RESEARCH AND CONSULTING

Although there is widespread public recognition of the need for effective school-based violence prevention programs, the implementation of integrated, comprehensive, sustainable programs remains a challenge for most schools. There are many barriers to achieving integrated violence prevention programming in schools, and different barriers require different solutions.

The Sustainable Strategies for Safe Schools will conduct a province-wide (Ontario) consultation with 20 school communities to identify such barriers. In addition, a stages of change model is being evaluated as a framework to understand the progress of different schools in achieving sustainable violence prevention programming. This project will match strategies for teaching and learning about violence prevention to the particular stage of change in a school to increase the likelihood of positive, sustainable change. This overall aim of the project is to better understand and bridge the gap between having programs that we know work and having them implemented in an integrated and sustainable manner in every school in Ontario.

The project's goals include the following:

• Understand the barriers to integrated and sustainable violence prevention programming in schools;
• Develop a model to identify schools' stage of change;
•  Develop a resource to match strategies for learning and teaching about violence in relationships to a school's stage of change;
• Pilot and evaluate the resource.

The Trillium Foundation of Ontario has generously provided funding for the Violence Prevention Project to the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System of the Family Court Clinic (CCFJ).

The CCFJ will be collaborating with the CAMH Centre for Prevention Science, the Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children at the University of Western Ontario and four school boards, Limestone District School Board, Rainbow District School Board, Toronto District School Board and Thames Valley District School Board.

In the first year of the project, twenty-three schools from four different school boards across the province agreed to participate, including at least two secondary schools and three elementary schools in each of the four school districts.

In each school the Sustainable Strategies for Safe Schools team consulted with parents, staff, students and community partners to establish what the school has already done to prevent violence and promote healthy relationships amongst their students and what needs to be done.  The participants were then requested to establish priorities for action.

This project is co-directed by Peter Jaffe, Special Advisor on Violence Prevention at the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System and Claire Crooks, Associate Director of the CAMH Centre for Prevention Science. Consultants include Ray Hughes, CAMH Centre for Prevention Science, and Linda Crossley-Hauch, Thames Valley District School Board.

For further information please contact Lynn Watson, Coordinator of the Trillium Prevention Project by phone at 519-679-7250 X129 or email.