The Improved Service Quality workgroup aims to strengthen prevention workforce capacity, enhance leadership development, and raise service delivery standards. 

Priority Efforts:

• Advocate for livable wages – ensuring prevention workers receive fair compensation.
• Leadership development – investing in equitable pathways to leadership across prevention.
• Workforce pipelines – creating sustainable, diverse entry points and career pathways.
• Shared standards – co-developing a prevention quality framework rooted in accessibility, effectiveness, and community accountability.
• Organizational support – building trauma-informed, supportive workplaces that retain staff.

Workgroup Members

The Funding and Strategic Alignment workgroup aims to change how funding is allocated in prevention efforts. It advocates for more equitable and flexible funding models that accurately reflect the true cost of prevention.

Priority Efforts:

• Community-centered benchmarks – shifting away from compliance-based metrics of success for prevention programs.
• Building peer learning and feedback loops – ensuring providers share practices, reduce isolation, and improve quality collectively.
• Strengthening evaluation frameworks – highlighting long-term outcomes, not just short-term outputs.
• Funders roundtables – multi-series discussions between prevention providers and private foundations to build pathways toward private-public partnerships.

Workgroup Members

The Coordinated Response workgroup aims to eliminate silos and create a seamless, integrated ecosystem for prevention services across Chicago.

Priority Efforts:

• System mapping – creating a clear, visual understanding of who responds to which types of harm across CSAC’s network and beyond.
• Shared referral systems – developing/adapting tools that allow providers to refer across organizations safely, equitably, and without duplication.
• Data sharing agreements – building protocols that enable collaboration while safeguarding individual and community rights.
• Shared calendar – coordinating events and activities to maximize visibility, coverage, and trust across neighborhoods.

Workgroup Members

The Culturally Responsive Prevention Methodology workgroup aims to ensure all prevention services and strategies are trauma-informed and grounded in the lived experiences of Chicago’s diverse communities.

Priority Efforts:

• Equity language bank – creating a glossary to unify communication and align funders, providers, and communities.
• Community-centered design – embedding community wisdom and lived experience into prevention strategies.
• Implementation support – providing staff and organizations with the training, tools, and structures needed to apply culturally responsive practices daily.
• Provider self-reflection – fostering ongoing personal and organizational reflection to surface bias, privilege, and growth areas.

Workgroup Members