Who We Are - Overview

Collaboration as a substance abuse prevention strategy

Who:

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Communities Against Substance Abuse, working together in partnership with many different community members, organizations, issue-focussed groups, public sector staff, other community collaboratives, service clubs, and anybody else we can round up who support common goals.

What:
Collaboration occurs when two or more individuals, groups, or organizations work towards a common desired result, e.g. a prevention campaign, policy change, or change in community norms, increased availability of after school programs, or stronger families.

When:
Collaborative strategies are used to address complex social problems when solutions require service coordination across organizational and sector boundaries, decision-making closest to the "problem", multiple strategies or interventions, and ongoing, sustained interventions in order to be effective.

Where:
Collaboration occurs in our communities all the time. For CASA, we work both at the regional level, throughout the East County, and at a countywide level, working with the other 10 County-funded regional prevention collaboratives and Countywide initiatives.

Why:
Collaboration is a response to community conditions, including:

1	fragmented services
2	a redefinition of private and public sector roles;
3	decentralization of government and an emphasis on "local control";
4	a growing awareness that community problems can be addressed more effectively by local solutions; and,
5	emerging knowledge about the complex and interrelated nature of social problems.

How:
At the Countywide level, Communities Against Substance Abuse provides staff support to the:

1	Media Action Committee and the Social Availability Committee of the San Diego County Policy Panel on Youth Access to Alcohol
2	Media planning and coordination for all 10 regional substance abuse prevention collaboratives.

At the regional, East County level, we provide staff support to:

1	the East County Community Prevention Alliance
2	the Sustainability Network for East County Community Collaboratives
3	Prevention Teams in the communities of El Cajon, Lemon Grove, Jamul/Dulzura, Alpine, and Santee;
4	A variety of program specific prevention initiatives involving interorganizational efforts in support of common goal, such as the East County Hospitality Resource Panel, the Discovery Club, etc.

Our regionally focussed substance abuse prevention collaborative is The East County Community Prevention Alliance (ECCPA), a collaborative developed and working together to increase the effectiveness of substance abuse prevention efforts throughout East County.

The ECCPA is staffed and guided by the leadership of Communities Against Substance Abuse and funded via both the Federal Drug Free Communities Support Program and our San Diego County Alcohol & Drug Services Prevention Contract.

Community-specific collaboratives are the partners with whom we are working, so that they might be the prevention "actors" in their communities. Many of these collaboratives are all-voluntary groups without paid staff, organized around "creating better futures for their communities" composed of community members, service agency staff, and public sector staff.