Targeted Outreach - Governor's Office of Crime Control & Prevention ...

22 Targeted Outreach
Target youth reported that they felt safe at the Clubs.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is the most safe and 1
is the least safe), 86 percent of prevention youth
rated Club safety at 8 or higher. On average, they
rated the Club safety at 9.1. Intervention youth felt
slightly less safe at the Club: 70 percent rated Club
safety at 8 or higher, with an average rating of 8.4.
Both prevention and intervention youth rated the
Club safer than their school. On a scale of 1 to 10,
prevention youth rated the school 7.9 and the Club
9.1, on average. Intervention youth rated school
7.2 and the Club 8.4. One youth we interviewed
went to a particularly unsafe school. He told us
that he feels safe at the Club but not at school:
“I’ve seen people with weapons [in school], and
my cousin got shot in school.”
Are there Systematic Differences
Between the Level of Youth’s
Involvement at the Clubs and Their
Backgrounds or Club Experiences?
Although we noted that many youth (68% to 74%)
reported participating one year after recruitment,
the remaining youth did not. What factors contributed
to youth’s ongoing participation? To answer
this question, we looked at the association between
youth’s background characteristics (such as risk level
upon entry to the Club, as well as their age, gender
and ethnicity) and their involvement in the Club. We
also examined how referral sources related to participation
and whether the youth’s Club experiences
related to their level of involvement.
Youth Characteristics
Importantly, we found no significant differences in
youth’s race, gender or age as an indicator of their
participation in either prevention or intervention
Clubs. Gang risk factors, school grades and the number
of socially supportive adults at baseline also did
not relate to how often youth attend. Frequently, programs
for high-risk youth cannot keep the youth who
display the most at-risk characteristics. This is not
true of the GPTTO and GITTO initiatives. Youth’s
gang-risk score was not related to participation. The
Clubs that implemented these initiatives are not losing
the kids who most need the support and diversion.
Similarly, information obtained from the staff’s
monthly tracking forms revealed that the rate at
which youth terminate from the program is the same
regardless of the youth’s gender and age.
Referral Source
Although Clubs cannot choose the ethnicity or age
of youth who are at risk of gang involvement, they do
have some control over how the youth come into the
Club. Therefore, one question that seemed particularly
relevant to Club implementation of GPTTO and
GITTO is how the referral source related to youth’s
participation at the Club.
Using information from tracking forms, we examined
whether the youth referred by different agencies
(e.g., probation, schools, parents, direct
outreach) were systematically different in retention
rates, but found no evidence to this effect for either
prevention or intervention youth. Dropping out of
the program was not related to the particular referral
source. The Club and Intervention project staff’s special
attention to the individual youth and efforts at
tracking the youth’s progress inside the Clubs—making
sure they get hooked in to programs of interest
to them and that meet their needs—are likely strong
contributors to this finding (we discuss these aspects
more fully in Chapter V).
Positive Supports
Positive supports have a strong relationship to participation
for prevention youth. A sense of belonging,
socially supportive adults at the Club, participation in
challenging and interesting activities, adults who
know the youth well, and Club safety all are related to
prevention youth’s participation. Prevention youth
who feel a sense of belonging at the Club (r=.28,
p.0001) and report that the adults at the Club are
supportive (r=.16, p05), that the activities are interesting
(r=.23, p001), that the Club is safe (r=.22, p001),
and that adults at the Club knew them well (r=.12,
p.10) have more frequent participation than do those
who do not receive these supports at the Club.
For intervention youth, however, perception of the
program and its staff are not a factor in explaining
their program participation. Intervention youth are
equally likely to participate, regardless of whether
they feel a sense of belonging to the program, find
its activities interesting, feel the adults are supportive,
feel that the Club is safe or that project staff
know them well. 11 In fact, we were unable to detect