Evaluation of Three Communities That Care Projects in the U.K.

• NCJ Number: 215725
• Journal: Security Journal Volume: 19 Issue: 1 Dated: 2006 Pages: 45-57
• Author(s): Iain Crow; Alan France; Sue Hacking
• Date Published: 2006
• Length: 13 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This study evaluated the first three Communities That Care (CTC) projects that were established in England and Wales to reduce the risk of juvenile delinquency.

Abstract

Two of the three CTC projects--Northside and Westside--experienced implementation failure, which resulted in little activity and was inconsistent with the CTC model. The Southside project, on the other hand, was implemented in accordance with the CTC model and outcomes findings indicated that the children served by this project experienced a reduction in several risk factors, such as rewards for prosocial behavior. Overall, the findings suggested that the CTC children fared better than non-CTC children in terms of community risk factors. CTC children fared as well as, and in some cases slightly worse than, non-CTC children in their school risk factors. Mixed findings were evident in terms of family and individual and peer risk factors for youth, indicating the need to conduct more long-term followup studies to test whether the positive benefits of the CTC intervention are more evident in the long-term. CTC is a long-term intervention designed to build safer neighborhoods by decreasing the risk of juvenile delinquency among youth in four key areas: school failure, school-age pregnancy, drug abuse, and youth crime. The evaluation assessed three main research questions: (1) was CTC successfully implemented; (2) did changes occur in the risk factors of children; and (3) what caused the changes in youth risk? The implementation research focused on observations of staff meetings, analysis of program documents, and interviews with key personnel. The outcome research involved pre- and post-surveys of children attending schools in the CTC area. A “before intervention” school survey was completed by 5,516 students while an “after intervention” survey was completed by 5,334 children. The surveys were identical and asked about personal and social circumstances, family factors, neighborhood characteristics, school experiences, drug use, activities, and delinquency. Surveys were scored and statistically analyzed. Tables, figure, footnotes, references