How ready is your community to take action to increase the use of child safety seats?

Answers to that question can range from “We’ve never even thought about the lack of child safety seat use” to “We’re already running a number of successful programs that are fixing the problem.” Those are the two extremes on a “community readiness” spectrum. Where your tribal community falls on that spectrum is called your community’s readiness.

 

A Tip from the Team

To be successful, any effort toward making change within a community must begin with strategies that are appropriate to the community’s stage of readiness.

 

Before you develop any strategies for a child safety seat campaign, you need to consider your community’s readiness stage. Colorado State University’s Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research has written a very helpful guide called the Community Readiness Handbook. This module will give you a quick overview of that material, but please refer to that handbook for more detailed information.

Click on the next section to learn about the different stages of readiness and how they might affect your campaign.