The SafeFutures Program To Reduce Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Violence (SafeFutures) is a 5-year demonstration initiative supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). SafeFutures seeks to prevent and control youth crime and victimization through the creation of a continuum of care in communities. This continuum of care enables communities to respond to the needs of youth at critical stages in their development by providing them with appropriate prevention, intervention, and treatment services and imposing graduated sanctions. SafeFutures community-based program operations and evaluation activities began in late spring/summer 1996. Six local government grantees—Boston, MA; Contra Costa County, CA; Fort Belknap Indian Community, MT; Imperial County, CA; Seattle, WA; and St. Louis, MO—were selected to represent urban, rural, and American Indian communities that demonstrated some prior experience with and a continuing commitment to reducing crime and victimization through comprehensive community assessments, strategic planning, and interagency collaboration.

In response to OJJDP’s interest in determining the success of site-specific efforts, each community commissioned a local evaluation, and OJJDP funded a national cross-site evaluation performed by The Urban Institute (Rossman, Kopczynski, and Morley, 1999; Rossman et al., 1998). This Summary draws on information obtained through multiple visits to each SafeFutures community during the first 3 years of the initiative, followup discussions with selected participants to clarify specific aspects of program implementation, and analyses of secondary documents.

The SafeFutures initiative is the result of a concerted Federal effort to link research findings about risk and protective factors for youth with state-of-the-art knowledge about promising approaches to preventing and controlling juvenile delinquency. The initiative embraces many of the most important innovations being suggested by practitioners and researchers (see, for example, Connell, Aber, and Walker, 1995). SafeFutures seeks to help participating communities expand collaborative efforts directed at reducing juvenile delinquency and violence. The initiative calls for the creation of a continuum of care, that is, a multidisciplinary system capable of timely, effective, and appropriate responses to individual or family needs for prevention, intervention, treatment, or corrections services.

To a large extent, the SafeFutures initiative is a manifestation of OJJDP’s Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Wilson and Howell, 1993), which combines research findings about the etiology and development of delinquency with principles articulated by Hawkins and Catalano in 1992 on the concept of risk and protective factors. In a sense, SafeFutures makes the Comprehensive Strategy operational by pooling Federal and local funds from nine broad program areas, referred to as program components, to support the demonstration communities’ development or enhancement of their continuum of services for youth and to contribute to meeting the overall goals of the initiative. The nine components that constitute SafeFutures are (1) afterschool programs (Pathways to Success), (2) juvenile mentoring programs (JUMP), (3) family strengthening and support services, (4) mental health services for at-risk and adjudicated youth, (5) delinquency prevention programs, (6) comprehensive communitywide approaches to gang-free schools and communities, (7) community-based day treatment programs—Bethesda Day Treatment Center model, (8) continuum-of-care services for at-risk and delinquent girls, and (9) serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offender (SVCJO) programs (with an emphasis on enhancing graduated sanctions).

SafeFutures encourages community collaboratives to tailor prevention, intervention, treatment, and graduated sanctions strategies to local needs and capacities. As a result of the local autonomy and flexibility built into the initiative, the services provided by the six sites under the nine specific components vary considerably. Variation also results from different levels of emphasis on particular components and from differences in service configuration. In addition, the SafeFutures initiatives are evolving. Like other comprehensive community initiatives, these efforts involve a high degree of complexity, from building or expanding effective collaborations to developing and fine-tuning services to fill gaps and multidisciplinary delivery mechanisms. Service configurations, partnerships, and other aspects of systems reform are emerging over time, as local leaders and program managers identify new opportunities and/or successfully resolve existing difficulties.

A variety of lessons can be learned from the early implementation of the SafeFutures initiative. Some lessons are common to any complex demonstration, others are less frequently encountered and may result from SafeFutures’ emphasis on collaboration and the implementation of programs to address the nine components. This Summary groups key lessons learned into three categories reflecting three primary audiences: those responsible for creating or managing funded demonstration projects; those involved in community-based collaboratives; and those responsible for providing services to youth at high risk of delinquency, violence, and victimization and their families. Because it is not always easy to classify a given point and because points may overlap, some findings probably apply to more than one category.

Funded Demonstration Programs

• To implement complex, multifaceted initiatives, funders and demonstration sites should adopt an iterative and flexible approach to program development and implementation. Such flexibility, however, has limits for both sides involved in a demonstration program. Funders’ flexibility may be somewhat constrained by legislative restrictions regarding the use of funds or mandated program elements. The demonstration sites’ flexibility to modify program components is often constrained by the funders’ need to ensure program fidelity in replicating a particular model.

• Communities need access to ongoing training and technical assistance to ensure effective implementation of highly structured or particularly complex components and to adapt generic models to the local context. For example, in addition to providing sites with built-in resources for basic SafeFutures technical assistance, OJJDP encouraged sites to obtain additional technical assistance on mentoring through its National Mentoring Center. Funders also may need to encourage communities to access available technical assistance, as in years 3 and 4 of the SafeFutures demonstration when OJJDP strongly encouraged sites to use training and technical assistance to fully implement the Spergel Model for the gang-free schools and communities component. Further, funders must expand the range of technical assistance resources as necessary. The development of the Systems Improvement Training and Technical Assistance Program (SITTAP) exemplifies OJJDP’s recognition of the need to provide more focused training and technical assistance on the systems change objectives of SafeFutures.

• Small service providers generally need more and different types of technical assistance and training than large, well-established organizations. Small community-based organizations are often less familiar with aspects of program implementation such as accountability, recordkeeping, reporting, program evaluation, and other common requirements for demonstration programs.

• Demonstration sites need flexibility to exercise cultural sensitivity and competence in program implementation. Although several programs in each SafeFutures community were specifically tailored to the cultural context of a targeted population, staff and service providers encountered difficulties adapting some components, such as mentoring, to ensure their relevance to the cultural context.

• Communities and program staff appear reluctant to impose eligibility criteria in a way that will ensure that they serve youth at highest risk or in greatest need. Many staff seem to regard all youth residing in target areas as being at risk and fail to see a need to identify those at greater risk.

• Replication of programs that were successful in other communities (or under different circumstances within the local community) does not guarantee similarly positive results in a new setting. It may be difficult for demonstration sites to isolate and duplicate the features of a program that are specifically responsible for the program’s success.

• Program sustainability should be addressed well in advance of anticipated termination of Federal (or other external) support.

Community-Based Collaboratives

• The process of systems reform can be seen as a continuum with gradations and permutations. Bringing together actors from different institutional contexts who logically need to interact with one another but have not previously done so can be viewed as an early indication that systems reform is under way.

• Communities need a considerable amount of time, effort, and trust to develop viable collaborations, which are complex mechanisms. Collaborations involve organizations with different institutional climates and varying levels of autonomy, flexibility, and power; individuals with differing levels of experience and expertise; and diverse cultural contexts that give rise to different ways of defining issues and solutions. Collaborative relationships need to be nurtured and maintained over time. This is not easy to do and requires considerable time and effort.

• To be successful, collaborations need individuals in positions of authority to exert their leadership to secure resources and support.

• In collaborative ventures, the differing perspectives of staff from different systems need to be recognized and respected if partnerships are to succeed. To work as a team, partners should “learn each other’s language” and develop an understanding of the values and norms of their respective fields. Cross-training also helps promote teamwork.

• Turnover among elected officials and administrators of key partner agencies can have a negative impact on collaborative efforts.

• Implementation of services and activities in multiple components can take longer than either the local communities or the funders originally anticipate. The use of subcontracts or other agreements with agencies that are already operating similar programs (e.g., afterschool or mentoring programs) can facilitate relatively early implementation of programming. The downside of such agreements, however, may be the continuation of “business as usual,” rather than the careful consideration of whether reforms are necessary. In cases where staff have to be hired and new programs established, services to youth can be delayed by startup activities.

• By introducing a variety of accountability mechanisms over the course of the initiative, communities can help ensure that multiple service providers fulfill their obligations.

• Programs operating in partnership with other agencies can be discontinued for reasons unrelated to the initiative—even when the program is considered successful.

Service Provision

• Communities are willing and able to implement programming that is innovative in the local area. For most communities, however, implementing innovative programming has both beneficial and detrimental effects. Most new approaches offer the opportunity to fill a previously unmet need or gap in service but provide no formulaic approach to success for communities to follow. In most cases, service providers experience learning curves and have to find creative ways to redress unanticipated difficulties, many of which are logistical.

• Staff turnover in leadership and other key positions can seriously hinder program implementation and stability. Turnover affects program continuity and disrupts institutional memory. Staff may need to reestablish linkages and, in some cases, restart programs that lapsed during periods of staff change.

• Filling positions—especially positions involving specialized skills—can be a problem, particularly in rural areas that have a limited professional workforce.

• Recruiting mentors and other volunteers is particularly challenging in low-income areas. Transportation and poverty issues affect programs’ ability to attract and fully utilize volunteers. Recruiting mentors is also more challenging for programs that serve youth already involved in the juvenile justice system or youth who may be perceived as high risk by potential mentors.

• “Hidden” resource requirements can pose challenges to program implementation. Several programs encountered unanticipated costs associated with transportation and food—both of which are important elements of many programs that serve a low-income population.

• Communities may have difficulty getting families of at-risk youth to support services for their children or to participate in family-focused services. A number of factors contribute to this difficulty: parents may feel intimidated by the institutional settings or staff; parents may fear that participation might reveal their dysfunctional behaviors; and parents may face logistical challenges, including limited access to transportation.

• Programs need to be developmentally appropriate—in terms of both substance and setting. Programs seem to experience more difficulty attracting and retaining older teens than middle or elementary school-age children.

• It is more difficult—and takes longer—to see results of program efforts on youth who are beyond the at-risk stage, such as those already deeply involved in the juvenile justice system, gangs, or substance abuse. Prevention programs often are able to see changes in participants’ behavior and attitude in the short run. Intervention programs may see little or no real change after considerable lengths of time. The lack of measurable program outcomes in such cases makes it difficult for administrators and funders to determine whether intervention programs are working and should continue receiving support or whether modifications or alternative programs are needed.

Comprehensive Responses to Youth At Risk: Interim Findings From the SafeFutures Initiative

OJJDP Summary • November 2000