Center for Mental Health in Schools, UCLA http://www.smhp.psych.ucla.edu
Summary:
This model focuses on sustaining specific valued functions and collaborations through systemic change within an organization. This may involve integrating valued functions into the fabric of existing programs and services and/or reframing an organization's intervention vision to include these crucial elements. This model consists of four stages, each with 16 steps to argue for and achieve sustainability for program elements. Stages are: preparing the argument for sustaining valued functions; mobilizing interest, consensus, and support among key stakeholders; clarifying feasibility; and proceeding with specific systemic changes.
Leadership for Change:
This model stresses the importance of having a dedicated group of people-'change agents'-to lead efforts within a school/school system.
Strategic Planning:
"Understanding the Big Picture" is where this model starts: what is the current vision for school/community improvement, what are current agenda priorities for school improvement; how does the current vision address barriers to student learning?
Partnerships/Collaboration:
Programs can "mobilizing support of key stakeholders" by identifying champions of the functions, clarifying cost-effectiveness, planning and implementing a social marketing strategy, and planning and implementing strategies to obtain support of administrators, school boards and other policy makers. Partnerships can help link program functions with educational reforms and school improvement planning, making them more valued. Such linking can also help avert marginalization of student support services, a persistent concern.
Capacity Building :
Has your program/project changed the ways that people in your system do business? How many people within your infrastructure have changed the way they work? Can those changes last after the funding is over? The goal is systemic change, through staff performance that continues after your program ends, and through changes in the infrastructure that sustain this new way of doing business.
Communications/Marketing:
"Social marketing" is presented as a tool for accomplishing change; it can help you to identify and mobilize a critical mass of stakeholders.
Public Policy:
Sustainability efforts should include linking program relevance to education reform and gaining key policymakers' support through social marketing.
Evaluation:
Evaluating sustainability efforts includes preparing action plans, adopting benchmarks and specifying immediate and long-term indicators of success. Evaluation is also a key tool in assessing which valued functions of a program to sustain.
Financing:
"Braiding" resources to sustain worthy program elements may include identifying related, funded programs and tapping into their ongoing funding streams. Goals include clarifying cost-effective strategies for sustaining functions.
