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Preventing Youth Violence:
Communities Take Action
Core Concepts
CORE CONCEPTS IN YOUTH VIOLENCE PREVENTION
PREVENTION: The creating of conditions, opportunities, and experiences that encourage and develop healthy people.
INITIATIVE: The overall violence prevention effort, including, but not limited to, conducting community needs assessment, convening and establishing a collaboration, planning and implementing a science-based program, evaluating the collaboration and intervention, and working to sustain the initiative.
COLLABORATION: The coming together of two or more groups, individuals, or organizations to address a community problem. Federally supported youth violence prevention collaborations should be guided by written agreements, policies, and procedures.
PROGRAM: A specific research-based intervention implemented initially as a pilot project and then, if evaluated and found effective, expanded (or made widely available) throughout the community.
Community Problems Need Community Solutions
Community-wide youth violence prevention efforts have been and continue to be supported - at least in part - by several Federal agencies as well as national and local foundations. This support is predication on a firm belief, supported by a growing body of research, that:
- Violence is a learned behavior and, as such, can be unlearned.
- Everybody can contribute to violence prevention; youth are part of the solution.
- Violence is a complex problem that requires a comprehensive, multifaceted response.
- Partnerships and collaboration are more effective than isolated individual efforts.
Moreover, "the more the whole community takes responsibility for the healthy development of children, youth, and families, the better the results are for youth" (Bernard S. Arons, M.D.).
Broad-based coalitions involving community stakeholders can build consensus around, and assume ownership of, both the problems and the solutions. Both SAMHSA/CMHS and its youth violence prevention grantees anticipate that their coalitions will be instrumental in remedying the isolation in which many providers of services to children and adolescents work, and will help establish a system of prevention, early intervention, and treatment services designed to facilitate healthy child and youth development. The measure of the success of these programs will be healthier, safer, and more resilient youth.
Prevention is More Cost Effective Than Treatment
Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General (2001) cites significant savings to taxpayers and victims from projects designed to reduce youth violence. For example, for every dollar spent, Multisystemic Therapy returns benefits of $13.45; Big Brothers Big Sisters of American returns $2.12; the Seattle Social Development Project returns $1.79; and the Prenatal and Infancy Home Visitation by Nurses program returns $1.54. On the other hand, boot camps, which have not been found to be effective programs, return $.26 for every dollar invested.
Interventions Should Use Effective Strategies
The Surgeon General's report identifies several prevention and intervention strategies that have been shown to be effective in addressing youth violence. These strategies fall into one of three categories:
- Primary prevention is designed to address all members of a target community (e.g., all teenagers) to prevent the onset of violence and related risks.
- Secondary prevention aims to reduce risk through early identification and intervention among a population with a higher than average risk (e.g., children of alcoholic parents). Without intervention, these youth are more likely than the general population of youth to engage in risky behaviors.
- Tertiary prevention manages a crisis or treats a problem. These interventions are for youth who have already demonstrated some antisocial or delinquent behavior (e.g., they have been suspended repeatedly from school or have engaged in fights at the community center).
Certain Factors Put Youth at Risk; Others Serve to Protect Them
After nearly three decades of research on violence, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, delinquency, and school leaving, many risk factors that make youth vulnerable to developing these problems have been identifies. Among the risk factors especially salient for violence are:
- Individual risk factors, such as favorable attitudes toward the behavior and early initiation of the behavior.
- School risk factors, such as early and persistent antisocial behavior, academic failure beginning in late elementary school, and lack of commitment to school.
- Family risk factors, such as family history of the problem behavior, family management problems, family conflict, and favorable parental attitudes toward and involvement in the problems behavior.
- Community risk factors, such as availability of drugs and/or firearms; community laws and norms favorable toward drug use, firearms, and crime; media portrayals of violence; transitions and mobility; low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization; and extreme economic deprivation.
But not all youth, even those who are surrounded by many risk factors, succumb to problem behavior. These youth are protected by factors - within themselves, in their homes, and in their communities - that provide a buffer against risks, including:
- Individual characteristics, such as gender, resilient temperament, outgoing personality, and intelligence.
- Healthy beliefs and clear standards.
- Bonding with family members, teachers, and other socially responsible adults.
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