Components of Strong Communities

1. Components of Strong Communities Community mobilization by staff outreach workers Strong Families Universal assistance to families of young children Generally provided with existing human resources (unpaid volunteer service and donated professional time) In existing community facilities (homes, libraries, churches, fire stations, schools, parks, etc.)

2. Building a Sense of Community • Strong Communities was designed to promote normative change in perceptions, beliefs, and behavior • Caring • Attentiveness • Neighborliness  • Inclusion • Universality of access to family support • Mutuality of respect and caring

3. Building a Sense of Efficacy • Optimism • The belief, individually and collectively, that action on behalf of families will be effective, because • the community is a welcoming and supportive place • positive things do happen for families in the community  • Action • The belief, individually, and collectively, that the possibility of effective action on behalf of families should be translated into practical activity (moral norm) • The belief that such practical activity will occur; it is the thing to do, a norm that pervades life in the community (social norm) 

4. The Initial Results • What we see [when we look at progress in the first 5 or 6 years of the Strong Communities initiative] is that… not only are community efforts to protect children effective, but that communities are enlivened and renewed through their collective efforts to protect their most precious and vulnerable resources, their children. Jeanette Lancaster Then dean, University of Virginia School of Nursing and editor, Family & Community Health

5. 5,000+ Volunteers ContributedTheir Time and Skills Recruitment Was Steady

6. Contributions of Volunteer Time Grew Steadily From January 2004 through June 2008, more than 60,000 hours of volunteer service were recorded

7. The Settings of Everyday LifeWere at the Heart of Strong Communities

8. Church EngagementExpanded Across Time

9. Businesses Also Expanded the Arrayof Activities in Which They Participated Businesses typically began involvement with a financial contribution

10. Voluntary Associations Servedas Portals to Community Resources

11. StrongFamilies A New Part of Everyday Life • About 3,000 families enrolled in 2006-07 • Many thousands more participated • At least 1,300 activities from mid-2006 to mid-2008 – a number that rapidly grew • Extrapolated estimate of 25,000 instances of participation • Activities occurred throughout the community • More than one-third each in churches and community centers • Schools, 9.0%; libraries, 7.7%; other, ~15%

12. From Community Actionto Safer Homes In surveys conducted in 2004 and 2007, parents in the Strong Communities service area reported less parental stress greater social support more frequent help from others greater sense of community and personal efficacy more frequent positive parental behavior more frequent use of household safety devices less frequent disengaged (inattentive) parenting less frequent neglect trend toward less frequent assaultive behavior across time and relative to matched communities

13. Fewer Founded Referrals to CPS2004-2007 • Officially substantiated cases of maltreatment among children aged 2 and under declined by 11% in the service area but increased by 85% in the comparison area • For children aged 4 and under, founded maltreatment decreased by 41% in the service area but increased by 49% in the comparison area • For children aged 9 and under, founded maltreatment decreased by 8% in the service area but increased by 30% in the comparison area

14. Fewer Injuries to Young Children2004-2007 • Emergency room visits and inpatient stays attributable to neglect declined by 68% among children of all ages in the service area and but by only 19% in the comparison area • All admissions for injuries resulting from maltreatment of children aged 2 and under declined by 23% in the service area but only 6% in the comparison area • All admissions for injuries resulting from maltreatment of children aged 4 and under in the service area declined by 38% in the service area but only 13% in the comparison area

15. Safety Across the Community • Significant increases in beliefs of parents, teachers, and especially children • that kids are safe at or in transit to school and • that parents are taken seriously by school personnel • Such beliefs became less common in families of children in matched comparison schools

16. Summary of Outcomes • Compelling evidence of community engagement, with transformative effects on key volunteers • Both breadth and depth of engagement across time were extraordinary • These changes in community life apparently translated into changes in parental perceptions and norms of behavior • These changes are corroborated by the archival findings • Remarkable convergence among studies (across methods) • Effects were strongest among families with young children • Evidence for enhanced safety was primarily in regard to neglect • Some evidence for spillover to older elementary-school-age children

17. Building a Culture of Caring Effects are especially noteworthy given the premature termination of the project ‘Bowling alone’ persists: e.g., indicators of parental engagement in community civic life (e.g., organizational membership) declined significantly between 2004 and 2007 But it is possible even in the current age of alienation to enlist communities in care for children — and to sustain and deepen that involvement across several years We did so in diverse communities, with the greatest success (probably contrary to the expectations of most people) in the most disadvantaged communities

18. IT CAN BE DONE! • Incorporated all sectors of the community • Engaged all ages, both genders, and multiple ethnicities • Relied on assets — both people and places already in the community • Engaged volunteers on the basis of altruism, not self-interest per se • Found new roles for churches

19. The Process of Change:Differences Across Communities • The service area can be relatively easily divided by wealth • East: Mauldin and Simpsonville • West: Fountain Inn; South Greenville (‘Pelzer’); Piedmont; Anderson School District 1; Conestee; Gantt • In both areas, neglect decreased, and positive parental behavior increased, according to parental surveys (across time and in relation to matched block groups) • But the level of activity on multiple objective measures was much greater in the West (mostly rural, disadvantaged area)

20. What Happened? • West: Changes in concrete, observable behavior; enabling safety for children • Increased social support, giving and receiving help, neighboring activities, use of household safety devices • Strategy: Community organizing and (literally) building safe communities • East: Recognition of new community norms for neighborliness, diligence of care, and respect for children’s physical integrity; actualizing safety for children • Modeling/educative effects • Strategy: Community education: public events; media

21. The Ultimate Lesson One person CAN make a difference • Outreach workers were linchpins of the effort • Working in a carefully planned, ethically coherent, and empirically grounded initiative  a social movement inclusive of people of diverse ethnicity, class, politics, and theology

22. The Answers Are in the Principles • LOGICAL relation of activity to prevention of child abuse and neglect, not ‘just’ to promotion of child or community well-being • Directed towards TRANSFORMATION of community norms and structures • Continually pushing the envelope; MORE is better! • Undertaken through activities to recruit, mobilize, and retain VOLUNTEERS • Directed toward the establishment or enhancement of RELATIONSHIPS among families or between families and community institutions

23. Directed toward enhancement of social and emotional SUPPORT for families of young children • Intended to increase the safety of children but largely directed toward PARENTS • Implemented in a manner to enhance parent leadership and community ENGAGEMENT • Designed to promote RECIPROCITY of help • Built on the ASSETS (leadership, networks, facilities, and culture) in and among primary community institutions

24. All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connects us as neighbors—in our own way each one of us is a giver and a receiver. Mr. Rogers Besides hosting his long-popular children’s series on public television, the late Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister.