Requirements and helpful information for the report:

Use Headings! Structure as a report.

The programs you choose to select (and the areas they target) will be determined by your overall intervention strategy- this strategy will provide a rationale for those choices.The end goal for the coalition outlined in the case study is a reduction in youth crime. Programs that influence other areas of life (eg. those which encourage forming meaningful bonds and engaging with society) could be included, but they would need to have some evidence-based connection (ie. in the research literature) to the end goal of crime prevention (and you would need to make that connection clear in your essay).

What is a strategy -to give an example, Communities that Care is an intervention strategy, communities deliver selected intervention programs.

You are correct that there is absence of information regarding demographics of the population, along with other background factors. In an ideal situation, you would be gathering information about the community as an early part of the intervention strategy, in order to ensure that the choices made are appropriate for that specific community. For this case study however, you are going to have make some assumptions about key risk factors. There is some information in the case study that should help guide you to do this

One thing that the case study mentions is that “there has been an increase in offending by early onset serious repeat offenders”. You might like to take a look at the research literature on the key risk factors for these types of offenders. The case study also mentions an increase in offending “in particular for violent offences” so that’s another place you could start researching in order to identify key risk factors. These risk factors will help you decide on an appropriate intervention strategy, and suitable programs

It would be a good idea to back up your selection of risk factors to target with research. For example: One of the issues facing this community is youth violent offending. Research demonstrates that key risk factors for these behaviours include….(refs)

How many strategies to use? Your strategy will provide you with some guidance, and you also need to consider what would be practical. Remember that you need to briefly outline the program itself, argue why it should be used, and provide some evidence of effectiveness- so the word count might also play a part in how many programs you choose to include. As a guide you should use more then 1, 2-4 is good.

The general recommendation is that you should try to focus on using resources which are less than 10 years old. That said, provided you have some recent sources, it is okay to use older sources also. When discussing programs and the evidence that supports their effectiveness you are likely to find these sources are older

If using Communities that Care as the intervention strategy – you don’t need to discuss theories in detail, but you should draw on them as part of your rationale for why the strategy would be effective. You don’t need to go into depth about the theories, as markers know these.

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