Community Coalition for Teens
Communities That Care
Youth Recognition flyer for community members
Project Overview
Communities That Care is a community-wide strategic planning and prevention system using an integrated approach to promote positive youth development and reduce teen substance use. FCAC and CCT are co-hosts of this initiative, and work with a wide cross-sector of the community, including youth-serving organizations, school districts, the police department, treatment providers, parents, youth, the faith community, human service providers, local governments and more. Contact: Kat
Current Activities
The Communities That Care Coalition has conducted an extensive needs assessment, and identified three primary areas of need in teen substance abuse prevention in Franklin County – Parent Education, Youth Recognition, and Community Laws and Norms Favorable to Teen Substance Use. Workgroups have been formed around each of these areas of need, and have developed and prioritized a set of strategies which they are working on implementing:
- The Parent Education Workgroup has selected the evidence-based curriculum Guiding Good Choices, which has been shown to improve family management and decrease teen substance use. The Workgroup (with support from grants form the Executive Office of Public Safety and the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts) is working with over half a dozen school districts and community organizations to implement this 5-week parent education curriculum for parents of teens ages 9-14. Parent participants have provided overwhelmingly positive feedback on the program.
- The Youth Recognition Workgroup has created flyers for parents, teachers and school staff, and community members on the importance of youth recognition and great and easy ways to recognize youth. Through a grant from the Massachusetts Woman’s Home Missionary Union, the workgroup has also offered mini-grants to a wide variety of community organizations for their youth recognition efforts.
- The Community Laws and Norms Workgroup, in partnership with the Hampshire-Franklin Narcotics-Gang Task Force, has created a Memorandum of Understanding between the majority Franklin County Towns, which allows for cooperation and consistency in the implementation of alcohol beverage sales compliance checks to ensure that liquor licensees and their employees adhere to state laws on sales to minors.
You can download a printable pdf file of the Highlights of the Communities That Care Community Action Plan
Future Plans
The Parent Education Workgroup would like to work with school-districts and community organizations to implement Staying Connected with Your Teen, a 5-week evidence-based parent education curriculum for parents of high-school age youth.
The Youth Recognition Workgroup will be awarding $5000 worth of mini-grants to local groups planning youth recognition activities and events. The workgroup is revising and distributing three different flyers on youth recognition, targeting parents, community members, and school personnel.
The Community Laws and Norms Workgroup intends to provide Responsible Alcohol Beverage Server Training to retailers and their employees, and to conduct "Shoulder Tap Surveys" – a community education campaign to ensure that adults do not buy alcohol for minors.
The Communities That Care Coalition, will evaluate progress toward our goals in these three areas of identified need, through the Community Coalition for Teen’s Regional Teen Health Survey. This data will be available in the fall of 2006.