Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-985-9488

Contact Email
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Sherry C. Wong
Director of Training and Development
Developmental Research and Programs

Across the country, in small towns, suburbs and urban centers, increases in high-risk behavior among adolescents have galvanized communities to critically examine their approach to promoting the healthy development of children and youth. Drs. J. David Hawkins and Richard F. Catalano and their colleagues at Developmental Research and Programs in Seattle have synthesized research from a variety of disciplines to create a community operating system called Communities That CareĻ (CTC). CTC provides communities with research-based tools to help promote the positive development of children and youth and prevent adolescent substance abuse, delinquency, teen pregnancy, school dropout and violence.

The Communities That Care operating system helps communities:

• mobilize and engage all members of the community who have a stake in healthy futures for children and youth
  
• establish a shared vision, a common language, and a collaborative planning structure to integrate diverse community efforts addressing youth and family issues
  
• establish priorities for action based on a data-based profile of community strengths and challenges
  
• define clear and measurable outcomes that can be tracked over time to show progress and ensure accountability
  
• identify gaps in the current response to priorities
  
• select programs and strategies that have demonstrated effectiveness to fill identified gaps
  
• evaluate progress toward desired outcomes

The Social Development Strategy (SDS) is the research framework that CTC uses to guide communities toward their vision of positive futures for young people. The SDS organizes the research on protective factors, those factors that are associated with resilience in the face of risk. The Social Development Strategy begins with the goal of healthy, positive behaviors for young people. In order to develop healthy behaviors, young people must be immersed in environments that consistently communicate healthy beliefs and clear standards for behavior. CTC helps engage all community members in a dialogue about core beliefs that are widely shared and supported by the community and about how those beliefs can be infused into all aspects of young people's lives. Research indicates that young people who have strong bonds to their families, schools, and communities are more invested in following the beliefs and standards held by these groups. These bonds are created by providing opportunities for young people to be involved in meaningful ways, skills for successful involvement, and recognition for their involvement. The CTC operating system helps communities infuse the Social Development Strategy into all areas of young peoples' lives.

CTC's use of data-based predictors-risk and protective factors-is grounded in the successful public health approach to prevention of heart and lung disease. Americans of all ages can list many of the risk factors for heart disease-smoking, high-fat diet, high blood pressure, obesity, family history.

Research has identified nineteen risk factors that are reliable predictors of adolescent substance abuse, delinquency, school dropout, teen pregnancy and violence. Risk factors are found in the community (e.g., availability of drugs, low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization); in the family (e.g., family management problems, family conflict); in schools (e.g., academic failure, lack of commitment to school); and in the individual and his/her peer group (e.g., early initiation of problem behaviors, friends who engage in problem behaviors). CTC provides validated tools for measuring levels of risk factors, selecting priority risk factors on which a strategic plan can be focused, and then tracking progress toward desired changes in those priority risk factors. Concentrating efforts on these early predictors allows communities to positively impact children's lives by reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors before young people become involved in problem behaviors.

As prevention science evolves and matures, new tools will become available to help communities more accurately and precisely profile, address and monitor the unique conditions impacting children and youth. DRP is currently developing new technologies to assist communities with the collection, analysis and management of risk and protective factor data.

Promising Approaches

Through extensive research reviews, DRP has identified programs and strategies in families, schools, and communities that have shown significant effects on reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors. However, the key to long-term community change is not just the implementation of effective approaches, but the careful selection of effective strategies that match the unique risk and protective factor profile of the individual community and fill identified gaps in the current resource network.

Installing the Operating System

With over ten years of experience helping communities across the country install the CTC operating system, DRP continues to enhance and refine its tools, based on emerging prevention science. CTC has been implemented in over 500 communities across the United States since its inception in 1990, and is currently being piloted in Great Britain, Wales and Scotland. We have selected the term "operating system" to describe Communities That Care because, just as Windows 98 tells your computer how to function and provides the platform on which different programs can operate, CTC is a way of organizing the way a community operates to promote the healthy development of young people. It provides a unifying framework that brings together a wide range of stakeholders, programs, and initiatives to address youth issues in a comprehensive, systemic way. Just like Windows 98 doesn't tell you which specific programs to use on your computer-that depends on your own needs and how your computer will be used-each community using CTC will have a different set of programs and activities in place, based on its unique profile.

Because many communities have a history of collaborative efforts and have already engaged in numerous planning efforts to address youth issues, CTC starts with and builds on existing collaborative teams and planning efforts, community structures, data profiles and programs and activities. Many communities have found that one of the greatest strengths of CTC is that it provides a unifying framework for integrating all of the activities in the community that are focusing on the healthy development of young people. One key leader describes it as "the merging of the parades". According to one CTC program coordinator in Michigan, CTC has "made our community into a big quilt: community members and agencies working with youth are the patches and the CTC Board is the quilter who stitches the patches together".

As communities increasingly recognize the importance of a collaborative, comprehensive, research-based approach to the positive development of young people, CTC offers a rigorous, scientific methodology translated into community-friendly tools to assist in achieving that vision.

Please direct inquiries to: Sherry C. Wong, Director of Training and Development, Developmental Research and Programs, 130 Nickerson St., Suite 107, Seattle, WA 98109.