The primary work of the Capacity & Readiness Assessment is to ensure that capacity exists for implementation (Leeman et al., 2015), to mobilize the major drivers for implementation success, including the necessary competencies, organizational supports, networks, and leadership (Fixsen et al., 2015), to assess the overall readiness of the community being served (e.g. the selected vulnerable population) for the intervention, and to then prepare them for it based on their level of readiness.
Before attempting to institute a significant new intervention, it is important to mobilize and/or build a constituency specifically for the intervention (i.e., are there other people who need to be involved?) as well as the overall capacity for performing the intervention at the local site. Most of the structural capacity-related factors identified in the literature are built into collaborative and participatory design, development of local partnerships and interventions, and the use of deliberative processes and deliberative forums. These factors include collaborative and proactive design, engagement of the intended recipients of the intervention, and local contextual planning. The major new work for the intervention during the Capacity & Readiness Assessment stage is to ensure the presence of critical implementation drivers.
The key tasks for this stage include the following:
*Most important items indicated with an asterix
- Assess initial resource availability
- Assess feasibility of planned intervention given the above findings
- Adjust scale of planned intervention or implement in feasible stages
- Assess readiness for change at both the community partnership/agency level and the site for the planned intervention. Do members from different organizations collectively value the change enough to commit to its implementation (Weiner, 2009; Shea et al., 2014)?
- Commitment to change and action – includes political will, opportunity costs, individual and organizational commitment
- *Change efficacy refers to the level of confidence in ability to implement complex change shared by the organizational members. The level of change efficacy is dependent upon members’ perception of the following:
- *Task demands – What courses of action are necessary to do this intervention and can we do them? How much time is needed? How should activities be sequenced?
- *Resource availability – Do we have the human, financial, material, and informational resources necessary to implement the intervention with fidelity?
- *Situational factors – Can we implement this intervention effectively given the current situation we face?
