Communities That Care
[2] Using strategic consultation, training, and research-based tools, CTC is designed to help community stakeholders and decision makers understand and apply information about risk and protective factors, and programs that are proven to make a difference in promoting healthy youth development, in order to most effectively address the specific issues facing their community's youth.
[5] CTC is grounded in rigorous research from social work, public health, psychology, education, medicine, criminology, and organizational development.
All children need opportunities to be actively involved with positive adults and peers, the skills to participate and succeed in social, school, and civic settings, and recognition for their efforts, improvements, and accomplishments.
High quality longitudinal studies have identified risk factors in neighborhoods and communities, families, schools, and peer groups, as well as in individuals themselves.
[9][10][11] These factors increase the probability of delinquency, violence, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, and other behavior problems in young people.
For example, the risk factor of “Poor Family Management” has been shown to predict five youth problem behaviors: substance abuse, delinquency, teen pregnancy, school drop-out, and violence.
The identification of risk and protective factors provides the foundation for advances in preventing adolescent health and behavior problems.
By 2004, 56 tested and effective programs were available in the United States that have been demonstrated to reduce involvement in problem behaviors and/or increase positive outcomes for youth.
These 56 effective programs and policies are summarized in CTC's Prevention Strategies Guide at https://www.communitiesthatcare.net/Prevention%20Strategies%20Guide/introduction.pdf Archived 2018-11-23 at the Wayback Machine.
Programs range from prenatal (for example, Olds, 1997[14]) and early childhood interventions (for example, Reid et al., 2001[15]), to community policies related to alcohol (e.g. Holder et al., 2000[16]), to school-based curricula that teach youth social and emotional skills that will help them navigate life (e.g. Botvin at al, 2003,[17] Eisen at al., 2002,[18] and Grossman et al., 1997[19]).
Key activities in this phase include recruiting key leaders to serve as champions of the effort, obtaining school district support to conduct a youth survey to provide epidemiological data on risk, protection, and youth behaviors, and hiring a coordinator to manage CTC activities.
This is the data collection phase, including a comprehensive community assessment of adolescent behaviors and current prevention services.
From this analysis, the work group recommends priority risk and protective factors for focused attention by the CTC Board.
It describes prevention programs that have been demonstrated in at least one high quality research trial to be effective in changing risk, protection, and problem behaviors.
The process of monitoring implementation progress and community level changes in risk, protection and youth outcomes is repeated every two years.
The CTC system is collaborative, proactive, science-based, and data driven, and provides structure, tools, training and technical assistance for coalitions.
The coalition will include a diverse group of stakeholders concerned with youth development (youth-serving agency staff, school representatives, health professionals, city leaders, law enforcement, United Way, other funding entities, neighborhood groups, business people, parents, media representatives, faith community members, youth, etc.)
By providing a setting and common language for all stakeholders to discuss prevention, the model ensures that all voices in the community are heard and respected.
This is a confidential, schoolwide survey for students appropriate for Grades 6-12, that measures a majority of the risk and protective factors identified to predict youth problem behaviors.
Coalition members review policies and programs that have been tested and proven effective in addressing their priority factors.
The CTC structure includes six training workshops and additional tools that help walk community members through each stage of the process.
Training manuals are composed of modules that provide comprehensive information, exercises, and guidelines for each stage of the process.
Successful CTC efforts include high-quality training and technical assistance from experienced and certified facilitators.
Materials include: A cornerstone of effective community-level prevention involves the implementation of appropriate responses to the priority needs identified during the assessment phase of the process.
In each year of the intervention, CTC communities enacted an average of 90% of the key features of the CTC prevention system, including developing a community board, prioritizing risk and protective factors, selecting tested and effective preventive interventions from the Communities That Care Prevention Strategies Guide, implementing selected implementation programs with fidelity, and periodically assessing risk and protective factors and child and adolescent well-being through surveys of students.
[37][40] The Prevention Research Center at Pennsylvania State University has been studying the process and impact of the statewide CTC system since its inception in the early 1990s.
Panel youth from CTC and control communities also reported similar levels of delinquency, alcohol use, and cigarette smoking at Grade 5 baseline.
Preventive effects on alcohol use and cigarette use were first observed in the spring of Grade 8, 2.67 years after intervention programs were implemented.
Longer follow-up measurements are needed to determine if CTC can significantly reduce community levels of delinquency and drug use as hypothesized.
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
