented an important role of violence prevention leadership, which is to send a strong positive message to the public that violence is learned, is preventable, and that this strategy will lead to norms change within Alameda County that will make violence prevention possible. This is a message for core group members to bring forward and emphasize in their own work and with their constituencies.

There was concern from some group members that in light of the dire budget situation, and all staff in county departments stretched to their greatest extent, that there are no new resources and it was not realistic to try and develop something new (as in a separate Office of Violence Prevention). The group also emphasized the need to ensure that whatever structure is developed, it is sustainable.

Three small groups then discussed structure options that addressed the five key recommendations (centralizing leadership; providing a training venue; ensuring collaboration across departments and CBOs; dissemination of public information and involvement of general public; and data collection and analysis.)

The groups did separately arrive at consensus on a general structure for the county. This included a high-level coordinating council (representing multiple departments/agencies) -- with "muscle" -- that would report to the CAO or the Board of Supervisors. Further, the coordinating council should have significant input from and involvement with a number of non-governmental sectors, including business, youth, CBO's, and community members.

There are, however, many specifics questions still to be answered to further shape and refine the structure, including:

• How does the coordinating council report and to whom?
• Who are the key agencies to provide leadership roles for participation on the Coordinating Council?
• How often does the Council meet?
• How do the various sectors participate in a meaningful and ongoing way?
• How is the structure staffed?
• Is there an office that coordinates and implements? What does it look like?
• How will these bodies link with communities?
• How does this potential configuration translate into training or public information, involvement campaign?
• How will there be a fit created between violence prevention objectives and the work that people are already doing?

Finally, as input into the ongoing process, core group members provided suggestions of things that should be taken into account in answering these and other specific questions about structure, roles, and activities as the group moves forward. These were divided into the 5 key elements that the overall structure must address. They will be considered in future planning and are:

Centralized Leadership:

• Coordinating council with sub-committees into other jurisdictions reports to CAO-BOS.
• High visibility leaders-involve state level legislator(s) possibly.
• Expand notion of corporate involvement, include successful business people who may live here in the county but may make their $$$ elsewhere.
• Must regularly involve small but empowered parts of government agency leaders & CBO's who have investment in VIOLENCE mitigation.

Training Venue:

• There should be training in the schools for youth.
• They should be trained to work in different careers and in different environments.
• Pool resources for training.
• County Office of Emergency Preparedness.

Collaboration and Coordination:

• Coordinating Council reports to CAO & BOS.
• Structures -- Collaboration & coordination resource mapping to make sure the right peoples are at the table and you reduce or hopefully mitigate "TURF" issues.
• Cross training of county workers who come across violence in the field, so they know who to call in regard to the many different issues affecting families.
• This includes city agencies as well. Community forums, leadership by policy makers, commitment (written) from all stakeholders.
• Coordination of resources
• Have mandatory conference seminars for county & city staff that work in certain areas that provide help to high-risk populations.

Coordinating data collection and analysis:

• Establish a culture of data showing among city & county workers + departments not of "hogging" data.
• Development of key measures and indicators that are desired for each agency.
• Develop a county violence prevention web site that keeps track of data.
• Connect w/ CHISS at UCLA (Rick Brown) for assistance in making data public.
• Integrated county Data warehouse with all county data is kept.
• Centralized countywide data bank.
• Use available resources to begin to develop integrated data system.

Public Information:

• CAO Office Public Information Officer.
• Outreach to those hard to reach.
• Convene a meeting of the Media/Ad/PR agencies to develop a media campaign that focus on Violence Prevention.
• Run clear and targeted campaigns around policy issues in the process, make violence prevention look like a successful well-funded issues
• More "in your face" type of P.S.A.'s to emphasize the consequences of violence teen pregnancy, smoking, model this on the state's Tobacco Campaign. (Ad council).
• Media campaign that is focused on several different audiences, Alameda Co. residents, business, those in Bay Area -- outside of Alameda County & those causing violence.
• I think there should be small sub-groups located in high schools so they can implement the information to their communities.
• Advertise on the hip-hop stations -- target any type of outlet a high-risk population may be tuned into.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The book signing event with Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard Spivak, co-authors of Murder is No Accident: Understanding and Preventing Youth Violence on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, has been postponed until March. We will send out an e-mail announcement with the date and location once we have a confirmed rescheduled date.

FUTURE MEETINGS:
The next full advisory board meeting will be collapsed with the core group. The meeting will be held on Thursday, January 15 from 4-6 pm.

MATERIALS:
Materials for the blueprint development process, including those distributed to the Core Group and Advisory Board, are available at PreventionInstitute

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