Implementation support staff include implementation specialists, trainers, researchers, and evaluators. The effectiveness of implementation staff depends significantly on their ability to engage individuals serving various roles and functions in community supervision agencies. For example, implementation support staff collaborate with agency executives on thorough assessments that identify where gaps exist between current practices and the evidence-based model of community supervision. Implementation support staff also are involved in the development of implementation plans and serve on implementation teams. In addition, implementation support staff are the eyes and ears of the implementation process. They are involved in all implementation activities to some degree, and their duties may include training, facilitating meetings, observing staff, administering assessments, and analyzing data.

Functional Competencies for Implementation Support Staff: Connection

Soliciting feedback. Implementation support staff must understand how organizations’ top priorities are playing out in practice. This involves active solicitation of feedback on fit, competencies, performance, barriers, alignment, culture, and needs at each level. Implementation staff should consider themselves as recursive or repetitive feedback loops,responsible for soliciting feedback and sharing it with those who need it most. Feedback includes fidelity measurements, organizational data, and anecdotal experiences that highlight how things are working, or failing, in practice. Implementation staff also can develop and disseminate various surveys, such as feedback surveys, engagement surveys, and culture surveys. 

Engaging internal and external resources. The goal of implementation support staff is to have a finger on the pulse of the organizations in which they work. Engaging staff at all levels of agencies involves understanding organizational priorities and how those priorities affect staff, supervisors and executives. Implementation staff also must understand what employees at various levels of organizations need to do their best work. For example, trainers preparing community supervision staff to provide EBPs must ask leadership what the intended impact, scope, and scale of programming and services should be. Implementation staff must engage supervisors to learn how they support EBPs in practice and listen to feedback from staff about what works in practice and what barriers impede adoption. 

Implementation is complex, multi-dimensional process. Few community supervision agencies have all or even most of the necessary skills and capacities in-house. It is wise, then to engage external resources for guidance and assistance. These resources include colleges and universities, trainers, consultants, other community supervision agencies, policy and advocacy organizations, and technical assistance providers.   

Functional Competencies for Implementation Support Staff: Assessment

Assessing implementation capacity and infrastructure. Community supervision agencies are frequently asked and often required to change practices. Because implementing new practices requires staff to change what they do, and sometimes how they understand their roles, implementation efforts can get off track when agencies are not intentional about understanding internal capacity and infrastructure to support change. The role of implementation support staff in understanding organizations’ capacity for change is of tremendous value in anticipating change and planning for it. Assessment tools such as the Dynamic Implementation Assessment by the Alliance for Community and Justice Innovation and the Hexagon Tool by the Active Implementation Research Network allow implementation staff to assess organizations’ implementation capacity and infrastructure, as well as their readiness for change.

Assessing technology, inputs, outputs, and outcomes. Implementation support staff should be knowledgeable about organizations’ technology, inputs, outputs, and outcomes. As used in this context, technology is not necessarily automated or digital. Rather, it refers to the standardized methods through which agencies transform inputs into outputs. Understanding the technology of community supervision is essential if the implementation of EBPs is to succeed. Inputs, outputs, and outcomes are the three core categories of measurement that describe organizations’ infrastructure and impact. Assessing these categories is not about measuring everything organizations do; it is about recognizing what has the highest impact and ensuring that those tasks or functions are properly and intentionally implemented for long-term sustainability.  

When organizations can articulate their most important inputs, they can assess the current allocation of resources and what is needed and necessary to affect outcomes. Inputs in community supervision include time and skills, persons on supervision, court/parole board orders and service/treatment resources. Outputs are measures that lead to desired outcomes, such as motivational interviewing interventions and cognitive-behavioral treatment programs. Finally, outcomes are long-term measures that determine if agency activities are creating benefit or change for persons on supervisions and their communities. Implementation staff must be clear on the highest impact inputs, outputs, and desired outcomes to be able to tailor their focus, service provision, and engagement. 

Functional Competencies for Implementation Support Staff: Planning

Conceptualizing implementation. Implementation support staff assist with developing comprehensive implementation plans. The planning process involves describing what agencies need to do to implement EBPs. Conceptualizing is the process where implementation support staff and implementation teams work with executives to use assessment information to formulate implementation strategies.

Implementation planning. Implementation support staff’s key tasks during the implementation planning process include: 

• Collaborating with executives and implementation teams to develop plans 

• Developing strategies to address organizational culture change 
• Providing for training – initial and boosters 
• Developing capacity for performance coaching and feedback 
• Building information infrastructure to support performance measurement and management

• Collecting and analyzing data to monitor performance 
• Developing feedback mechanisms and provide feedback 

Implementation staff should expect problems as agencies try new ways of working. Regular implementation monitoring will reveal the need to adjust implementation plans and strategies. One useful tool is the Plan Do Study Act process (PDSA). This is a process where implementation staff conduct small studies, testing out small components of plans to gauge their feasibility. Based on the results, additional PDSA cycles may be conducted to further refine practices or study other components in a process of continual organizational learning. 

Using the results from organizational assessments, implementation support staff create plans to address the organizational needs, barriers, and alignment challenges that are impeding the achievement of desired outcomes. Addressing organizational needs involves things such as staff selection and development plans, building organizational capacity, and supporting the elimination or deprioritization of strategies that have lower impact in meeting goals. 

Functional Competencies for Implementation Support Staff: Supervision

Monitoring fidelity. It is not enough to train and coach staff, or collect data, or ensure that organizations are meeting deadlines. Implementation support staff must look at how their efforts affect outcomes. The key concept here is implementation fidelity. Simply stated, fidelity is the degree to which the implementation of an innovation follows the prescriptions of the proven innovation. Fidelity assessment is essential to assessing organizational functioning. If practitioner behavior does not change, then outcomes will not change. Innovation outcomes cannot be interpreted without knowing the fidelity with which an innovation is being delivered. Poor outcomes may be the result of high fidelity use of an ineffective innovation, or may be the result of an effective innovation used poorly in practice. Fidelity assessment and feedback are important for reducing practitioner drift away from compliance with EBPs. 

Creating feedback loops. Implementation support staff must be willing to provide clear and direct feedback to individuals throughout all levels of organizations. Creating regular feedback loops that are top-down, bottom-up, and lateral is critical. Implementation staff must be knowledgeable about and experienced in using implementation science, fidelity measurement, recursive feedback loops, and alignment.