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

38 Targeted Outreach
Case management, including completing an intake
form when the youth starts and tracking the youth’s
monthly progress, is very different from the typical
Boys & Girls Club procedure. Although our earlier
work with Boys & Girls Clubs indicated that staff are
generally aware of and “watch out” for youth who
participate in their area’s activities, there is usually
no formal mechanism for keeping in touch with
youth outside their program area or outside the Club
(Gambone and Arbreton, 1997). The intention
behind “tracking” youth and their progress in
GPTTO and GITTO is to ensure that Club staff are
helping build youth strengths and meet the needs
they might otherwise turn to the gang lifestyle to fulfill.
Also, by paying attention to how the youth is
doing in other domains of his or her life (e.g., at
school, at home and, if necessary, in contact with the
justice system), the staff member tries to communicate
to the youth that a number of people care about
them and their activities. Finally, documentation of
youth’s progress is encouraged as an important indicator
of how well the initiatives are working for the
target youth.
Case Management in Prevention Clubs
The GPTTO prevention model suggests that case
management responsibilities be divided among staff
members, a procedure with multiple potential benefits.
First, case management and its paperwork are
time consuming, and dividing it among staff leaves
more time for staff to interact with youth and run
programs. Second, this system allows a youth to hook
up with a staff person with whom they might be most
likely to engage. For example, if the youth is interested
in art, the art director might be the most
appropriate person to track the youth, who is likely
spending the most time in the art room and developing
a strong relationship with staff there. Dividing up
the responsibilities for tracking may also potentially
keep the program running more smoothly in light of
the continual staff turnover that Clubs face. If one
person tracks all the GPTTO youth and builds relationships
with them, and that person leaves, many of
the target youth might also leave if they have not
bonded with other staff members.
Clubs divided the responsibilities for tracking in different
ways. About one-third of the prevention Clubs
used 2 to 3 staff members for case management, onethird
used 4 to 7 and one-third used 8 to 10. Five
Clubs reported that the best way to ensure the quality
of tracking, programming and documentation was
not only to divide the tracking responsibilities among
program staff, but to assign one person as the overall
program coordinator, who would be responsible for
overseeing and coordinating all paperwork and case
management. Thus, the staff working with the youth
in the program area where the youth spent time were
kept informed about the youth, but a central
“Targeted Outreach Coordinator” completed and
filed the paperwork. In five of the Clubs where this
structure was not utilized, the evaluation contact person
indicated that he or she thought additional funding
to support a Targeted Outreach Coordinator
would benefit the youth and the Club.
Case Management in Intervention Clubs
Case management took a different form in the intervention
Clubs, where youth are part of a separate
project with designated staff (in contrast to prevention
Clubs, where GPTTO responsibilities are just
one of many). One intervention Club utilized outreach
coordinators responsible for recruiting, case
managing and completing paperwork for approximately
10 to 30 youth each. Another intervention
Club relied on two program staff, one in each of two
program settings, to case manage and complete documentation
on approximately 8 to 10 youth each.
One intervention Club assigned a case manager to
complete the intake and tracking on the 35 youth
who were part of the evaluation; however, four
months into the evaluation, funding allocated specifically
for the position ended and, thereafter, no tracking
forms were completed (at that site, program
coordinators at each of eight locations were responsible
for documentation on 25 youth as part of
requirements for a city grant; however, these 200
youth were not necessarily in the P/PV evaluation).
Monthly Tracking Challenges
Case managers’ completion of monthly tracking
forms was not uniform for all youth and decreased
over the 12 months of the program. Four and eight
months after intake, Club staff submitted tracking
forms on about three-quarters (78% and 74%,
respectively) of the GPTTO youth and about half
(55% and 53%, respectively) of the GITTO youth
originally enrolled in the program. One year after
intake, staff completed tracking forms for 62 percent
of GPTTO and 46 percent of GITTO youth.