The Better Beginnings,Better Futures Project: Long‐term Parent,Family, and Community Outcomes of a Universal,Comprehensive, Community‐Based Prevention Approach for Primary School Children and their Families

Better Beginnings, Better Futures is a large‐scale, multi‐year, longitudinal research‐demonstration project designed to reduce children's problems, promote healthy child development, and enhance family and community environments in three economically disadvantaged communities in the province of Ontario, Canada. The initial intervention was implemented from 1993 to 1997 and focused on families with children from 4 to 8 years of age in their first 4 years of schooling (from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 2). This study examined the long‐term parent, family and community programme outcomes, 15 years after the start of the intervention, when the young people who had participated in the intervention as young children were 18 to 19 years of age. Comparison of intervention communities with matched non‐intervention communities showed a mix of outcomes. Although few significant differences between intervention and comparison communities were found with regard to parents' health and family outcomes, there was evidence that parents in the intervention communities were engaging in fewer risk behaviours, had lower levels of depression and had more community involvement than parents in the comparison communities. These results suggest that the intervention did have some positive long‐term effects on youths' parents and on their community environments. Results are discussed with respect to the importance of considering family and neighbourhood contexts in the development and evaluation of prevention programmes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spiritual Need Four: Opportunities to Be Served and to Share with Others

SUMMARY

Older adults have unique opportunities to be served and to share with others through groups and individual relationships and programs in religious congregations. Where programs and senior centers with public funding can provide only for physical, emotional, and social needs, religious congregations can be more wholistic and provide for the spiritual needs as well. This chapter offers further discussion of planning that will facilitate program development for the whole person.     

Intergroup reconciliation: Instrumental and socio-emotional processes and the needs-based model

We discuss the complexity of the concept of intergroup reconciliation, offer our definition of it, and identify instrumental and socio-emotional processes as distinct processes that facilitate reconciliation. We then present the needs-based model, according to which conflicts threaten victims’ sense of agency and perpetrators’ moral image, and social exchange interactions that restore victims’ and perpetrators’ impaired identities promote reconciliation. We review empirical evidence supporting the model and present extensions of it to (a) contexts of structural inequality, (b) “dual” conflicts, in which both parties transgress against each other, and (c) contexts in which the restoration of positive identities is external to the victim–perpetrator dyad (e.g., third-parties’ interventions). Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

Recensement des actions évaluées à destination des enfants exposés à la violence conjugale

Knowledge relating to actions for children exposed to marital violence appears still limited, whereas in France many efforts are deployed to develop them. This field of intervention is recent and the actors of child welfare and those of the associative sector wishing to set up specific actions to help the child, often encounter a lack of knowledge about this type of intervention. This article proposes to make known actions carried out in this context over Atlantic by the analysis of six programs and the results of their evaluation.     

CAMP: A community‐based approach to promoting safe sex behaviour in adolescence

The primary goal of this study was to describe the development and assessment of the Community Awareness Motivation Partnership (CAMP) Teen Theatre intervention. Based on the behavioural ecological model, CAMP addressed the role of contraceptive use in safe sex behaviour through a brief informative, entertaining, and culturally responsive dramatization programme. Adolescents (N = 1613) between the ages of 11 and 18 (M = 13.31, SD = 0.76) received the intervention, and 961 participants completed both pre‐ and post‐tests. The majority of participants were Latino (78.5%, n = 1039), many of whom were first generation immigrants. Results indicated that the intervention increased participants' reported intentions to delay sex and use contraceptives. The intervention produced short‐term changes in safe‐sex behavioural intentions and knowledge. Suggestions for producing long‐term changes were discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A cervical cancer prevention programme in rural Mexico: addressing women and their context

This article reports on the development and administration of a programme in seven rural villages in the Mexican state of Oaxaca to address high rates of cervical cancer. The rationale and strategy are described on which the programme is based. The development and administration of the programme (to 1513 women) is presented, aimed at enabling women to take better care of themselves. Various additional activities that were added in the course of the programme in order to facilitate contextual factors are also described, including community campaigning, programmes with men and the training of health personnel. Effectiveness was evaluated in terms of both process and impact indices, showing high rates of attendance at programme sessions by enrolled women, an increase in knowledge and a substantial increase in the number of preventive diagnostic tests. The final section reflects on both the achievements, and the scope and the limitations of the programme. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Debating drunk driving: The construction of causal explanations in television discussion programmes

The mass media are an important source of social understandings and representations. The growing genre of audience discussion programmes functions as a public forum for airing opinions on issues of social concern. The genre is structured so as to involve viewers, to validate ordinary experiences and to express opinion. Four programmes on drunk driving were analysed for the causal explanations they offer viewers. The causes, effects and causal interconnections used within each programme were analysed, and networks of the overall representations of drunk driving were constructed. These showed a broad consensus of causes and effects across programmes, but different explanations in terms of locus, stability and controllability. Programmes typically offered lists of important factors, rather than structured arguments, despite the debating framework. There was an emphasis on external, stable, controllable causes in the programmes.