NCJ Number
248420
Date Published
March 2013
Length
36 pages
Annotation
This booklet describes each of the current Safe Start Promising Approaches communities and outlines how these programs are integrating evidence-based or promising practices as well as other complementary interventions within their geographical, agency, and community contexts.
Abstract
Safe Start's mission is to broaden the knowledge of and promote community investment in evidence-based strategies for preventing and reducing the impact of children's exposure to violence. The move from knowledge building to knowledge transfer is done through: Research; Evaluation; Technical Assistance, Resource Development, and Dissemination of Information; and Evidence-Based Practice Implementation. In 2000, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and its Federal partners in the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services launched the Safe Start initiative to address the needs of children exposed to violence. The initiative seeks to prevent and reduce the negative consequences of children's exposure to violence, as well as to create conditions that enhance the well-being of all children and adolescents through preventive interventions. The initiative's approach acknowledges the need to raise the awareness of both the problem of childhood exposure to violence and its solutions. It recognizes that we need to learn more about the prevalence and consequences of exposure to violence, and it calls on communities to put in place a continuum of services that address prevention, early intervention, treatment, and crisis response. Fifteen Promising Approaches sites funded from 2005 to 2010 focused on implementing and measuring developmentally appropriate services for children exposed to violence within the context of the systems that serve them. A second cohort of 10 Safe Start Promising Approaches sites are receiving funding from 2010 through 2015 to provide evidence- or theory-based interventions to prevent and reduce the impact of children's exposure to violence in their homes and communities.
Date Published: March 1, 2013