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Care To Act

 

Supporting a Culture of Caring at UCM

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As part of the UCM Office of Health Promotion, the Care To Act approach focuses on preventing harm and supporting the well-being and safety of everyone on campus, by discussing how we can each be caring and engaged community members.

Watch this short video about Care To Act, courtesy of the Digital Media Production program!

 

 

The Care To Act Approach

It's intersectional

Aeiral view of hte main UCM quad

Our areas of impact are:

  • Interpersonal violence
  • Substance misuse
  • Bias and discrimination
  • Mental health

Care To Act addresses these four areas because they affect the well-being and safety of everyone.

 

 

It's multi-dimensional

Studetns using laptops at a counter in the Union dining area

Step 1: the online overview course

The online engage program logo overview course explains our approach to harm prevention, and covers some of the reasons you might show caring for others. At the end, there's a list of many supportive resources on campus and in the community. This course is assigned to all new students at UCM.

To be sure everyone is starting from the same place of understanding, we ask that all group members take this short course before you host a conversation or presentation about Care To Act.

Take the Online Overview Course

 
Students at the UCM Lee's Summit campus listening

Step 2: the Care To Act Foundational conversation

Care To Act Foundational conversations are facilitated discussions that include scenarios and concepts for further reflection.

Foundational conversations cover ALL FOUR of our focus areas:

  • Interpersonal violence
  • Substance misuse
  • Bias and discrimination
  • Mental health

These conversations are either 45 minutes or 90 minutes; you choose the time frame that works best for you.

To maintain the fidelity of the program as designed, hosting a Foundational conversation is required before hosting a Deeper Dive conversation.

 
Students walking outside on a spring day

Step 3: a Deeper Dive conversation

After your class, student organization, or other group has hosted a Care To Act foundational conversation, please invite us back for a Deeper Dive conversation!

Deeper Dive conversations cover ONE of our four focus areas:

  • Interpersonal violence
  • Substance misuse
  • Bias and discrimination
  • Mental health

Deeper Dive conversations are 90 minutes long.

 

 

Get Involved!

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Host a Care To Act conversation or short presentation

Bring a Care To Act Foundational conversation or Deeper Dive conversation (and swag!) to your classroom, student org, or other group, or request a short presentation (10-20 minutes) about Care To Act for faculty or staff.

Request a Conversation or Short Presentation

 
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Become a Care To Act facilitator

We're always looking to expand our group of facilitators!

Successful Care To Act facilitators will have these skills:

  • The ability to facilitate effective conversations with a variety of constituents.
  • The ability to create a space for respectful, productive inquiry and discussion.
  • An awareness of your own biases and the ability to limit their impact on conversations.
  • A passion for wellness education and prevention.
  • Baseline knowledge in the four areas of focus addressed in the program - we'll help with that!
  • Ability to maintain the privacy of what is shared during facilitated conversations (within the structure of UCM's Title IX-related reporting requirements).

Facilitator registration is through Missouri Partners in Prevention.

Facilitator training takes just 3 hours, and includes access to the Care To Act Facilitator Guide, additional facilitation resources, and support from both Care To Act and Missouri Partners in Prevention staff. As the engage name is used statewide, the facilitator training uses this name as well.

Register to be a Facilitator

 

About Care To Act

Care To Act is UCM's presentation of the statewide engage violence prevention strategy, branded for our campus. This program is funded by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services/Office on Women's Health, and was created and developed by Missouri Partners in Prevention, based upon research from the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

August 15, 2022 UCM Daily Post

You may have seen the announcement in late March that our campus would be transitioning away from the Green Dot violence prevention strategy to a new approach, through our grant from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services/Section on Women's Health.

At UCM, the new program is called Care To Act, and (as Green Dot was) is housed in the Office of Health Promotion - and we are very excited about it!

The next step is about to begin: starting this week, and over the next 2-3 weeks, student workers will be stopping at locations around campus to distribute Care To Act info cards and window clings for offices. We ask that you please display the window cling in a student-facing area if possible, and at the same time remove Green Dot items from display.

A staff person will be coming on board in early September to help us move the program forward; for now, please reach out to me with any questions or ideas for partnerships. And watch the UCM Daily for information about how to be trained as a facilitator, how to request a facilitated conversation for your office, class, student org, or other campus group, and how we'll begin to share Care To Act more broadly with our students!

August 9, 2022 University News article

WARRENSBURG, MO – Building upon a culture that encourages individuals to make a positive difference in the lives of others, the University of Central Missouri this fall is introducing the Care To Act initiative.

Care To Act is a new multilevel approach that, in part, is designed to accomplish violence prevention objectives that were previously reached through the nationwide Green Dot program that was offered at UCM and at other colleges and universities. Since its adoption at UCM in 2015, this bystander intervention program, supported by a cooperative agreement between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, has featured educational programming designed to promote a community that is respectful and dedicated to preparing individuals who understand their roles in preventing violence.

Click here to read the full article!

March 24, 2022 UCM Daily Post

In early 2021 the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services/Section for Women’s Health (SWH) completed a thorough review of Missouri campuses’ implementation of the Green Dot violence prevention strategy, including years worth of feedback from each campus that was implementing the Green Dot strategy. At that time SWH decided that Green Dot was no longer the best fit for statewide prevention efforts on college campuses. 

SWH made the decision to create and implement their own multi-level violence prevention programming, specifically focusing on three projects: online pre-matriculation training, bystander intervention training, and prevention elements at the community level of the social-ecological model. This new program, utilizing the Collective Impact model, was developed by Missouri Partners in Prevention, with research and technical expertise provided by the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

As part of the UCM Office of Health Promotion, this expanded violence prevention strategy will engage students, faculty, and staff, as well as local and state level resources, to coordinate existing and new efforts to maximize the reduction of violence within a frame of citizenship, building community connection, and the concept of caring for others, and will address issues related to interpersonal violence, substance misuse, bias and discrimination, and mental health/suicidality.

Staff within the Office of Health Promotion (and other interested staff and faculty) will receive training in the new strategy this summer, and the new program will launch at UCM in the Fall of 2022. While the working name of this new program is Engage, the program name for our campus has yet to be decided. More information coming soon!

For more information email Suzy Latare, Manager of the Office of Health Promotion, at latare@ucmo.edu.

 

 

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