NCJ Number
228294
Journal
Future of Children Volume: 19 Issue: 2 Dated: Fall 2009 Pages: 67-93
Date Published
2009
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This paper examines several different community prevention efforts, emphasizing the creation of environments that facilitate positive parenting, summarizing both the theory of change and the empirical evidence concerning its effectiveness.
Abstract
Child abuse prevention efforts have historically focused on developing and disseminating interventions that target individual parents. However, it is increasingly recognized that environmental forces can overwhelm even well-intended parents, that communities can support parents in their role, and that public expenditures might be most cost-beneficial if directed toward community strategies. The goal is to build communities which are capable of fostering positive child and youth development. This paper focuses on community-based efforts to prevent child maltreatment by examining the theoretical frameworks of the new approach. It explores five different community prevention efforts and summarizes the empirical evidence evaluating their effectiveness. Key lessons learned are then discussed. If the concept of community child abuse prevention is to move beyond the isolated examples that have been presented in this paper, additional conceptual and empirical work is needed for the idea to collect sufficient investments from public institutions, community-based stakeholders, and local residents. 1 table and 50 endnotes