Page 12 - Preventing Youth Violence

and evaluate policies and programmes for crime prevention. The knowledge products

focus on Parenting Education, Violence Interruption and Case Management, which are
three of the main pathways to violence prevention and for which evidence is provided

as to their efficacy. The knowledge products also treat with the mental health issues of
depression and substance abuse as well as pervasive social norms that are supportive of

violence. Over the three phases of the Programme, the CSJP constantly pursued new and
innovative ways to improve the impact of its services. The results of this pursuit can be seen

in the pioneering Parenting Education programme, which included home-based training
delivered over a six- month period by trainers mostly drawn from the same communities

as the parents. CSJP III pioneered the use of a case management approach to violence
prevention in which locally developed risk assessment instruments were normed and used.

The Violence Interruption programme saw the adoption and adaptation of a model from
outside the country - a model which brought structure and coherence to efforts which

had previously spanned years of implementation. Another major action under CSJP III was
the establishment of a Psychological Services Unit (PSU) in the Programme Execution Unit

(PEU) staffed with psychologists and social workers. The establishment of the PSU arose
from lessons learnt over the previous phases of the Programme: namely, the psychosocial

challenges of our clients must be addressed in order to achieve sustained behaviour
change. The papers on Depression and Substance Abuse came out of that process.

The writers are mostly Programme staff who, over the years, have worked closely with
each other in their respective fields. Early in the second phase of the Programme it was

recognized that the CSJP experience was fertile ground for research and documentation.
The PEU therefore facilitated research students to gather information on the Programme as

a whole or on specific services delivered by the Programme. The Programme is heartened
by the contribution of its own staff to the knowledge documentation and sharing process

as reflected in these products. We also recognize and appreciate the contribution of non-
staff writers.

Four central observations that the knowledge products highlight are: (i) the high level

of social dysfunction pervading vulnerable and volatile communities; (ii) the necessity
for a crime prevention programme to utilize community human resources; (iii) the urgent

need for a robust and sustained social norms campaign; and (iv) the urgent need for
an effective multi-agency collaboration arrangement. Feelings of hopelessness and

ii