Age range

Website: www.safepassages.org

Mission/Goals: Safe Passages makes and implements policies that help children in Oakland grow up safely and lead productive lives. It aligns community resources towards comprehensive strategies that support children and youth at critical times in their development (including: 1) if exposed to violent behavior at a very young age; 2) in middle school years when they may be more likely to get in trouble; and 3) if arrested as a teenager.) The program's affiliates include the City of Oakland, Alameda County, the Oakland Unified School District, the East Bay Community Foundation, Children's Hospital Oakland, and other community organizations.

Notes: Safe Passages is a multi-level initiative to reduce violence that focuses on both systems change and intervention in youths' lives at key stages of their development. Safe Passages is part of the Urban Health Initiative, a national youth violence reduction program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Safe Passages utilizes: 1) an early childhood strategy (to coordinate services for children ages 0-5 and their families who have been exposed to violence); 2) a middle school strategy (to create safe and supportive school environments by implementing a comprehensive delivery model at middle school sites); 3) a youth offender strategy titled Pathways to Change (to provide comprehensive services to decrease the incidents of repeat offenders in the local juvenile justice system); and 4) an afterschool strategy (which coordinates a team to develop partnerships between public agencies, community-based organizations, and other stakeholders to promote a city-wide network of afterschool programs and providers). The Second Step Violence Prevention
Curriculum is utilized in both the early childhood and middle school components of Safe Passages.

Source(s): urbanhealth.org/oakland.htm;
www.safepassages.org;
www.promisingpractices.net

Type of Evaluation: Experimental (random assignment of schools).

Note: The following evaluation summarizes the Second Step Violence Prevention Curriculum, which is one component of the Safe Passages program. The sample in this evaluation did not include Oakland schools. An additional outcomes monitoring report that includes Oakland schools is cited at the end of the summary.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of the Second Step Violence Prevention curriculum on student behavior.

Sample: There were a total of 418 intervention and 372 control students (n = 790). In the intervention group, 56.2% were male, 17.7% had prior behavioral problems, 23.1% were in special education, 86.4% lived in two-parent households, and 78.5% were
white. In the control group, 50.8% were male, 22.5% had prior behavioral problems, 30.3% were in special education, 83.6% lived in two-parent households, and 80.1% were white. Children were in 2nd and 3rd grades at 12 school sites.

Methodology: The evaluation was a randomized controlled trial involving six pairs of matched schools. Schools were matched based on their school district, the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-cost school lunches, and the proportion of minority students. After matching, schools in each pair were randomly assigned to control or treatment status. The Second Step program was implemented over a 16- to 20-week period. Twice during the intervention period, classrooms were observed to determine the quality and fidelity of program implementation. Outcome data were collected at three periods—before the start of the curriculum, two weeks following the conclusion of the program, and a follow-up at six months after completion of the program. In addition, 12 children from each study classroom (for a total of 588 students) were randomly selected to be part of an “intense observation” subsample. Children included in the observation subsample were observed on three occasions–for 60 minutes at baseline, for 60 minutes two weeks after program completion, and for 45 minutes six
months following program completion. These
children were observed in classroom,
cafeteria, and playground settings. Observers were blind to the treatment status of the
students.

Measurement Instruments: Teacher and
parent ratings, observational ratings.

Outcomes Examined: Student attitudes and behavior (including empathy, impulse control, anger management, social behavior)

Impact/Outcomes: No significant changes in student behaviors were reported from baseline to post-intervention periods for either the treatment or control groups. Immediately following the completion of the program: 1) there were no significant differences between the groups in observed classroom behavior; 2) there was a significant difference between groups in observed instances of negative physical behavior, with intervention rates decreasing from 2.20 to 1.56 episodes per child-observation hour and control rates increasing from 1.82 to 2.56 episodes per child-observation hour (however, given the fairly low rates of negative physical behavior among both groups, the effect size is relatively small.); 3) there were no significant differences between the groups in instances of negative verbal behavior; and 4) the rate of observed neutral or prosocial behavior increased by 17.1 more episodes per child-observation hour in the intervention group
than in the control group (again, given the high frequency of neutral or prosocial behavior in both groups at all times of measurement, the effect size of this change is fairly small). At the six-month follow-up, most of the significant differences between the groups had dissipated because of a decline in negative behavior in the control group.

Study:  Grossman, D. C., Neckerman, H. J., Koepsell, T. D., et al. (1997). Effectiveness of a violence prevention curriculum among children in elementary school, Journal of the American Medical Association, 277(20), 1605-1611.

Additional Evaluation 1: McMahon, S., Washburn, J., Felix, E., et al. (2000). Violence prevention: Program effects on urban preschool and kindergarten children. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 9, 271-281.

Additional Evaluation 2: Safe Passages Violence Prevention and Intervention Strategies Outcome Evaluation Report. (2004, June). Report presented at the Oakland Council Violence Prevention Hearing on May 10, 2004.

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