Resilient Communities: South Dakota provides a technical framework to support community coalitions to prepare, know, prevent, respond to and sustain multi-sector efforts to address  childhood maltreatment and its impacts across the lifespan.

In the first phase of Resilient Communities, “Prepare,”  a facilitating team will get ready to lead their community through the second three-step phase: “Discovery,” a series of community conversations and shared inquiry to help multi-sector stakeholders discover how their community already Knows, Prevents, and Responds to child maltreatment, as well as gaps and opportunities for improvement. Finally, in the third phase, “Sustain,” communities will create a sustainability plan and pledge to continue working together to become more self-healing, safe and Resilient Communities.

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Prepare

Understand and enroll in the Resilient Communities: South Dakota Initiative

The first step in the Resilient Communities: South Dakota process is to indicate your intent to apply:

The process towards being recognized as a South Dakota Resilient Community by the Center for Prevention of Child Maltreatment (CPCM) is time-intensive and requires dialogue and collaboration from many sectors and stakeholders. Although each community will be unique, going through this framework and its steps will prepare you for success. After you complete the following steps n this PREPARE phase, your community’s facilitating team will gain access to the subsequent steps and technical support to complete them.

Identify Community Coalition and Facilitating Team

Identify a community coalition to jointly oversee and implement the process steps to becoming a SD Resilient Community. Reach out to your local prevention entity to learn if there is an already established coalition in your community and/or receive support in starting one. Having an  established community coalition is a pre-requisite for the Resilient Communities: South Dakota program.

Identity a facilitating team of 3-5 individuals in your community who are informed and passionate about ending child maltreatment and increasing resiliency. At least one member of the facilitating team should also regularly attend and/or be involved  in the leadership of your Community Coalition. Ideally, each facilitating team members should be from different sectors (examples include, but are not limited to education, law enforcement, behavioral health, health care, youth serving organizations and government).

Meet the Brookings County Facilitating Team

Collect Community Data

CPCM will provide more information about the data Facilitating Teams should collect and understand  about their community.

Increase Facilitating Team’s Knowledge of ACES

As a facilitating team, complete the Self-Healing Communities training through the Center for Prevention of Child Maltreatment. More information may be found here.

Contact CPCM when you have completed the steps in the PREPARE section to get access to the steps and technical support to complete the KNOW, RESPOND, PREVENT and SUSTAIN portions to the Resilient Communities: South Dakota framework.

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Know, Respond, Prevent

In the next, discovery phase of this framework, KNOW, RESPOND and PREVENT,  the facilitating team will host community meetings in order to increase multi-sector awareness of how to better Know, Prevent and Respond to child maltreatment in their community. This community-based participatory research uses an appreciative inquiry process, and will typically take several months. You will get additional technical support and materials for these steps.

Going through the process of being named a Resilient Community by CPCM is designed to lead communities to a greater understanding of their specific strengths and opportunities to collaborate more deeply in order to decrease child maltreatment and increase resiliency.  In order to gain the most benefit from the Resilient Communities: South Dakota framework, it is important to not rush to complete the work.

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Sustain

In the final phase of the Resilient Communities: South Dakota framework, the community will develop a sustainability plan in order to continue to better Know, Prevent and Respond to child maltreatment in their community. Each community will also develop a “Resilient Community Motivator” pledge packet and will get stakeholder buy-in to sustain efforts.  The Resilient Communities: South Dakota program is intended to be recursive and sustainable. Communities designated as a Resilient Community by CPCM  will continue to have quarterly meetings, training, and  evaluation methods to continue improving upon their ability to Know, Prevent and Respond to child maltreatment.