Communities that Care projects demonstrate potential despite variations in implementation

Communities that Care (CtC) was introduced to Britain from the United States six years ago with funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It uses knowledge about risk and protective factors in children’s lives as a practical auditing tool to help plan prevention strategies that are tailored to local priorities.

Its long-term aims are to promote young people’s achievement in school and reduce problem behaviour such as crime, drug misuse and school-age pregnancy. To do this, it encourages local residents and professionals to make sure their plans include evidence-based programmes whose effectiveness has been demonstrated through research.

The evaluation, by researchers at Sheffield University, monitored the progress of the first three CtC programmes to be established in England and Wales. It also used surveys of local secondary school students to look for signs of progress in reducing the levels of different risk factors among young people and increases in the level of protective factors*. Their study found that:

• All three CtC demonstration programmes – described as ‘Northside’, ‘Westside’ and ‘Southside’ in the report – managed to involve a wide range of partners and local people in the programme. They also succeeded in using CtC’s auditing tools to identify the priority risk and protective factors that they would target in their action plans.
• A total of 33 different initiatives were planned, most of which focused on the parents of young children or on children of pre-school or primary school age. They included support schemes for young families, parenting education programmes, after-school clubs and social and thinking skills programmes in schools. However, only 15 had been implemented by the end of the three-year evaluation period.
• The ‘Southside’ area was broadly successful in delivering its plan, putting eight different programmes into action. There was evidence from the surveys that life for children in this area improved, with a decline in risk factors relating to families and the surrounding community. Achievement test results in local primary schools also improved. However, it was not possible to be certain that these improvements were due to the CtC programme.
• In ‘Westside’ and ‘Northside’, the local CtC plan was not implemented as fully as intended. In ‘Northside’, a succession of delays and problems meant that only three, limited initiatives were introduced, none of which lasted more than six months. The evaluators observed particular difficulties bringing local primary schools into the CtC programme.

The report suggests that one factor explaining the ‘Southside’ neighbourhood’s relative success in implementing its CtC plan was previous experience of partnership working between local people and professionals. Good communications between different agencies, both at senior management level and locally, were also important.

The researchers commend the emphasis placed by CtC on securing the continued support of ‘key leaders’, such as head teachers, directors of education and social services and council chief executives. The role of the co-ordinator employed by each project is also judged critical to their ability to make progress in delivering their action plans. In ‘Northside’, local agencies were unable to fill the co-ordinator’s post for more than a year at one stage.

Dr Alan France, a co-author of the report, said: “CtC aims to be a long-term community intervention programme, so it is, perhaps, unsurprising that the evaluation remained inconclusive about the impact these three demonstration projects had on levels of risk and protection among young people. However, there is evidence that – if implemented well – the CtC approach could make a long-term contribution to the development of services. Its strong commitment to evidence-based approaches in defining the problem, in identifying programmes and in implementation provides a real opportunity for future success.”

He added: “While there is still much to learn about measuring and reducing risk and implementing these types of programme, the results of this evaluation show that a national policy of increasing resources towards this form of evidence-based prevention, at both national and local level, could well pay long-term dividends.”

Barry Anderson, Chief Executive of Communities that Care UK, the central organisation that provides training and support for local CtC programmes, said: “We welcome this report which contains important lessons about planning and implementation. It will help the more than 30 CtC programmes that now exist in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as new projects starting in the coming months. CtC’s approach to prevention, based on risk and protective factors, has strongly influenced policy on children’s services since it was introduced to the UK. We are pleased that its contribution to the spread of evidence-based service planning has been recognised by this evaluation.”