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Communities that Care

Project Manager - Pat Dunmore
Alexandra House
Alexandra Road
Swansea
SA1 5ED

T: 01792 648833
F: 01792 646429

Communities that Care was established with the help and financial support of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 1997 and is concerned with building safer communities where children and young people are valued. CtC aims to provide a structure which brings together the various partners, including families and communities, who have an effect on the way that children and young people develop. The CtC way of working is very much about targeting preventative work at the communities where problems are identified. CtC do not target individual young people but those areas where the risk of young people becoming involved in problem behaviours has been shown to be higher than the national average or a particular problem for a local community.

CtC works to reduce youth crime and antisocial behaviour, school failure, school age pregnancy and drug and alcohol abuse. CtC recommend that to tackle these problems something being described in academic circles as ‘Prevention Science’ is needed, to identify the risk and protective factors that predict problems and identify tested strategies and programmes that reduce risk and increase protection. CtC uses a self-completion questionnaire, delivered through schools, to 11-16 years in a local area to predict the problems. Promising Approaches is CtC’s comprehensive guide to what works. CtC have collected evidence about effective preventative programmes that improve outcomes for children and young people. They only include interventions that have been proven to address the risk factors they are trying to reduce. For example, there are thousands of different parenting programmes out there – CtC recommend the ones they know work.

The purpose of Communities that Care’s work in CWLWM is to adapt what CtC do to fit into the way the Communities First programme works in Wales. The way CtC work shares a lot of similarities with Communities First – both long term; looking to work with a community for 10-15 years; both work through partnerships involving local people and agencies - but because Communities First areas are different all over Wales and are finding different ways to address things, this means looking at a number of different methodologies, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach. As part of CWLWM, CtC are working on a long term basis with four Communities First partnerships (two in Caerphilly, one in Flintshire and one in Torfaen) to identify how to best support them in their work.

Communities that Care’s CWLWM work will result in:

• Long term prevention action plans for the four pilot Communities First areas developed by local residents and agencies.
• Greater understanding by Communities First Partnerships in particular, and all those involved in Communities First across Wales in general, on long term prevention issues and use of risk and protection factors in service planning.
• A guidebook for Communities First Partnerships on using the CtC Programme.
• A paper on engaging local communities in community led childcare and early years interventions programmes.

For further information about the Communities that Care click here to visit their website.