Communities That Care

Communities That Care

Communities That Care (CTC) is a program of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) in the office of the United States Government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). CTC is a coalition-based prevention operating system that uses a public health approach to prevent youth problem behaviors such as violence, delinquency, school drop out and substance abuse. Using strategic consultation, training, and research-based tools, CTC is designed to help community stakeholders and decision makers understand and apply information about risk and protective factors, and programs that are proven to make a difference in promoting healthy youth development, in order to most effectively address the specific issues facing their community’s youth.

Developed by Drs. J. David Hawkins and Richard Catalano at the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group (SDRG), CTC’s principal strategy, the Social Development Strategy (right), focuses on strengthening protective factors that can buffer young people from problem behaviors and promote positive youth development.

CTC is grounded in rigorous research from social work, public health, psychology, education, medicine, criminology, and organizational development. It engages all community members who have a stake in healthy futures for young people and sets priorities for action based on community challenges and strengths. Clear, measurable outcomes are tracked over time to show progress and ensure accountability.

Read more about Communities That Care:  References

Famous quotes containing the words communities and/or care:

    Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
    Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

    You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?
    Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)