Your jurisdiction has officially launched dosage probation. Congratulations!

Why Do This Step?

Over the last several years, your probation agency, staff, system stakeholders, and community provider partners have achieved a lot. From the readiness assessment to implementation, it has been a marathon of teamwork to establish your dosage probation policies and practices, align programming with the dosage probation model, and overcome hurdles and achieve victories, no matter how small or big. Following the dosage probation implementation model, your jurisdiction has poised itself for long-term success.

Your agency and jurisdiction have tirelessly navigated a lengthy implementation journey. But the journey doesn’t end here: it’s time to keep moving forward to ensure the dosage probation model’s success in your jurisdiction now and into the future. All too often, organizations adopt new practices without providing the follow-up support needed to achieve the desired outcomes. When this happens, change initiatives often fail—up to 90% of the time. Fortunately, intentional, consistent leadership and other organizational supports can help guarantee long-term success.

This section guides probation leadership in planning for post-implementation fidelity and sustainability of the dosage probation model.

Take Immediate Steps to Support Implementation

Providing immediate support to your probation staff and system stakeholders is essential as they adjust to their new expectations in implementing dosage probation. If you still need to, it is highly recommended that reinforcements be put in place as soon as possible following implementation.

Celebrate!

Dosage probation has been a significant change initiative in your jurisdiction that has engaged various staff members' and stakeholders' attention, time, industriousness, and dedication over the last several years. One of the most important tasks you can undertake upon implementation is recognizing and celebrating their collaboration, commitment, and contributions.

This can be done in countless ways, for example, by hosting a catered luncheon or happy hour, creating a commemorative plaque including the names of those who significantly contributed, sharing a celebratory cake, or sharing photos, videos, or quotes memorializing the implementation process. The effort will be well worth showing staff and stakeholders they are valued—boosting morale and renewing their motivation for the upcoming post-implementation work.

Repurpose the Dosage Probation Policy Team and Dosage Probation Workgroup 

With the implementation of dosage probation in your jurisdiction, the Dosage Probation Policy Team and Dosage Probation Workgroup will need to redefine their role and consider how they will operate moving forward.

Until now, the team’s and workgroup’s primary role has been active policymaking: answering critical policy questions and agreeing on and developing new dosage probation policies and procedures. While they may need to address unfinished business from the previous implementation phases, their attention should gravitate to implementation oversight and adjustment to ensure dosage probation achieves the intended results.

The following tasks should be carried out post-implementation:

• Implement a formal method to promptly gather and address implementation questions, concerns, and feedback from colleagues or peers
• Implement a formal process (e.g., collaborative case file reviews) to recognize the successes of people on probation and review those who were unsuccessful and why
• Review data collected on the dosage probation logic model’s outcomes, impacts, and other metrics of interest to identify the dosage probation results achieved and those not meeting expectations and why
• Adjust policies and practices as needed based on quantitative data and qualitative feedback
• Ensure written policies and procedures are updated accordingly (such as in the Dosage Probation Policy Team Decisions document and your agency’s dosage probation manuals)
• Ensure colleagues or peers are notified about and understand changes in policy and procedure
• Ensure a dosage probation onboarding process for newly hired stakeholders and probation staff (see “Plan for Sustainability,” below)

The approach to handling these tasks depends on the organizational structure, resources, and stakeholder dynamics in your agency and jurisdiction. For instance, the policy team and workgroup may share the responsibility of all these tasks or divide some of them up. Or probation leadership may take the lead on some tasks while the policy team and workgroup handle the others. Ongoing collaboration and information sharing between the policy team, workgroup, and probation leadership is critical regardless of how the work is distributed.

It is recommended that the policy team convene at least quarterly during the first year of implementation, and that the workgroup continues meeting monthly, reducing to bimonthly or quarterly as agreed. The policy team and workgroup may consider convening annually for maintenance purposes when all system stakeholders impacted by dosage probation are comfortable with their roles and expectations, policies and procedures are well-established, and the desired results are by and large achieved—typically a few or more years post-implementation.

The policy team may eventually be sunsetted in favor of ongoing oversight through another criminal justice body, such as a coordinating council. Similarly, the workgroup’s responsibilities may be given to others, such as those overseeing dosage probation’s continuous quality improvement (CQI).

To ensure a smooth transition to the policy team’s and workgroup's new roles, it is recommended that you schedule a joint meeting with the chairpersons. During the meeting, participants should establish a mutual understanding of the team's and group's (and probation leadership’s, if applicable) new responsibilities and plan relevant discussions to transition their members accordingly.

Oversee Continuing Logic Model Subcommittee Work

It is common for logic model subcommittees to have tasks to complete even after implementation. These can be tasks still pending in their action plans, or they may have identified new activities to be completed post-implementation. Setting clear expectations and keeping track of these efforts is crucial so they do not unintentionally slip through the cracks upon implementation—which can happen naturally as your agency and staff focus on adjusting to new standards.

Before your jurisdiction goes too far down the implementation path, you may consider meeting with the subcommittee chairpersons to review their action plans, identify outstanding activities, and agree on next steps. The next steps may involve reallocating staff time by reducing the number of subcommittee members, combining subcommittees, or establishing a new working group to complete the remaining activities.

Give Staff Time to Adjust

Your probation staff will need time to adjust to the new dosage probation standards, policies, and procedures. Now is a great time to reflect on what can be done to promote your agency’s culture of support and staff resiliency in a time of such significant change.

One strategy is prioritizing everyone’s time to focus on the most critical job duties supporting dosage probation, such as skill practice and coaching in evidence-based practices (EBP), other CQI processes, continuing subcommittee activities, and ongoing or newly established workgroup efforts. If you have not already, you may consider eliminating unrelated job duties, pausing or slowing the pace of nonessential or non-dosage probation activities for several months, or removing or combining meetings to free up time.

You may also create a strategy for promptly responding to staff concerns and questions and highlighting staff accomplishments or progress over implementation's first several months or more.

Continue Developing Your Dosage Probation CQI Manual

During the implementation planning phase, your agency made good progress in developing a written dosage probation CQI manual and implementing the necessary infrastructure to provide coaching and possibly other CQI activities. Now, with the implementation of dosage probation, expanding your agency's CQI policies is crucial to supporting the fidelity and success of the dosage probation model.

It is recommended that the person(s) responsible for developing your agency’s CQI policies and processes continue reviewing the Dosage Probation Continuous Quality Improvement and Coaching Guide (.pdf) to address the topics and questions that may still require attention in your dosage probation CQI manual.

Your agency may still need to establish or strengthen its policies and organizational structure to implement coaching and other CQI processes effectively. During this implementation phase, other CQI processes typically involve supporting supervisors and coaches in their ongoing learning and development, setting quantitative performance standards, and guiding official oversight to ensure compliance and progress with CQI at both the agency and staff levels. Additionally, it may involve creating formal feedback loops—processes for gathering and addressing feedback from all staff involved in applying the CQI policies and procedures.

Questions to Consider When Expanding Your Dosage Probation CQI Manual

Consider the following questions alongside the resources shared above to help you further develop your agency’s dosage probation CQI manual. You may need to address other issues specific to your probation agency.

• Who will oversee your agency’s compliance and progress with CQI, for example, one or more individuals at the executive or mid-management levels or a CQI committee? Who will oversee staff compliance and improvement if different from above? What are the responsibilities of each role or individual? What procedures will they follow to fulfill these responsibilities? For example, who will they report to, what will they report, and how often?
• What quantitative performance benchmarks will you add to your dosage probation CQI manual to demonstrate your agency’s fidelity to the dosage probation model? What outcomes or impacts might you include from your jurisdiction’s dosage probation logic model? Is there a logic model subcommittee or others overseeing dosage probation’s performance measurement and management with whom you can collaborate? What plans, policies, or processes should be put in place to accurately and consistently record, collect, store, process, report, and monitor the data?
• What support would supervisors and coaches (if different from supervisors) benefit from to feel confident in their dosage probation leadership and coaching skills? For example, would learning teams (communities of practice), peer observations and feedback, or book clubs be helpful? How about internal or external mentoring or training opportunities, such as coaching, leadership courses, or specialized training or boosters in EBP? Who will be responsible for overseeing this support?
• How will you regularly gather feedback about your agency's CQI policies from supervisors, coaches, supervision staff, and others as needed and adapt them accordingly? How will you ensure CQI progress is consistently acknowledged, celebrated, and reinforced among staff? Who will be responsible for these activities?

Plan for Sustainability

Proper organizational support and resources are critical for change initiatives to succeed in the long run. The National Implementation Research Network (NIRN), an organization that contributes to the best practices and science of implementation, sets forth three “implementation drivers.” These drivers—the functional supports needed for the long-term success of a new evidence-based program, practice, or intervention—are:

Together, they establish and maintain fidelity to the intervention and improve outcomes over the long term for all those who benefit from it.

NIRN’s Drivers Best Practices Assessment Version 2.7 (.pdf)(DBPA) assists organizations in evaluating their strengths and opportunities for sustaining new programs, practices, or interventions. The assessment contains instructions for completion, a scoring form, a scoring rubric, and an action plan template. You can use the DBPA to identify and prioritize sustainability change targets for your agency and develop a strategy for improving your agency’s infrastructure supporting dosage probation.

In addition, you may find the following information and resources helpful as you consider your agency’s sustainability activities.

Selecting Skilled Supervision Staff

You may refer to the Probation Agent Hiring–Promotion Interview Questions (.doc) and Probation Agent Entry-Level Job Description (.doc) for inspiration when developing or revising formal staff recruitment, hiring, and promotional processes. You may adapt these resources to meet your agency’s needs or create your own.

Supporting Staff Wellness

Experience with the dosage probation pilot sites points to the importance of paying careful attention to staff wellness and retention. As staff integrate dosage probation into daily practice, they can become much more engaged and invested in the people they work with. While supporting and embracing the positive strides people make is a welcomed adaptation, staff can experience an emotional toll—different than what they may be accustomed to—when people engage in harmful behavior or disengage altogether.

In planning for sustainability, your agency may benefit from creating or refreshing a plan for mitigating burnout, addressing secondary trauma, and fostering an environment of support, celebration, and recognition.

Educating, Engaging, and Communicating

Ongoing information sharing and activities that involve probation staff, community service providers, and other system actors (e.g., judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement officials, advocates of people harmed by crime, state leadership if applicable, and possibly others such as commissioners or public information officers) are essential to dosage probation’s long-term success. 

It is critical to establish policies and processes that ensure all stakeholders receive continuing education, engagement, and communication so that they support and adhere to your jurisdiction’s implementation and philosophy of dosage probation as time goes on.

While the terms “education,” “engagement,” and “communication” are often used interchangeably, they refer to different strategies for building and maintaining stakeholders’ commitment to policies and practices.

Click on the headings below to learn more about each strategy.

Together, these efforts will help prevent or reduce “drift”—deviation from the intended direction or course occurring over time without intentional fidelity practices—and facilitate onboarding new stakeholders as staff turnover and leadership changes occur.

Questions to Consider When Planning for Sustainability

Consider the following questions alongside the information and resources shared above to help you plan for the long-term success of dosage probation in your jurisdiction. You may need to address other issues specific to your jurisdiction or probation agency.

• What policies and practices will you implement to onboard new probation staff, including leadership? What education, engagement, and communication strategies will you use? How will you ensure any new EBP training curricula are incorporated into this process? If an outside entity delivered the curricula, can you contract with them or send staff to be trained as trainers?
• What policies and procedures will you implement to safeguard dosage probation as probation staff depart? Would implementation oversight, adjustment, CQI, or sustainability practices halt if one employee were to leave? If so, how will you prevent this from happening?
• Do you anticipate immediate staffing or leadership changes among stakeholders? How about at the state level, if applicable? What onboarding policies and practices will you implement to educate, engage, and communicate with stakeholders about dosage probation? How might the policy team or workgroup assist these efforts?
• How will you keep an open dialogue with stakeholders to avoid siloing the work? What strategies best suit your various stakeholders?
• How will you revisit the roles and responsibilities of the policy team and workgroup to ensure they adapt to the evolving needs of your jurisdiction and agency post-implementation?