In the News:

November 2010:

Kingston Times, What Midtown Thinks

RecordOnline, Farm to Sprout in Kingston

What is a community prevention collaborative?
Prevention collaboratives are long-term initiatives involving agencies, governments, parents, schools, faith organizations and businesses. They come together to assess the level of healthy behaviors and institutions in their community and use model frameworks to help plan and implement strategies for building on their strengths and addressing areas of weakness.

Locally, communities use risk and protective factor or strength based surveys to accomplish their community assessments. Risk Factors are the conditions within a community that influence the onset of adolescent problem behaviors.  Protective Factors are a community’s positive attributes which act as buffers to risk, ultimately reducing the impact and prevalence of problem behaviors. The surveys help identify the level of problems like substance abuse and violence and, together with other local law enforcement and health data, a picture emerges. Each member of the collaborative involves their own organization in activities to address the issues identified by the assessment and the collaborative tracks the community’s progress over time.

FAMILY has been the sponsor of the Kingston Cares collaborative since it was established in 1998, together with the Ulster County Mental Health Department and Kingston City Schools.  Grant funding from New York State’s Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) brought together parents, schools, youth, faith leaders, businesses, the media, law enforcement, agencies, organizations, and other community leaders to implement research-based, community-wide planning initiatives to reduce adolescent problem behaviors through prevention education and youth recognition.

One of its early initiatives brought Creating Lasting Family Connections, an award-winning family strengthening program, to Kingston. The program, now offered through a number of Family’s programs, fills a gap in quality parenting groups specifically for families with young teens. Kingston Cares has also been a catalyst in mid town Kingston, bringing the growing Hispanic community and area businesses together in the Broadway Partnership, an initiative to combat unhealthy social norms and media messages about crime, drinking and tobacco use in the neighborhood.