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

36 Targeted Outreach
Table 12
Source of GPTTO and GITTO Youth
Prevention Clubs (n=21)
Source of Target Youth What was the lowest What was the highest What were the average
percent of percent of and median
target youth target youth percent of
referred to a Club? referred to a Club? target youth
referred to a Club?
Direct Outreach 0 83 35/39
Juvenile Justice (police, probation, courts) 0 16 3/0
School 0 89 18/8
Parents 0 82 27/27
Intervention Clubs (n=3)
Source of Target Youth What was the lowest What was the highest What were the average
percent of percent of and median
target youth target youth percent of
referred to a Club? referred to a Club? target youth
referred to a Club?
Direct Outreach 0 60 29/28
Justice (police, probation, courts) 2 58 24/11
School 7 35 22/23
Parents 6 26 15/12
resolution component into the basketball activity
instead of asking the youth to attend a separate conflict
resolution program.
In essence, to fully engage these youth, staff needed
to make sure that youth got involved in programming
that met their interests. Additionally, however,
the philosophy assumes that if Clubs cannot identify
youth’s needs and address them, gangs will fill those
gaps. If Club activities are not interesting and engaging,
the youth will not stay involved.
To ensure that staff met the needs of the youth and
addressed them through appealing, engaging activities,
staff had to complete a program plan for each
target youth brought into the Club. The program
plan helps the staff think about the youth’s interests
and needs, identify existing programs that are appropriate
for the youth or discover if there is a need to
create new programming. From the documentation
we received, we found that slightly more than half
the Clubs (54%) created a program plan and made
suggestions for youth to participate in combined
interest/needs-based programming over the course
of the evaluation year. Furthermore, subsequent documentation
that tracked youth’s participation in
combined interest/needs-based programming indicated
that just over one-quarter (28%) of tracked
youth continued to participate in interests/needsbased
programming four months after intake.
Our site visit interviews with staff, along with phone
conversations during the course of the evaluation,
confirmed that developing interest-based programs
that address the needs of youth at the same time is
very difficult for several reasons. A number of Clubs
had hired program staff after the training sessions had
taken place and therefore these staff were not trained
in the needs/interests-based programming component
of the model. Other Clubs used a rotating