The Centre for Research on Community Services is currently engaged in an ambitious pilot project, known as Communities That Care (CTC), in three Ontario communities: the francophone community in Hawkesbury, the urban Aboriginal community in Sudbury, and the multicultural community in the Bayshore area of Ottawa.
CTC is aimed at preventing serious adolescent problem behaviours and promoting positive youth development. Although adopted in more than 400communities in the United States and in 23 communities in the United Kingdom, CTC is virtually unknown in Canada.
The project was supported by grants from the Trillium Foundation of Ontario, the National Crime Prevention Centre, and the Ottawa ACADRE Centre, an organization that promotes Aboriginal health research.
CTC is based on the well-supported assumption that exposure to certain risk factors such as lack of discipline in the family and academic under-achievement in primary school increase the likelihood that a child will develop problem behaviours in later life. CTC is designed to prevent such behaviours, namely, substance abuse, delinquency, violence, dropping out of school, and teenage pregnancy.
The approach is implemented in three phases, which involve community mobilization, risk and resource assessment and the implementation of an action plan.
“Overall, the results of the approach to date have been very promising,” says Bob Flynn, CRCS co-director and a professor in the School of Psychology. “Ultimately, we hope that it proves sufficiently effective to warrant permanent adoption in the three Ontario communities and implementation in many other Canadian communities.”
(This article was adapted from material published in the Winter/Spring 2004 issue of the CRCS Newsletter.)
