2025 · Report · English

Communities That Care: Toolkit technical report.

Valdebenito, S., Baidawi, S., Rankin, S., Jiang, J., Smith, S., Lewis, J., & Shlonsky, A.

Valdebenito, S., Baidawi, S., Rankin, S., Jiang, J., Smith, S., Lewis, J., & Shlonsky, A. (2025). Communities That Care: Toolkit technical report. Youth Endowment Fund. youthendowmentfund.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Communities-that-Care-Technical-Report.pdf

Summary

Technical report for the Youth Endowment Fund's Toolkit, prepared with the National Children's Bureau, presenting a mixed-methods systematic review of Communities That Care. A multilevel meta-analysis pooled 13 publications (41 effect sizes) from four primary datasets, the US multisite randomised trial, the Pennsylvania and Chicago quasi-experiments and the Australian evaluation, on youth violence and offending. Areas using CTC showed a 7% lower risk of violence and offending than comparison areas (RR 0.93; 95% CI 0.84–1.02); the estimate is substantively meaningful but not statistically significant, and certainty is rated low because so few studies exist. There was no strong evidence that effects differed by country or baseline violence, only weak evidence of larger reductions for violent than for offending behaviour. A narrative review of 24 implementation papers identified adoption of a science-based prevention approach, prior experience with evidence-based programmes and evaluation, and an active coalition with community capacity and partnerships as the conditions under which CTC is most likely to succeed.