E-Sites For Safe Schools

ABSTRACT

A substantial body of research indicates that positive school culture benchmarks are integrally tied to the success of school reform and change in general. Additionally, an emerging body of research suggests a similar role for school culture in effective implementation of school violence prevention and intervention efforts. However, little research is available that specifically focuses on the elements of school culture that promote the successful implementation of bullying intervention programs aimed at reducing the most prevalent form of school violence. Therefore, this case study attempted to identify the school culture characteristics that supported or interfered with implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program from the viewpoint of school staff key informants in a junior high school in its second year of program implementation. Data were collected primarily from open-ended, semi-structured interviews along with informal observations and analysis of school documents. Themes emerging from the interviews were examined in relation to the findings from the observations and documents. School culture characteristics that supported implementation included a sense of family, warmth, collaboration, and connections among staff and between staff and students, combined with a central focus on learning as the primary mission of the school. Identified barriers to implementation included the local community served by the district that was slow to change and accept differences. Outcomes suggest that, beyond ensuring fidelity of implementing the core components of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, examining the characteristics of a school's culture that promote or impede implementation efforts might further ensure its success and integration.     

The Role of Community in Facilitating Service Utilization

SUMMARY

Guided by an integrated theory of parent participation, this study examines the role community characteristics play in influencing a parent's decision to use voluntary child abuse prevention programs. Multiple regression techniques were used to determine if different community characteristics, such as neighborhood distress and the community's ratio of caregivers to those in need of care, predict service utilization levels in a widely available home visiting program. Our findings suggest that certain community characteristics are significant predictors of the extent to which families utilize voluntary family supports over and above the proportion of variance explained by personal characteristics and program experiences. Contrary to our initial assumptions, however, new parents living in the most disorganized communities received more home visits than program participants living in more organized communities. The article concludes with recommendations on how community capacity building might be used to improve participant retention.     

Community Elder-Care in Tasmania

SUMMARY

Adult caregivers (n = 184; M age = 43.9 years old) working at a non-profit, eldercare program at five geographically diverse sites located in the self-contained, island state of Tasmania, Australia, completed a set of self-report measures. Results across the five sites indicated that respondents experienced a relatively strong sense of self-efficacy toward making a difference in their local community. However, there were significant differences (controlling for social desirability) when comparing caregivers from rural northern (n = 45) with urban southern (n = 139) communities, with rural caregivers claiming stronger sense of common mission with others, reciprocal responsibility to help others, and caregiver satisfaction, plus lower disharmony with other members and caregiver stress in helping the elderly than urban caregivers. Implications suggest that community self-efficacy may be high among eldercare staff, but their sense of community and caregiving perceptions may reflect geographic differences, especially in Tasmania.     

Implementing and Evaluating School-Based Primary Prevention Programs and the Importance of Differential Effects on Outcomes

Abstract

In 2004, Second Step (Committee for Children, 2002), a violence prevention program, was implemented in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district for 1,416 K through second grade students. Both process and outcome measures were used to evaluate program impact and examine issues related to the implementation and evaluation of evidence-based practices. Process measures indicated a high level of implementation fidelity, while pre/post outcome testing on a 20% random sample of students demonstrated significant reductions in reactive aggression scores, t= 2.221, df= 238, p< 0.05, and evidence of declines in proactive aggression. Authors discuss challenges and opportunities related to implementing and evaluating evidence-based programming in Safe Schools/Health Students sites, particularly regarding strategies for the assessment of differential intervention effects to evaluate program outcomes.     

School Violence Interventions in the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative

Abstract

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative was designed to encourage collaboration among school districts and local community service providers in the provision of behavioral health prevention and early intervention efforts. These efforts would address the physical safety of students as well as provide mental health, violence prevention, and social skills services. One local SS/HS Initiative brought together community and school collaborators in an ambitious agenda that included 14 distinct programs that addressed the needs of over 110,000 students in a large school district. The purpose of the current paper is to report the results of the evaluation of two of the programs designed to reduce violent and disruptive behavior in schools. The programs include a school-based anger management program and a community-based, alternative-to-suspension program. Working in cooperation with program staff and the school district, quasi-experimental designs were used to measure change over time for students. The two studies demonstrate the application of multiple methodologies in evaluating the effectiveness of prevention and early intervention efforts with the aim of providing data to support program improvement and sustainability.     

Chapter 9: Partnerships Between Health Professionals and Self-Help Groups

SUMMARY

The study aimed to identify the meanings and mechanisms of partnership between health professionals and self-help group members. The three project stages involved in-depth individual interviews of professionals (n = 47) and of members (n = 49) using a semistructured interview guide; separate group interviews of professionals and members to rank themes which emerged in Phase I, and a joint professional/member workshop. A Partnership Framework was developed. The predominant partnership characteristics identified by professionals were egalitarian, flexible, decreased professional control, understanding and shared goals; and by members were trusting, reciprocal, shared goals, flexible and understanding. The five critical obstacles to partnerships, from professionals' standpoint were communication, attitudes, role ambiguity, the format health care system and ideological conflicts, and from self-help groups' perspectives were knowledge, the system, skills deficiency, attitudes and ideological conflicts. The foremost mechanisms for achieving partnership according to health professionals involved education, clearinghouses, and role and goal clarification; to self-help group members, they entailed trust building, communication building, and education. [Note: italics denote consensus by professionals and members.]     

A Community Service for a Rural High School

Abstract

This case study illustrates a preventive consultation using the ecological paradigm to guide entry, assessment, problem solving, and collaborative intervention design and implementation in a rural high school which initially had serious reservations about working with urban academicians. The ecological paradigm's emphasis on the identification of resources, on collaborative work with community members, and on developing tailored solutions based on the strengths of the setting are discussed. A four year follow-up describing the long-term outcome and commentary from a key setting member are included.     

Chapter 1

Abstract

In this paper, we review the result of research conducted in the context of a 13-year collaborative partnership between DePaul University and a community-based, self-run, residential substance abuse recovery program called Oxford House. This collaborative effort highlights several examples of the research and action activities fostering a positive alliance that benefited both the research team and the Oxford House community. It also proposed practical guidelines for developing effective action research collaboratives that may be helpful to others who desire to cultivate and maintain similar mutually beneficial partnerships; including such processes as the development of trust, respecting the personal experiences of the community members and group, commitment to serving the community, validating findings with organization members, and accountability.     

Doctoral Education in Clinical-Community Psychology

SUMMARY

This paper provides an overview of doctoral clinical-community psychology programs and highlights some possible future directions in training. Clinical-community doctoral programs were categorized as: (1) formally labeled clinical-community programs, (2) clinical programs with a formal community track, or (3) clinical programs with an informal community emphasis. Many graduates from these programs obtain a basic understanding and appreciation of community psychology through required or elective courses, and through contact with students and faculty involved in community research and action. Those students who focus their research and electives around community psychology obtain a thorough and in-depth training experience in community research and action. Changes precipitated by managed care will challenge current ways that psychological services are provided allowing for more community based, innovative, and preventive approaches for which community psychology training would be particularly useful. Greater flexibility in APA accreditation guidelines provide opportunities for greater flexibility within clinical-community programs. Doctoral programs in clinical-community psychology are positioned to lead the development of a public health and human service approach to doctoral training through the integration of community and clinical psychology.     

Characteristics of Homeless Women with Dependent Children

Abstract

Large community initiatives are a growing phenomenon both in the U.S. and worldwide. These initiatives address a wide variety of issues, including early childhood development, by integrating institutions such as schools, health agencies, and faith-based institutions that focus on separate but related aspects of community concern. A major challenge facing these initiatives is the competing demands of developing organizational capacity to promote effective programming while simultaneously delivering demonstrable results and accountability. Empowerment evaluation (Fetterman, Kaftarian, &; Wandersman, 1996) is an approach to evaluation and organizational capacity building that equips participants at all levels of an organization to pursue programming quality and results. This article describes and presents lessons learned from the development and implementation of a system of tools and processes, grounded in the principles of empowerment evaluation, designed to promote quality in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a statewide school readiness initiative. While these lessons are specifically applicable to community-based early childhood development initiatives, they are broadly applicable to initiatives fostering systems change through community development.     

Welcome baby programs

SUMMARY

Several successful prevention programs are recognized as exemplars of implementation. Complicated multidimensional interventions with different goals and directed at different target populations have been conducted with a high degree of fidelity using a common set of strategies. Future research priorities involve identifying the specific factors that promote implementation and determining what levels of implementation are necessary to achieve maximum program impact.     

Design and Implementation of Parent Programs for a Community-Wide Adolescent Alcohol Use Prevention Program

SUMMARY

Project Northland is a comprehensive community trial designed to evaluate programs for the primary prevention of alcohol-related problems during adolescence. It uses a community-wide model, that includes both demand and supply reduction techniques. The first phase of Project Northland (grades 6-8) was completed with the effective implementation of multiple, complementary programs including a multi-year social behavioral curriculum, intensive parental involvement components, peer leadership opportunities, and community-level changes through the formation of local task forces. This article describes the process used for developing and implementing the comprehensive parent interventions used during the first phase of the research, highlighting the elements that led to the successful implementation of the programs with very high participation rates by parents, their young adolescents, teachers, and community members.     

The School-Based Violence Prevention Planning Program

Abstract

Despite a growing research literature identifying evidence-based prevention strategies, schools often adopt programs lacking evidentiary support (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2002; Ringwalt et al., 2002). Further, when evidence-based programs are adopted they often suffer from poor implementation (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 2002). This gap between research and practice defines a need for efforts to further the dissemination and effective implementation of evidence-based prevention strategies. The School-Based Violence Prevention Planning Program (SBV3P) is designed to improve the dissemination of evidence-based prevention strategies by building the capacity of school personnel to identify and effectively implement violence prevention strategies that have substantial empirical support. In this program, prevention planning teams from schools create violence prevention plans by progressing through a structured planning framework emphasizing data-driven decision making and the use of empirically validated violence prevention strategies. To build capacity, participating teams are provided with training, technical assistance, and online resources. Here we present the SBV3P and review a pilot test of this program.     

Implementing a Violence Intervention for Inner-City Adolescents

SUMMARY

Violence is a growing public health problem that disproportionately affects African American adolescents. There is a pressing need for more attention to be directed to the development of theoretically-based, research-validated, culturally sensitive preventive interventions and programs. This article focuses on the steps involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of a culturally-specific program designed to reduce the prevalence of violent behaviors and related injuries and deaths among urban, African American teens. The project's success was heavily dependent upon the commitment and cooperation of the community organizations that participated in the field research. Although numerous unexpected challenges were encountered, the preliminary findings indicate that it is possible to effectively implement preventive interventions in urban communities with modest funding.     

Parenting education: Primary prevention in a rural community

SUMMARY

The present paper describes the educational background and current role of a community psychologist conducting tobacco control studies at a research institute affiliated with a university medical school. This includes how the author originally became interested in community psychology as an undergraduate, chose a graduate training program and postdoctoral fellowship, and how this training was instrumental in obtaining the current position.     

Successful Program Development Using Implementation Evaluation

SUMMARY

Four methods used to enhance implementation of a resiliency-based early childhood substance abuse and violence prevention initiative are described. Project staff drew up formal agreements with participating programs to ensure administrative support for the intervention, provided high quality training for program implemcnt-ers, used a participatory evaluation approach, and monitored implementation both directly and through practitioners' self-report. The contribution of each of these methods to fidelity of implementation is discussed, and implementation challenges are identified. The growth and success of the project demonstrates the utility of implementation evaluation data for ongoing program development and improvement.     

Effectiveness of a Cancer Education Program for Women Attending Rural Public Health Departments in North Carolina

SUMMARY

The Western North Carolina Cancer Awareness Program (CAP) was a four-year program, funded by the National Cancer Institute, to increase education and support services for the prevention and early detection of breast, cervical, and skin cancer among women receiving care in six rural county public health departments. Three health departments were selected as intervention units, and the remaining three health departments served as comparison units. Women age 20 and older were randomly selected in each health department. Women in the intervention group received a comprehensive health education program that included easy-to-read printed materials and telephone counseling dealing with breast, cervical, and skin cancer. Theoretical guidelines for development of the intervention program included the PRECEDE Model and the Health Belief Model. Overall, the results indicated that personalized education, which includes the combination of readable printed materials and telephone contact, can be effective in increasing some early detection behaviors for breast and skin cancer among women who attend public health departments. The value of telephone counseling as a comparatively inexpensive approach to individualizing health education has significant implications for the development of similar cancer education programs for underserved populations.     

Memories

SUMMARY

The Hawaiian Studies Program (HSP) integrates the learning of Hawaiian culture with more traditional secondary curriculum in science, social studies, and English. Students also participate in weekly community service-learning sessions. Fifty-five HSP students and 29 peers (who were not involved in the program), completed a survey measuring: students' connection to, pride in, and responsibility for their community; civic attitudes; and career knowledge and preparedness. HSP teachers, community members, and students were also interviewed about program outcomes. Compared to other peers, HSP students tended to report feeling more connected to their community and school and to agree that they had career-related skills. Participants believed that service-learning contributed to these outcomes by making connections between school and community life and by exposing students to a variety of careers.