Prevention is the mayor’s job: the leadership role of local government in positive youth development

Introduction: local responsibility for the next generation

The future of a society is rooted in the wellbeing of its children and young people. Securing their positive development is not a peripheral task but a central obligation, and nowhere more so than at the local level. For the person at the head of a municipality – the mayor, the council leader, the chair of the executive board, whichever office a country’s system gives the executive lead – this creates a particular responsibility. Prevention and the healthy development of young people are, in the plainest sense, a matter for the top.

Internationally recognised concepts such as positive youth development, and implementation strategies built on them such as Communities That Care (CTC), offer scientifically grounded and practice-tested frameworks for meeting that responsibility. They turn attention away from deficits alone and towards the systematic strengthening of protective factors, skills and supportive environments.

This article draws on the research on positive youth development and CTC (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996; Catalano et al., 2019; Kuklinski et al., 2021) and on what is known about local government and civic engagement in Europe. It examines the central role of the head of a local authority in implementing comprehensive prevention strategies. How can local leadership shape prevention effectively, and what part do the elected council, the administration and civil society play?

Positive youth development and the Social Development Model as a compass

To fill the leadership role in prevention effectively, a leader needs a clear understanding of how positive development comes about. Positive youth development offers a valuable frame of reference. It aims not merely to protect young people from risks but to promote their development actively. The focus is on building competence (social, emotional, cognitive), strengthening confidence and a positive identity, fostering strong connections to family, school and community, anchoring prosocial values and character, and supporting a positive contribution to society and to wellbeing (Lerner, 2000; Fernandes et al., 2021).

The Social Development Model offers a plausible explanation of the underlying mechanisms (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996, 2002). It holds that young people learn patterns of behaviour, prosocial and problematic alike, in their social environments: family, school, peer group and community. Four factors are decisive for that learning:

1. Opportunities: are there real chances for meaningful involvement and interaction?
2. Skills: do young people have the social and emotional competence to use those chances?
3. Recognition: do they receive positive feedback and reinforcement for their involvement and prosocial behaviour?
4. Bonding: do strong social bonds to positive adults and institutions grow on this basis?

When these processes go well, young people develop a bond to prosocial norms and values, which in turn contributes to healthy behaviour and positive development. If instead the environment offers opportunities for problem behaviour, and the corresponding skills are learned and recognised, bonds form to problematic groups and norms. The model thus makes clear that prevention has to work on all four factors to promote positive development. For those who carry responsibility locally, it supplies the reason why a comprehensive approach aimed at shaping supportive environments is necessary.

The municipality

The municipality – a town, a rural district, a county, a city borough – is the natural place where the processes of the Social Development Model unfold and where comprehensive prevention strategies such as CTC have to be anchored. It is the immediate living space of young people, and it holds the decisive structures and resources. Across Europe the principle is the same even where the constitutional detail differs. The European Charter of Local Self-Government, ratified across the member states of the Council of Europe, defines local self-government as “the right and the ability of local authorities, within the limits of the law, to regulate and manage a substantial share of public affairs under their own responsibility and in the interests of the local population”, and adds that public responsibilities should generally be exercised by the authorities closest to the citizen (Council of Europe, 1985, Articles 3 and 4).

The exact division of tasks varies from country to country, but the areas that matter for positive youth development sit wholly or largely with local government almost everywhere:

• the provision and running of early-years settings and schools, or at least of the buildings, the transport and the wider school environment;
• the statutory duty to support young people and families and to protect them from harm, exercised through children’s and family services;
• open youth work, sports facilities, cultural institutions and libraries;
• a safe living environment, including community safety and, in many countries, a municipal police force;
• housing, transport and public space.

The head of the municipality has the task of steering and coordinating these varied services so that they contribute as well as possible to the positive development of young people. That requires a perspective across departments and the ability to break up silos within the administration. Strategies such as CTC, which rest on a local stocktake of risk factors and protective factors and require joint planning across departmental boundaries, offer a suitable methodological frame. Where a two-tier system exists, the upper tier – the county, the province, the district – often plays an important coordinating role for the municipalities within it, bundling higher-level tasks and exercising oversight.

The council and its committees: partners and pathfinders

Ambitious prevention strategies cannot be implemented without political backing. The head of the municipality works at the interface of administration and politics and must therefore actively mobilise political support.

The central political body is the elected council. It decides the municipal budget, adopts by-laws and sets the strategic guidelines. Its consent is indispensable for anchoring and funding CTC, and in several European countries a formal council resolution is the precondition for a municipality to take part at all. Persuasion is needed here, and the argument is a good one: prevention is a worthwhile investment in the municipality’s future (see Kuklinski et al., 2021, on the benefit-cost ratio of CTC).

Of particular strategic importance is the committee of the council responsible for children and young people, whatever it is called locally: a children’s services committee, a youth welfare committee, an education and social affairs committee. In some countries its composition is unusually well suited to prevention. Germany’s statutory youth welfare committee, for instance, gives voluntary-sector providers of youth services voting seats alongside councillors and officers, so that the public and the voluntary side of children’s services plan together as a matter of law. Wherever the local system allows something similar, this committee is the ideal place to form the local coalition that CTC needs, and to turn the statutory planning of children’s services into a data-based, strategic process in the CTC sense. The head of the municipality should support its work actively and draw on its expertise. The challenge is to keep the political focus on the long-term goals of prevention, which also pay off financially, despite tight municipal finances and, in many places, falling turnout at local elections.

Civic engagement: the indispensable alliance

The third pillar of a successful local prevention strategy is civil society. Civic engagement – the voluntary, public-spirited action of residents – is far more than a nice extra; it is an indispensable resource and an expression of a living democracy.

For local leadership this means cultivating a culture of recognition and partnership:

• People engaged in clubs, initiatives, youth organisations and informal neighbourhood networks offer young people a wealth of opportunities for involvement. As mentors, coaches or project sponsors they contribute directly to the delivery of prevention measures.
• Civil-society organisations are important partners in the local CTC coalition. Their expertise, their closeness to everyday life and their networks are essential for planning and implementation that match real need. Cooperation between public services and voluntary providers is a central element.
• Active participation strengthens trust, networks and cohesion in the municipality, the social capital described by Putnam (2000). This social foundation is central to the success of any local strategy, prevention included.

The task of the head of the municipality is to create good conditions for engagement, to foster cooperation, and to make the work of volunteers visible and valued. Municipal contact points for volunteering – volunteer centres and agencies – can be important support structures.

Practical implications for local leadership

From the perspective “prevention is the mayor’s job”, concrete leadership tasks follow:

• Declare prevention a matter for the top – prioritise it visibly – and define it as a strategic task across departments.
• Actively initiate and moderate the building of a broad partnership that includes the administration, the council, voluntary providers, schools, clubs, business and engaged residents.
• Drive the introduction of systematic local data collection on risk and protective factors – the local stocktake, in CTC the youth survey – and ensure that the results form the basis for prevention planning, for example in the relevant council committee.
• Press for adequate funding and staffing of prevention work in the municipal budget, and secure additional funding where the statutory framework in your country provides it, whether from health insurers, regional government or national programmes.
• Work towards the various departments – youth, schools, social affairs, health, urban planning – aligning their measures within an integrated prevention strategy.
• Cultivate a culture that is friendly to engagement, actively seek cooperation with civil society, and recognise the work of volunteers publicly.
• Understand prevention as a continuous process and see to the lasting anchoring of the structures and strategies established, beyond individual electoral terms.

Conclusion: leadership, cooperation and engagement as the key

Prevention and the promotion of young people’s positive development are central local tasks, and the head of the municipality carries an outstanding responsibility for their success. That leadership task can succeed only in alliance. Scientifically grounded frameworks such as positive youth development and implementation strategies such as Communities That Care offer valuable tools. Their potential unfolds only in interplay with the particular strengths of European local government: a municipality able to act under political leadership, established services for children and young people, and the indispensable force of civic engagement. It is the task of the local leadership to shape that interplay actively, to forge partnerships and to set the course for a preventive, enabling municipality – an investment that repays itself many times over in the future of the community.