The Chaffee County Youth Alliance (CCYA) is a local coalition that uses an evidence-based framework known as Communities that Care (CTC). CTC is a collaborative, research-based process that helps communities promote positive youth development and prevent unhealthy behaviors that has been at work in Chaffee County for the past nearly three years.
The original CTC effort came about in response to county statistics showing that risky behaviors and early substance abuse among county youth are much higher than state and national averages. A key finding has been that more permissive parental attitudes toward these behaviors may contribute to Chaffee’s higher statistics.
During the December 16 CTC meeting, members broke into groups to discuss the December 2019 Coalition Health Survey. The coalition went through an involved exercise to determine what individual members and organizations felt were priorities as well as what the coalition should focus on moving forward. CTC is currently in the implementation phase. Each member received the survey for health along with strategy. The strategy results will be reviewed by strategic leads and shared with the entire coalition in February. The survey looked at health, productivity and what would have the most impact in the community.
The priorities included:
- Equity in Practice
- Motivation for change within the community
- Adult and Youth relationships
The survey also compiled the top three strengths which included opportunities for participation, civic engagement and goal directedness and efficiency. The three areas for improvement included community representation in relation to diverse stakeholders, knowledge and skills and innovation-specific capacity.
Chaffee County Youth Alliance logo
The coalition was broken up into small groups where they then discussed how to make this possible. The goal: to identify how CTC can improve on these elements in the future and what the coalition felt is needed to get there.
While this was only a brainstorming session, ideas included better educating the community on equity, improving the spread of information within the community as well as the coalition (via meeting minutes) and accessibility to opportunities in between meetings. Other possible solutions included equity training and getting youth to meetings with the incentive of receiving credit for school.
The next meeting will be held at 8:30 a.m. on February 17. To learn more about CTC, click here.
