Step 5 Assess Your Capacity to Implement Remaining Candidate SAPA as Intended

GTO Step 5 provides a structure to assess whether the candidate SAPA can be carried out effectively with the knowledge, skills, and resources available.

Why

  • You cannot meet the goals and desired outcomes of any prevention activity without adequate capacity, or needed resources, to deliver the prevention activity as intended.
  • Inadequate capacity can cause added burden on staff and other existing prevention activities—for example, by reducing the time devoted to them.
  • Inadequate capacity leads to poor prevention activity implementation.
  • Understanding limitations can focus your team on strategies to improve capacity where it is needed.

How

  • As a team, consider several dimensions of needed capacity to implement the remaining candidate SAPA, including staffing (number and qualification); leadership commitment, support, and communication; technical (internet support or equipment); fiscal; needed collaborations; and other resource capacities that the prevention activity requires.
  • Make a plan for how you can fill any specific resource gaps you identify (e.g., how to get staff trained in the SAPA).
  • The longer GTO guide has a tool—Capacity Assessment tool—that could help you complete this step. You can download a .zip file that contains all of the tools.

Key Points

  • If you discover that your organization lacks the necessary capacities to deliver your SAPA with fidelity or to stick to the plan outlined by the curriculum by adhering to all its core components, it is important to brainstorm ways to build capacity before implementation.
  • This is an ideal time to provide a progress briefing to leadership to walk them through the GTO team's decision-making process and obtain buy-in for the selected SAPA. See the section on engaging leadership for how to give such a briefing.
  • GTO Step 5 aligns with assessment in the PPoA prevention process.

Update Your SAPA Overview

If you have eliminated SAPA from consideration, make sure that the SAPA Overview Worksheet (.docx) shows only your remaining candidate SAPA in column 4.

Linking GTO Steps

  • Steps 4 and 5 should be done together. If you have no viable candidates after completing Step 5, revisit Step 3 to identify new candidates for fit and capacity assessment.
  • Your final selection should be what you use in your implementation work plan in Step 6.

GTO Step 5 Resources

Handbook Overview

Up Next

Step 6: Plan SAPA Implementation and Evaluation