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

What Did Clubs Do? GPTTO and GITTO Strategies and Challenges 39
The level of detail requested on the tracking form
was a challenge for the staff. They were asked to provide
very specific information about school behaviors
and grades (e.g., exact grades and attendance); contact
with justice (e.g., police warnings, court dates)
and Club behaviors (e.g., frequency of attendance,
types of programs in which they participated). Not
surprisingly, staff were most likely to provide information
on the youth’s Club attendance and experiences
and least likely to have checked on whether the youth
had contact with the justice system. School information
was monitored for about half the target youth.
Whether the Club felt tracking in an area, such as
school or justice, was important and worth noting
largely depended on whether they had been able to
forge a relationship with those institutions in a way
that would allow them to collect the information.
Another challenge to accurate tracking and documenting
of youth was the high rate of staff turnover
at the Clubs. Only one intervention Club and two
prevention Clubs did not have staff turnover of key
people involved with GPTTO or GITTO during the
course of the evaluation (e.g., case manager, project
director, targeted outreach coordinator). At every
other Club, however, there was at least one incidence
of staff turnover. These high rates of staff turnover
led to lapses in tracking and incomplete information
for several reasons. Either no staff person was there
to gather the information or a new staff member
needed time to develop relationships not only with
the youth, but also with school and justice personnel.
As a result of staff turnover, as many as one half of
the staff members tracking youth had yet to receive
any formal training in program philosophy. Many of
these staff from the GPTTO Clubs regarded the
tracking forms as primarily of interest to and useful
for the evaluation, rather than understanding the relevance
of documentation for helping the staff work
with the youth. In part, their position on the tracking
forms may have stemmed from the fact that the start
of the evaluation and initiation of GPTTO at their
Clubs were simultaneous.
We do not know the cause of the high rates of turnover,
as it occurred among both part-time and full-time staff.
Two Clubs attributed it specifically to part-time college
students receiving better positions, and one Club experienced
turnover among their case managers before it
raised the pay rate from $7 to $8 an hour.
Eight Clubs that experienced turnover of key staff
(ranging from two to seven key staff per club in such
positions as case manager, project director and targeted
outreach coordinator) noted the same three
results of staff leaving: a dramatic effect on continuity
of project efforts, including building and maintaining
relationships with partner agencies and
consistency of programming; the need to re-establish
bonding and trust that had been built between youth
and staff; and the need for new training.
Although Club staff found the documentation component
time consuming and challenging, they also
found benefits—including increased knowledge
about the youth and how he or she was doing—
which they felt built a strong connection between
themselves and the youth. Club leadership at several
Clubs also reported on the benefits of keeping documentation
when they approached or were
approached to work with county or city programs
that needed to have paperwork and documentation
on the youth, as well as in the Clubs’ fundraising
efforts. One executive director said, “Because we had
the paperwork established, we were in a good position
to show the police department that we were a
credible agency that could effectively work with the
truancy reduction and court diversion program.”
Summary and Considerations
Gang Prevention through Targeted Outreach and
Gang Intervention through Targeted Outreach are,
in design, different from other Boys & Girls Club
programs in their comprehensiveness and scope.
Clubs that implement GPTTO or GITTO are
attempting to mobilize their communities, work with
outside agencies, recruit high-risk youth, integrate
youth into programs that meet the youth’s specific
interests and needs, and follow up with individuals in
different areas of their lives. As such, the process of
implementation takes time, energy, effort and
responsiveness on the part of other agencies. It also
takes a lot of training and indoctrination for programming
and case management implementation
and, as such, is aided by having continuity of staff
and buy-in from the top-level organizational staff.
The advantages of the initiatives outweigh the challenges.
Although Clubs had difficulty keeping up
with the paperwork and staff turnover made it difficult
to sustain continuity, most Clubs found value in