2021 COMBAT Funding: $74,667.00

In Lee's Summit CARES' Own Words

35-Year-Old Agency

Lee’s Summit CARES (LSC) serves as the only Lee's Summit community coalition addressing youth health and safety. The 35-year-old agency mobilizes community partners to develop a culture of physical and mental wellness for Lee’s Summit youth and families that inspires positive, healthy choices. LSC serves Lee’s Summit and adjacent communities of the 117-square mile LSR7 School District, reflecting an agency service area of more than 100,000 residents, which is home to nearly 15% of Jackson County's population.  

LSC’s expertise lies in its coalition model, significant community engagement and evidence-based programming. Organized as a community coalition, LSC convenes and coordinates partnerships using the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s (SAMHSA) Strategic Prevention Framework, which is similar to COMBAT’s STRIVIN’ model, as a comprehensive planning process to addresses how local culture, community and society impact youth health and health disparities.

The framework includes community assessment, capacity, planning, implementation and evaluation, within the guiding principles of cultural competency and sustainability.

More Than 50 Program Partners

LCS’s collective impact is reflected in its significant collaborations with more than 50 program partners representing education, law enforcement, government, medical and behavioral health providers, businesses, the faith community, media, parents and youth. The use of the coalition model allows the agency to be responsive and adaptive to serving emerging community needs that are identified through assessment, Town Hall events and Youth Forums that engage the wider community in conversations that support youth health and safety objectives. 

More than 70 members and volunteers support the vision, mission and activities of the coalition. 

Increasing Healthly Assets

The goal of LSC’s youth prevention programming is to increase healthy developmental assets that promote resiliency and reduce risky behaviors. Over the past 35 years, LSC has worked to surround youth with protective factors–upstander education to prevent bullying, healthy coping skills to promote mental well-being, drug and alcohol diversion programs to discourage risky behaviors, and parenting programs that develop strong families. 

Youth programming is offered in schools and through partnerships that target at-risk youth in the community, including Pro Deo, the city’s only teen community center; LSR7’s alternative high school, Summit Ridge Academy; and youth offenders in LSPD’s peer-led Youth Court diversion program.

LSC’s expertise in prevention programming has been recognized by state, regional and county agencies. The agency received the prestigious 2014 Missouri Coalition of the Year award by ACT Missouri, the Missouri Substance Abuse Prevention Network and the Missouri Division of Behavioral Health, which recognizes the coalition’s sustained level of excellent to bring together community partners to assess community needs and create lasting impact through prevention efforts.

COMBAT Funding

COMBAT funding supports LSC’s Community Organziing program to mobilize youth and adults using Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) Seven Strategies for Community Change. These prevention strategies include activities focused on providing information, building skills, providing support, enhancing access/reducing barriers, changing physical design, and modifying/changing consequences, procedures and policies. 

Activities are grounded in evidence-based behavioral strategies that enhance protective factors to develop youth’s ability to refuse drug and alcohol use, build resilience, protect adolescent brain development, and encourage positive, healthy and responsible decision-making during school years and beyond.  

Approach Is Working

Data shows LSC’s community approach to youth substance prevention is working. Six-year trend data since 2013 shows a decrease in local underage use of cigarettes by 83%, prescription drug misuse by 68%, marijuana by 58% and alcohol by 31% (Search Institute, 2019). 

Local data also shows that much work is still to be done. To promote youth substance use prevention, LSC seeks COMBAT funding to support its Community Organizing program activities:

1) Partnership Development:  Through strategic coalition building, a comprehensive community approaching using SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework will be facilitated to improve youth developmental assets and reduce underage access to substances by increasing engagement of community members and sectors to advance the coalition’s work through inclusive, community-based participation.  

LSC will convene the Partnership to Prevent Risky Behaviors (PPRB) to ensure that a wide-range of data and prevention strategies are explored and viewpoints shared. Created in 2004, the 40-member committee assesses local youth substance use data, identifies gaps in local substance prevention programming, and develops and executes strategies to address local youth use of and access to alcohol, tobacco/nicotine and other drugs. 

The committee includes youth and adults from education, law enforcement, behavioral health, youth organizations, businesses, civic, parent organizations and other community sectors. PPRB and its subcommittees meet at least 12 times a year. 

Partnership Development activities will focus on three areas of need in 2021:

• Increase collaboration and activities among youth-serving partners to provide alternative activities for underserved middle school youth;

• Increase youth prevention education through strategic partnerships to reach youth with substance use prevention education, particularly targeting  youth from vulnerable populations; and 

• Advocacy for local procedures and policies that prevent youth substance use and access. 

2)  Youth Leadership Development: To increase protective factors, youth members of the coalition will participate in programming that supports positive behaviors and promotes healthy decision-making. LSC has facilitated the city-wide Youth Advisory Board (YAB) since 2002 with student representation from the three public Lee’s Summit high schools, private schools in Lee’s Summit and students who are home schooled. Youth are widely recruited through school and community youth-serving organizations to ensure diverse representation. 

Twenty members in grades 8 – 12 will meet other youth, create education campaigns for their peers, and learn how to advocate for prevention locally and state-wide.  Youth leadership development activities for YAB members will:

• Provide Board-level and committee-level roles that ensure active youth participation in decisions that affect them; 

• Engage youth in the community-wide conversation around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion;

• Provide high-level training to develop Celebrate Sober and Tobacco/Vaping prevention campaigns for more than 8700 of their middle and high peers to address the leading substances – alcohol and nicotine –used by Lee’s Summit youth; and

• Ensure opportunities to speak with local and state elected officials, community leaders and decision-makers about the harms of youth substance use and access through the State of the Youth presentation and legislative meetings.

3) Training and Education: To decrease risk factors, youth and adults will be trained and equipped with knowledge of community strategies and prevention information to improve health outcomes for youth. Teaching skills across multiple programs helps support teens as they navigate root causes of risky behaviors, including stress, anxiety and trauma. All trainings are provided by Masters-level staff who have been trained in prevention and Trauma-Informed Care.

The following training activities will take place:

• Community Training:  25 community members from the Partnership to Prevent Risky Behaviors committee will be convened and trained on a semi-monthly basis using Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) Seven Strategies for Community Change.  Meeting attendance qualifies for 1.5 CEUs approved by the Missouri Credentialing Board for qualified professionals working in the field of substance use disorders. 

•  Peer Educator Training:  20 Youth Advisory Board will be trained in prevention messaging to create and deliver substance use prevention and wellness campaigns to their peers.  YAB members attend two additional trainings during the school year – in Liberty and Jefferson City – for additional leadership and prevention training with other Kansas City metro and state peer educators.  Participation qualifies students for community service hours.

•  Youth Education:  8700+ Lee’s Summit R-7 secondary students will be educated by their trained peers about the harms of substance use on the adolescent brain through targeted media campaigns on the benefits of avoiding drugs and alcohol. 

•  Youth Offender Training:  20 youth referred to Lee’s Summit youth-led Peer Court diversion program for substance use offenses will be trained using the CHOICES program to learn about positive decision-making.   The CHOICES program is approved by Family Court and fulfills Lee’s Summit Youth Court diversion requirements.

•  Retailer Training:  55 Lee’s Summit retailers will be trained in strategies that reduce youth access to substances, including selling protocols, proper ID checks and tactfully refusing service to minors.  First-time sellers/clerks cited for underage sales undergoing LSC training are eligible to have the fee associated with the citation waived by the Lee’s Summit Prosecutor’s Office.  Trainings will meet requirements of the Lee’s Summit Prosecutor’s Office and Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control.

Outcome

The goal of effective prevention is to reduce harmful behaviors and increase factors that promote resilience (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019).

Successful prevention activities address all levels of influence: individual, relationship, community and societal , all of which are addressed by LSC through its programming, partnerships and assessment of local youth developmental supports.  

Success will be accomplished if 78% or more of Lee’s Summit youth report in spring 2022 that they refrain from using alcohol, marijuana, nicotine or prescription drugs not prescribed to them.