NCJ Number
193910
Date Published
September 1996
Length
165 pages
Annotation
This report examines the experiences of five local Children At Risk (CAR) demonstration programs, which followed a nationally designed model for a substance abuse prevention program for high-risk 11-15 year-olds and their families.
Abstract
The model for CAR is based on an integrated theory of drug use and delinquency that combines social control theory, strain theory, and social learning theory. The demonstration program tested the effectiveness of a strategy to improve youths' attachment to prosocial institutions and reduce their ties to deviant norms and groups; increase youths' opportunities for positive experiences and decrease their negative experiences; and improve youths' socialization by strengthening their families, their ties to prosocial peer groups, other positive role models, and school. Research on the CAR program consisted of a longitudinal impact evaluation with randomly assigned treatment and control groups and a cost-benefit analysis. This report is the final documentation report of the demonstration program. Information for the report was obtained from site visits, interviews, a review of reports by site monitors and site personnel, and other written materials. A separate documentation report on program continuation and institutionalization of CAR collaborative strategies was released at the end of 1996. The demonstration programs were sponsored by a lead agency that was either a citywide collaborative, a government agency, or a direct service provider. CAR programs used two strategies to change the way services were designed and delivered: services integration, which involved collaboration or coordination of services across traditional agency boundaries; and vertical integration, which involved communication between hierarchical levels of interagency groups of front-line, middle-management, and executive staff around issues of policy, funding, or service delivery. The eight core CAR services were intensive case management, family services, education services, afterschool and summer activities, mentoring services, incentives, community policing/enhanced enforcement, and juvenile justice. Although the local programs shared many similar elements, they also differed in the ways in which they provided or emphasized some of these services. The four CAR programs that had completed the full 3-year demonstration continued to operate at their own expense. Site profiles are provided. A 10-item bibliography and appended documentation reports on CAR