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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:18 pm
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Results for truants
5 results foundAuthor: Makwana, Bea Title: Heretaunga Tiaki Tamariki Project: Outcome Evaluation Summary: In 2002 Heretaunga Tiaki Tamariki project (HTT), based in Hastings was one of 14 community youth programmes selected nationally to reduce youth offending. The programme received $510,000 over three years. HTT is a community youth programme aimed at reducing repeat offending of high-risk young people aged between 11 and 17 years, and is located in the Flaxmere Police Station. The entry criteria required clients to have already offended; or to have come to police attention; to have truancy issues; and/or care and protection issues; and may experience substance abuse problems. There was a maximum of 5 families per caseworker, with an anticipated throughput of 15-20 clients per year. This outcome evaluation considers the effectiveness of HTT over three years, 2003-2005. During this time 26 clients aged between 11 and 16 years were accepted onto the programme; all but two identified as Mäori. This evaluation found: • the success of the case plans was dependant on both the level of engagement by the client and the types of goals that were set. • social and family environments are complex and the provision of holistic interventions is difficult. • there is a need to clarify the client’s responsibility within case plans, particularly in relation to educational outcomes and the reduction of offending and seriousness of offending. • overtime interagency collaboration improved and HTT had more visibility in the community. • the programme was not able to demonstrate a reduction in offending and seriousness of offending. A strength of HTT was being located in a local police station and the consequent relationships that were established. The programme also had qualified staff and comprehensive filing and review systems. However, there was room for HTT to promote greater client responsibility, and awareness of HTT as a programme within the community. More generally, the evaluation has noted that both Police and Ministry of Justice can improve their ongoing monitoring and support of community youth programmes, particularly in the initial implementation and training stages. Details: Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Police, 2007. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 12, 2012 at: http://www.police.govt.nz/resources/2007/heretaunga-tiaki-tamariki/heretaunga-tiaki-tamariki-project-outcome-evaluation.pdf Year: 2007 Country: New Zealand URL: http://www.police.govt.nz/resources/2007/heretaunga-tiaki-tamariki/heretaunga-tiaki-tamariki-project-outcome-evaluation.pdf Shelf Number: 126304 Keywords: At-risk YouthCommunity ProgramsDelinquency PreventionFamiliesInterventionsJuvenile Offenders (New Zealand)RehabilitationTruants |
Author: Sapp, David Title: Counterproductive and Wasteful: Los Angeles' Daytime Curfew Pushes Students Away From School Summary: In 1995, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance establishing a daytime curfew for the city's youth. Promulgated as Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) 45.04, the law as currently written makes it unlawful, with limited exceptions, for any youth under the age of 18 to be in a public place during hours of the day when the youth's school is in session. Between 2005 and 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) issued more than 47,000 tickets under the ordinance. This report - based on a review of scientific research, interviews with and surveys of thousands of students, and data obtained from LAPD, LASPD, and other public agencies - argues that LAMC 45.04 is a fundamentally misguided policy. The curfew, which has increasingly been used as an enforcement tool to improve student attendance, in fact causes students to miss school. The curfew's economic burdens - which include hefty fines, missed days of school to attend court hearings, and lost earnings by parents who must accompany their children to court - fall most heavily on low-income communities and families that are least able to afford them. And the law has been applied in a manner that disproportionately affects black and Latino youth, who have been issued curfew citations under LAMC 45.04 in numbers that far exceed their percentage of the population - a fact which, among others, exposes the city and other agencies to legal liability. Moreover, substantial research shows that curfew laws are ineffective in achieving their stated purpose of reducing crime. LAMC 45.04 diverts resources away from addressing serious crime, forcing police to address student attendance matters which are properly addressed by schools and families, not the penal system. In response to a multi-year campaign by community organizations, LAPD and LASPD have agreed to modify their enforcement protocols for the daytime curfew to address some of the law's most deleterious consequences. These changes, reflected in recently issued guidance directives, represent meaningful steps forward. The law enforcement agencies with primary responsibility for enforcing the daytime curfew have demonstrated leadership by curtailing the unnecessary criminalization of youth and ensuring that their limited resources are instead focused on investigating and preventing crime. Nonetheless, serious problems remain. Among other things, the new enforcement protocols are internal guidelines and thus can be revised at any time; they leave substantial discretion to individual officers (for example officers maintain discretion to handcuff and cite students who are simply running late to school); and they do not apply to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which also has authority to cite students under the ordinance. The reality is that as long as LAMC 45.04 is on the books, the potential for youth to be caught up unnecessarily in the penal system remains and limited resources for addressing real crime will continue to be misallocated. As we discuss in these pages, the time has come to repeal this failed and counterproductive policy and to establish in its place a sensible and sustainable approach for ensuring that children stay in school. In place of the current approach, we encourage the City of Los Angeles to work with the many agencies within Los Angeles County with a stake in ensuring that our youth are engaged in school - school districts, county agencies such as the Department of Children and Family Services and the Probation Department, the juvenile courts, and law enforcement officials and prosecutors - to implement a research-based approach to engage students in school and to ensure that students are connected with appropriate resources if they begin to disconnect from the education system. This report concludes with recommendations for a comprehensive set of reforms drawing from evidence-based practices and research evaluating the effectiveness of various programs from around the country. Details: Los Angeles: ACLU of Southern California, 2012. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 20, 2015 at: http://www.publiccounsel.org/tools/assets/files/Counterproductive-and-Wasteful-Los-Angeles-daytime-curfew-report_FINAL.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.publiccounsel.org/tools/assets/files/Counterproductive-and-Wasteful-Los-Angeles-daytime-curfew-report_FINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 135723 Keywords: Juvenile CurfewsSchool AttendanceStudentsTruants |
Author: Heilbrunn, Joanna Zorn Title: The Costs and Benefits of Three Intensive Interventions with Colorado Truants Summary: In recent years, truancy has become a focus of policy discussions across the country. School districts, juvenile court, and police departments across the map are trying new methods to keep children in school1. There are several good reasons for this. At a minimum, a truant child is likely to be ill-prepared for skilled work, an increasingly serious problem given the shrinking demand for unskilled labor in the United States. One undereducated individual has a personal problem, but when urban areas are home to large numbers of residents who lack a high school diploma, the problem becomes both social and economic. On one hand, the business community has been vocal about the difficulty of finding an adequately trained workforce. On the other hand, United States residents who are unable to earn an adequate living look to various welfare programs for help, such as income assistance (TANF), Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Women, Infants and Children (WIC). These programs are funded by taxpayers, many of whom are reluctant contributors. Furthermore, research has consistently shown problems with school to be a risk factor for drug and alcohol use and for involvement with the juvenile justice system. Although it would be inaccurate and unfair to characterize all, or even most, truants as delinquents, it is quite accurate to recognize that a majority of criminals begin their careers of social deviance with truancy. Truancy is a red flag that may signal any of a number of problems in a child's home, ranging from poverty, to mental health, to physical abuse. And it warns of a child who is undaunted by breaking the social convention of school attendance, and who has time on his or her hands. Such a youth may be ripe for induction into criminal or self-destructive activity. Despite the new trend toward truancy reduction, and the general belief that truancy is a precursor to other more serious problems, little research has been done regarding the effectiveness of truancy reduction approaches, or their relative costs and benefits. Most published information to date tends to be more descriptive than analytical. This paper begins to fill that gap by reporting the costs and the estimated benefits of three truancy reduction programs in Colorado: The Adams County Truancy Reduction Project, the Denver Truancy Reduction Demonstration Project, and Pueblo's Project Respect. These three programs are of interest both for the diversity and the similarity of their approaches. All three treat truancy as a family problem, and rely on intensive case management intervention with the family. All try to be advocates for the families, and build upon the families' strengths, rather than take a punitive approach. All make frequent use of referrals to outside agencies, such as health clinics or drug and alcohol rehabilitation providers, and they make communication with these service providers part of their regular process. Yet they differ markedly in terms of their budget, scope, and where they fall in the larger picture of school, district, and court policy. The Adams County project is court-initiated. It is available to all the school districts in the county as an alternative to the regular court system; some of the districts choose to use the program, and some do not. The Denver project is run by the Community Assessment Center, and is an add-on to a much larger district-run truancy reduction effort. Both these interventions follow several levels of school and district-sponsored efforts, and come as a last resort before initiating court proceedings. The Pueblo project is wide-scale, with a large budget, and is active in every Title One school in Pueblo's urban school district. This project is school-based, and constitutes the universe of intervention efforts made prior to a court appearance. The Denver program focuses on middle school students, while the other programs are available to children of all grade levels. A thorough description of each of these programs may be found in Appendices A through C at the end of this report. This paper shows that the costs of each of the three truancy reduction projects, and each of the three court systems, pale in comparison to the enormous costs of high school failure and of juvenile delinquency. In light of the benefits of high school graduation, all the approaches to truancy reduction reviewed here likely pay for themselves many times over. Neither the court approach nor the case management models are shown to be demonstrably better than the other. It is most likely that the best model includes a court system that works in conjunction with social workers and school districts to provide a coherent and consistent approach to truancy in which children are not allowed to slip through the cracks. Details: Denver, CO: National Center for School Engagement, 2003. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 26, 2015 at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.509.453&rep=rep1&type=pdf Year: 2003 Country: United States URL: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.509.453&rep=rep1&type=pdf Shelf Number: 130048 Keywords: Delinquency PreventionFamily InterventionsSchool AttendanceStatus OffendersTruancyTruants |
Author: Finlay, Krystina A. Title: Final Evaluation Report: Gulfton Truancy Reduction Demonstration Project, Houston, TX Summary: This report details the evaluation outcomes of two components of the Gulfton Truancy Reduction Demonstration Project: police visits to the homes of truant students and case management for truants. The goals of this portion of the evaluation were to 1) assess the effectiveness of these two components in reducing absences and improving grades, 2) assess the effectiveness of case management in improving school engagement, 3) to a lesser extent examine the relationship between grades and attendance in general, and 4) compare the costs and benefits of case management. The majority of data for this report came from 2004-2005 school year records, student and parent surveys, and police records. The Gulfton area, and specifically the target high school, Lee, is primarily Hispanic. More than 70% of Gulfton students have limited English proficiency, compared with 27.6% in Houston Independent School District and 13.4% statewide. A large part of the community is made up of Mexican immigrants. In addition, Gulfton's median family income of $18,733 is nearly 30% below the city's median. In the 97-98 school year, 75% of Gulfton students were eligible for free/reduced lunch. Two main components of the truancy reduction effort in Houston were examined. The first, the practice of police visiting a truant students' home, was found to be effective in improving attendance, especially within the two weeks immediately following the visit. Long term effectiveness was not established, although it is possible that for some students this practice has a long term effect. Students who received these visits typically missed school for a variety of reasons. For instance, 40% percent of students reported being new to the school, and thus may have had difficulty with the enrollment process or simply getting into the routine necessary for daily attendance. Sixty-five percent said they were failing classes and 58% said they had difficulty understanding homework and assignments. In addition, 71% said they needed academic help. Most often, officers referred students to academic tutoring and did not issue tickets for truancy. Case management services were not effective for the majority of students. The current study found that case management was primarily targeted at students who were most at-risk. Truants receiving case management were compared to truants not receiving case management to explore the effectiveness of case management. Findings suggested that truants who did not receive case management were not struggling as much as those receiving services. In general, attendance, grades and school engagement were worse for truants receiving case management than for truants who were not given the services. Nevertheless, it was found that case management did not improve attendance nor did it improve grades or school engagement for the group as a whole. However, this is not to say that case management was ineffective for every single student. The effect of improving just one student's attendance and grades resulted in an estimated return of investment of over $4.00 for every $1.00 spent in providing case management. This fact is reason enough to continue the Houston Truancy Reduction case management efforts. Given that home visits from police are successful in improving short-term attendance, it is recommended that follow-up with the student occur within two weeks of the visit. Academic tutoring and other activities to increase school engagement should be provided immediately to ensure long term success. In general, case management may be more successful for truants if provided earlier in their school careers. Achievement levels were very low for the students involved in case management. Reaching these students before school failure is eminent would likely improve the outcomes of services. Details: Denver, CO: Colorado Foundation for Families and Children, 2006. 58p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 25, 2015 at: http://schoolengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/FinalEvaluationReportGulftonTruancyReductionDemonstrationProjectHoustonTX.pdf Year: 2006 Country: United States URL: http://schoolengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/FinalEvaluationReportGulftonTruancyReductionDemonstrationProjectHoustonTX.pdf Shelf Number: 136886 Keywords: At-Risk YouthSchool AttendanceStatus OffendersTruancyTruants |
Author: National Center for School Engagement Title: Lessons Learned from Four Truancy Demonstration Sites Summary: In 1999 and 2000 the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) began five-year funding of seven truancy demonstration programs. Each site was unique and offered different approaches to reduce truancy and promote school engagement. The National Center for School Engagement (NCSE) was contracted to evaluate these seven demonstration sites. Three sites were selected for in-depth evaluation in the final two years of their funding; Houston, Seattle and Jacksonville. The four communities developed and implemented a variety of approaches that were effective in improving school attendance. The major lesson learned is the power of community organizations when they join forces with schools to improve school attendance. A general lesson learned is that interventions based on locally designed strategies can improve school attendance by calling attention to truancy and making school attendance a priority. Programs in Contra Costa County, CA, and Hawaii/Waianae elementary schools showed the importance of intervening early with young children in preventing an ongoing truancy pattern. A lesson learned in Hawaii is that early intervention pays off when it begins with attention to excessive absences in kindergarten and first grade. Middle school program models were developed in Suffolk County, NY (Bellport Middle School) and Tacoma, WA (Mc Ilvaigh Middle School). They were effective in improving school attendance by integrating the intervention into the ongoing student services at the school. This integration at Bellport added a probation officer in the regular special education and child study team staff, which assisted in making the truancy program a regular part of the school’s helping culture. The truancy case manager in Tacoma joined the counseling staff of the middle school and worked closely with community organizations in the neighborhood. A lesson learned is that when outside agencies provide services in schools, they should become part of the existing student support services in order to have greater acceptance and impact Details: Denver, CO: Colorado Foundation for Family and Children, 2006. 10p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 25, 2015 at: http://schoolengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LessonsLearnedfromFourTruancyDemonstrationSites.pdf Year: 2006 Country: United States URL: http://schoolengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LessonsLearnedfromFourTruancyDemonstrationSites.pdf Shelf Number: 136887 Keywords: School Attendance School Dropouts Status Offenders Truancy Truants |