The effectiveness of Preventative Aftercare in producing essential child, family, and community outcomes
Format
Individual Presentation
Location
Savannah
Strand #1
Family & Community
Relevance
The proposal is on the effectiveness of a home-based interventions over six years on producing child, family, and community outcomes. This is very much aligned with the conference strand related to “Home”: Family and Community. The engagement through program services of youth and their families has been found to increase child resiliency through improved problem-solving skills, judgment and insight, interpersonal skills, adherence to recognized authority, and establishment of appropriate peer supports. Families were strengthened through enhanced family structure, increased parenting, and communication skills, and establishment of adequate supports. The community goals that were fostered through program completion included children and adolescents using community supports significantly more for leisure, recreation, and self-improvement, and demonstrating good citizenship. This included participation in school.
Brief Program Description
Out of home placements for children and adolescents commonly cause trauma that is associated with uncertainty, disrupted family relationships, separation from the supports of their social network, and their school. Preventative Aftercare has been found effective in preventing these traumatic events. This program could easily be even stronger by establishing more effective relationships with schools that participants attend.
Summary
Program: Preventative Aftercare provides home-based services to children at-risk for out of home placements, and their families across fourteen counties in Pennsylvania, and six counties in the state of Colorado. The program is best described as a flexible approach that incorporates cognitive behavioral strategies, and integrated family systems approaches. Most referred children and adolescents had either been adjudicated delinquent (55%) or dependent (40%). The presentation will include six years of replicated outcomes supporting effectiveness. This will include responses from teachers on changes they reported to have observed.
Methods: The sample included over 1,700 children and their families who completed Preventative Aftercare services from 2008-2015. Outcomes included ratings on an outcome measure that had been supported by tests of reliability and validity. Subscales included individual child, family, and community outcomes. Each evaluation year used a pretest to posttest and six month follow-up change score evaluation. The last two evaluation years included a control group (N=200) in a quasi-experimental evaluation.
Results: Each evaluation year found significant changes on all outcomes assessed from pretest to posttest, and at the six month follow-up (p
Implications: While caseworkers checked daily attendance, as well as periodic general progress of children in the program, simple ways of enhancing interaction between the program and schools could be easily implemented to be of further service to students and their families. In addition, Preventative Aftercare staff could easily strengthen the relationship with schools by providing educational, and interactive forums for students, as well as training for school personnel. These proposed enhancements will also be a part of the presentation, and applicability to other community service providers for students will also be addressed.
Evidence
The presentation itself will be on six years of replicated success of the Preventative Aftercare program on producing enhanced individual child, family, and community outcomes, as well as preventing out of home placements, and satisfactory school outcomes. The program services include use of evidence-based application of individual cognitive-behavioral interventions, and integrated family systems approaches.
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Pugh is the current chair of the Social Work Department at Edinboro University where he has also been an Associate Professor the past fourteen years. He has also been a social work faculty member at Youngstown State University, West Virginia University, and Louisiana State University. He earned a Bachelor’s degree, and MS in Ed at Youngstown State University (fear the penguin), and earned both an MSW, and Ph.D. in social work at the University of Maryland (fear the turtle). Dr. Pugh practiced social work in Maryland, Louisiana, and Ohio in juvenile justice, adult corrections, mental health, and substance-abuse. His research pursuits have been in program evaluation, and measurement for practice and evaluation.
Keyword Descriptors
evaluation, program effectiveness, comunity program, at-risk youth
Presentation Year
2016
Start Date
3-9-2016 9:45 AM
End Date
3-9-2016 11:00 AM
Recommended Citation
Pugh, David N., "The effectiveness of Preventative Aftercare in producing essential child, family, and community outcomes" (2016). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 95.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2016/2016/95
The effectiveness of Preventative Aftercare in producing essential child, family, and community outcomes
Savannah
Out of home placements for children and adolescents commonly cause trauma that is associated with uncertainty, disrupted family relationships, separation from the supports of their social network, and their school. Preventative Aftercare has been found effective in preventing these traumatic events. This program could easily be even stronger by establishing more effective relationships with schools that participants attend.
