National Alliance For Drug Endangered Children

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Roadmap & Toolkit

Roadmap to the DEC Approach

The roadmap and toolkit are designed to consolidate all the information needed to form a Drug Endangered Children (DEC) Alliance and provide resources (including samples from existing alliances) to help the formation proceed smoothly. A DEC alliance connects local practitioners from many disciplines together to provide a mechanism for sustaining cross-disciplinary and inter-agency collaboration and facilitate ongoing changes in policies and practices. When a formal group comes together, they are stronger; they will have more information to identify drug endangered children and be able to assist them in a variety of ways instead of working in fragmented siloes.

The National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children has established an 8-session Academy to help walk individuals or groups wanting to formalize DEC efforts, through the Roadmap and Toolkit. This Academy will provide access to our Roadmap and Toolkit Portal that houses many of our developed and widely used tools. National DEC Staff will provide coaching to assist with the use of tools and development of resources, facilitate discussion and answer questions. Learn more about the Academy at the description below.

Roadmap and Toolkit Academy Description

Awareness—the first key component of helping drug endangered children is establishing a clear understanding of the risks children face when their caregivers are engaged in drug activity or substance misuse. This knowledge highlights the need for collaborative efforts to help these children and their families and motivates practitioners to look at how they can do their jobs more effectively to provide better outcomes for drug endangered children, families, and communities.

Enhancing awareness about drug endangered children is an ongoing part of National DEC’s mission and provides the foundation for taking action to implement and sustain the collaborative DEC Approach*.

The second stage is taking action; implementation. This will be done by sharing a common vision, ongoing collaboration, and ongoing change. Having a common vision will help practitioners and community members be on the same page sharing common goals; ongoing collaboration allows practitioners to continue asking themselves who is missing from the DEC alliance, allows for sharing information and making each discipline stronger; and ongoing change will assist in making responsive changes to how practitioners do their jobs. National DEC has developed training curricula and other resources to help implement changes and put true collaboration into practice.

The third stage in creating a DEC alliance is institutionalizing efforts and the alliance. Institutionalizing efforts will allow for continued efforts over many years as well as a platform for when new issues or concerns arise.

* The DEC Approach is a multidisciplinary strategy to change the trajectory of a drug endangered child’s life through a common vision, ongoing collaboration, and ongoing change, which increases the likelihood of better outcomes for drug endangered children.

Destination – Successful DEC Alliance

Select a tab below to learn about each stage of the Roadmap