Strategies that focus on broad cultural and structural change at the community and societal levels will have greater impact over time and can serve to sustain the results of strategies aimed at individual and interpersonal transformation.
The level of the social ecology a strategy operates on can change depending on the specific contextual details of its implementation.
Social Ecology is a term used in public health to describe social influences that occur among different sized groups of people.
Each societal group is called a different “level” in the social ecology. Going from largest to smallest, they are:
Societal Level
Community Level
Interpersonal Level
Individual Level
Some scholars add a broader level, the cultural level, and describe it as a layer that encompasses the institutions and structures of the societal level.
We have labeled each strategy according to the level of the social ecology it is most likely to affect, but this is not a hard-and-fast categorization – there are ways to influence each Key Strength at every level of the social ecology. And - the strategies can be adapted! If you would like support navigating an adaptation of a strategy to shift it toward the community or societal level, please reach out to us via our contact form.
A note about the methods:
The strategies highlighted throughout the Prevent Violence NC website are those that have demonstrated or indicate a likelihood of success changing the prioritized, shared risk and protective factors. These strategies have not necessarily been evaluated for their effectiveness on the prioritized violence outcomes. However, given the research linking the risk and protective factors to the violence outcomes, we have reason to believe that modifying the risk and protective factors will ultimately have an impact on the occurrence of violence.
One goal of Prevent Violence NC is to continue to call attention to areas like this, where more funding is needed to support research and community-level evaluation.
Key Strength: Norms Related to Gender and Power
Levels of the Social Ecology:
Societal Community Interpersonal Individual
Social norms that shape gender roles exist at a cultural and societal level, but they are often taught and enforced at the interpersonal and community levels. For example, children may be teased by peers for showing interest in toys or clothing that don’t align with their assigned gender, and parents often limit the sports or other social activities their children may participate in based on gendered expectations. Educational and communications campaigns function at the interpersonal and community levels, while efforts to increase the number of women in societal decision-making roles operate at the community and societal level. Together, these strategies can begin to shift culture.
Strategy: Improving the status of women
The empowerment of women is about improving the material conditions of women’s lives – e.g. women’s economic and social autonomy - and increasing their decision-making authority in both civic and personal spheres. There are various pathways to achieving this increased status, such as:
- improving opportunities for women’s employment and access to credit
- improving women’s level of involvement in political activities locally and nationally
- positive role modeling of women in the media, and
- legislation to facilitate women’s access to divorce (Jewkes, 2002).
In the United States, it wasn’t until the mid-1960s states began to allow married couples to obtain divorce without requiring that one party be proven to be "at-fault" for the dissolution of the marriage. New York was the last state to pass legislation allowing no-fault divorce – in 2010. Relatedly, marital rape did not become a crime in North Carolina until 1993, and it wasn’t until 2019 that NC law recognized a partner’s right to revoke consent after sex has begun.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
A study by Whitaker (2014) found that "for each unit increase in the proportion of women in powerful positions within a county, there was a 71% decrease in the risk that control-seeking [men] would perpetrate physical IPV … The findings support the optimistic argument that as women gain more formal power in a community, control-seeking males are less likely to perpetrate physical IPV." Based on this finding, it is reasonable to support the broad strategy of promoting women’s formal power (i.e. increasing the visibility of women lawmakers, civic leaders, business owners, etc.) in a community as a means to prevent and protect against IPV, as well as other forms of violence. Indicators of power may include political representation, wages, economic opportunity, and access to resources.
Strategy: Incorporating gender analysis into policy and program design
According to USAID, gender analysis "is a systematic, analytical process used to identify, understand, and describe gender differences and the relevance of gender roles and power dynamics in a specific context…It typically involves examining the differential impact of development policies and programs on women and men." Conducting a gender analysis in program or policy planning involves gathering data both about the current status of different genders in the program or policy context, as well as data about how the potential policy or program might affect people of different genders in that context. An important component of a complete gender analysis is an examination of how the policy or program affects people across the full spectrum of gender diversity – including transgender people, gender non-conforming people, and cisgender people. A gender analysis can be conducted on a program specifically intended to address gender norms, or it can used to unearth potential impacts of an effort addressing a nominally unrelated issue.
The United Nations terms this practice "gender mainstreaming" and describes it as a strategy that uses two objectives to address inequitable gender norms. First, ensuring the "the analysis of issues and the formulation of policy options are informed by a consideration of gender differences," and second, that "opportunities are sought to narrow gender gaps and support greater equality between women and men."
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Conducting a gender analysis can reveal the ways that a program or policy could reinforce or shift harmful norms relating to gender and power. For example, an initiative to expand access to "maternity leave" may at first glance appear to exclusively improve the status of birthing people who did not have it before, but additional analysis would reveal that limiting parental leave to exclusively to mothers implicitly reinforces gender norms restricting fathers from actively nurturing their children. This then limits parent-child connectedness, and potentially family economic stability as well.
Strategy: Media and social marketing campaigns
Social marketing is different than social media – but it describes a significant portion of the activity that occurs on social media platforms. The NSMC, a firm in the UK that specializes in social marketing, describes the goal of social marketing as "always to change or maintain how people behave – not what they think or how aware they are about an issue. If your goal is only to increase awareness or knowledge, or change attitudes, you are not doing social marketing." Social marketing uses techniques from commercial marketing and harnesses them to achieve behavior change in service of the public good. One of the most common examples are the anti-litter campaigns that focus shifting people’s perceptions of acceptable behavior, such as the Don’t Mess with Texas campaign.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Because social marketing is an effective tool for catalyzing behavior change, media and social marketing campaigns can be used to promote equitable gender norms while also reaching a target audience with education and awareness messages. Awareness and education can be a part of social marketing campaigns – but they are never the sole goal. Social marketing is an effective way to shape social norms, and since social norms are the commonly understood rules of acceptable behavior, social marketing can be a powerful tool to decrease society’s tolerance of violence.
Strategy: Organizational and institutional reform
The United Nations Violence Against Women Prevention Framework includes "organizational auditing processes to identify and address structures and practices contributing to gender inequality" as a promising practice to prevent gender-based violence. This strategy involves developing audit tools and processes to engage staff, community members, and volunteers in reflecting on how an organization’s culture and policies affect people differently depending on their gender.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Norms about gender and the observable status/power of women within a community have a mutually reinforcing relationship. Examining and changing organizational policies to improve the status of women within an organization may, in turn, change descriptive norms about what women can or ought to do in society.
By engaging multiple stakeholders in a process of systematic reflection and reform, the changes made throughout the process may be more durable and influence a broader audience than if only an organization’s leadership were involved. According to USAID, "Community participation is a key component of primary health care and public health in general. Several studies have reported improved outcomes resulting from gender-based interventions—interventions that consider gender norms and gender inequality in planning and design—citing community participation as a key factor."
Strategy: “Whole-of-school” interventions
"Whole-of-school" interventions include not only student-focused curriculum, but also staff, faculty, parents, and the local community to promote equitable gender norms, respectful relationships, and safe school environments. They are multi-component efforts that may involve training for staff, environmental changes (such as lighting or modifications to foot-traffic flow patterns), and in-class instruction.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Whole of school interventions aim to catalyze change in both injunctive norms (what people should do), and descriptive norms (what people actually do), and the UN has classified the evidence as promising for preventing violence and positively impacting gender norms. Evaluations of Shifting Boundaries have indicated that the intervention is only effective when both components are implemented – the building-level and the classroom components together. Individual change is hard, especially when it means resisting the forces in one’s environment, and whole of school interventions offer young people environmental supports while also teaching skills for non-violent problem solving problems and healthy norms around masculinity and femininity.
Strategy: Educational programs
Addressing harmful norms directly through community-based trainings and programs is a key strategy for violence prevention. Curricula in these trainings and programs often cover topics such as gender issues, violence, non-violent conflict resolution, life-skills, and male violence against women (Jewkes 2002).
Educational programs can be tailored for participants of any age. Group settings are well suited to in-depth dialogue about gender, gender norms, and their connections to violence perpetration.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Training programs on gender equality and expressions of femininity and masculinity with mixed-gender groups have demonstrated promising results for reducing violence. Examples include group education workshops that occur in school or community settings and are structured to encourage critical reflection, discussion of gender norms, and behaviors that contribute to gender inequality.
For more resources on Norms Related to Gender and Power, visit our Resources section.
Key Strength: Economic Stability & Opportunity
Levels of the Social Ecology:
SocietalCommunity
Economic Stability and Opportunity can be understood as having enough material resources to provide for your, and your family’s basic needs, and ample, viable opportunities to improve your economic status. In terms of employment, it is having a steady job that pays a living wage or better, and ample opportunity in your neighborhood for everyone who needs such a job to obtain one. The strategies that are used to build this key strength tend to be at the community and societal level of the social ecology. Diminished economic opportunity and high unemployment not only reduce the potential for individual stable employment - but are also linked to greater community disorganization, and lower social cohesion and trust. Research has shown that communities that have been systematically dis-invested from economic resources and opportunities have higher rates of violence.
Strategy: Family Friendly Business Practices
Family friendly business practices are ways that business and employers can help support more balanced lifestyles for employees. These strategies can include more flexible options for work schedules, and more autonomy for workers over their schedules, more opportunities for remote work and telecommuting, and additional supports like child-care and flexible paid leave.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Work stress can contribute to violence against children (Roos et al, 2006 ). Increases in violent behavior also have been linked to perceived feelings of stress, isolation, and lack of support (Tucker, 2014). Stress has also been linked to increased risk of child abuse. Family friendly business practices and policies can help to mitigate feelings of stress and isolation by making employees feel more supported and ensuring that they are able to balance work and caretaking responsibilities without fear of losing their employment (CDC). This array of employer-offered benefits leads to greater employee autonomy in creating a work schedule that best fits their needs and combats the mounting strain placed on work-life balance. Common practices that fall under this umbrella are flexible scheduling, telecommuting policies, and child-care benefits.
Strategy: Addressing barriers to completing and paying for higher education
Employability in North Carolina – and across the nation – increasingly depends on completion of some post-secondary education. For communities of color significant barriers to post-secondary education persist, contributing to enduring unemployment and growing disparities (NC Justice Center). Many programs have shown success or promise at reducing the financial, academic, and procedural obstacles faced by prospective post-secondary students, including: offering more effective college readiness coursework (Long, 2014), simplifying the financial aid application process (Bettinger et al, 2009), and restructuring financial aid to make it more available to those with greater need (Welbeck et al, 2014).
Why is it important to violence prevention?
This approach requires structural changes to the higher education system in order to make it more accessible and equitable. Depending on if these changes were implemented at a single institution, state-institution systems, and/or across all institutions of higher education, this could have a deeply and sustainable impact at the community or societal level. There are some important considerations to ensure that this strategy addresses economic stability and employment opportunities in an equitable way and doesn’t further contribute to structural racism and other systems of oppression and advantage. First generation students, who are disproportionately students of color, tend to take on significantly more student loan debt. When combined with discrimination in the labor market, this makes it important that when we are addressing barriers with accessing higher education we are also addressing barriers to paying for higher education and finding gainful employment after earning the degree.
Strategy: Active labor market policies such as sector-based job training and job search assistance
with potential for: Active labor market policies (ALMP), such as sector-based job training and job search assistance can increase individuals’ employment and earnings potential (Urban Institute). ALMP also include employer-focused policies, such as supported employment and employment incentives, to facilitate more hiring, especially of individuals who need additional training and assistance (Nie & Struby, 2011).
Why is it important to violence prevention?
ALMP have the goal of opening economic opportunities and reducing unemployment. Because of the training aspect of this approach, these policies could open job opportunities to individuals and communities who have been marginalized and denied access to other entry points into various forms of employment, such as higher education. By reducing unemployment, these policies would also likely decrease economic stress. Also, because this is a policy-based approach, it has the potential to effect change at the community or societal level depending on if the policy is enacted in individual sectors, state-level government, and/or the federal government.
Strategy: Expanding paid apprenticeship opportunities
with potential for: Apprenticeship programs pair learners with employers for 2-4 years of intensive, on-the-job, paid training and classroom instruction. In addition to enhancing specific job skills, participants generally complete the equivalent of at least one year of community college (Lerman, 2014). Evaluations of apprenticeship programs demonstrate significant gains for apprentices and employers alike: apprentices earn higher wages, and employers realize greater innovation, among other benefits.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Apprenticeship programs have the potential to open new pathways to economic and employment opportunities and provide individuals with income while they go through the training process. This can remove some of the barriers and economic stress that may be involved in academic pathways to employment. In order for this strategy to fully address root causes of violence, however, implementation of apprenticeship programs needs to be done with an awareness of structural racism in the US educational system. Due to structural racism and racial biases, students of color are often under identified for gifted and college prep tracks and the over identified with behavioral labels marking them as challenging or challenged in some way. Because of this, an anti-racist lens must be used to ensure that apprenticeship programs are offered as a positive career option but not used as a way to divert students of color away from career tracks that require higher education.
Strategy: Increasing adult literacy
Increasing adult literacy has numerous benefits, including enhanced employment and increased earnings (Beder, 1999). Literacy councils provide programs to help individuals build literacy skills. Literacy councils are found in nearly every NC county.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Literacy is a skill that is required in most employment sectors and can be helpful in many other aspects of life. Literacy programs can therefore open many employment opportunities, aid in high school equivalency certification, and increase the level to which parents are involved in their children’s education. These types of programs can have a strong, positive impact on the economic opportunity and overall wellbeing of those who participate in them.
For more resources on Economic Stability & Opportunity, visit our Resources section.
Key Strength: Community Connectedness
Levels of the Social Ecology:
Community
Strategies to increase community connectedness most often function at the community level of the social ecology, although wide-scale changes to the built environment at the societal level may also serve to connect community members.
Strategy: Safe and healthy built environment
The built environment includes elements such as housing and housing density, the presence of parks or green space, road quality, the availability of sidewalks, bike lanes, and hiking/walking trails, and "walkability". The natural terrain and geography of an area broadly determine what can be built, but public policy also has a dramatic effect on built environments– both of entire communities and individual buildings.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Community and neighborhood design can have a significant influence on health and violence. Built environments can impact access to healthy food, exposure to pollution and environmental risks, access to clean water, as well as risk of experiencing injury and violence.
Numerous studies show that modifications to environmental conditions can influence aggression levels among dementia patients residing in long-term care facilities, with exposure to gardens showing a lasting positive effect. Researchers have also investigated how exposure to nature can reduce aggression among residents of densely populated urban areas.
Mental health overall can be affected by the built environment. Researchers have found a connection between neighborhood environments and depression and sexual health.
Strategy: Community Gardens
Community gardens can take a variety of forms, from a lawn re-purposed by a homeowner to grow food and share with the neighbors to vacant lot reclaimed by an urban farming organization. Flower gardens maintained by parishioners on a faith community’s grounds dedicated to mindfulness and beauty, or a teaching-garden at a school are just some of the many possibilities.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
While community gardens do not address the historical or structural forces that fragment a community (e.g. residential segregation, or economic instability), research shows that community connectedness provides a protective affect against several forms of violence perpetration.
Community gardens are known to increase the aspects of community connectedness known as collective efficacy and perceptions of neighborhood social capital (Teig et al, 2009; Comstock et al, 2010). Many community gardens have organized planting and weeding days, and social events throughout the growing season, and at harvest. The activity of organizing and tending to the garden creates connections among community members, and the achievement of growing something together contributes to a sense of collective efficacy.
Strategy: Photovoice and other community arts programs
Community arts programs provide participants the opportunity to build creativity and connectedness through the process of crafting and sharing their artwork. There are local arts councils located in nearly every county in North Carolina.
Photovoice is a specific kind of visual arts program that encourages participants to identify an issue of importance to their community, take photographs related to that issue, and engage in thought-provoking dialogue about the issue.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
When an arts program, such as photovoice, is used as a means for community members to identify and address factors influencing residents’ health, it can both increase their appreciation for the arts and their collective efficacy for addressing community health concerns. Mary Ohmer and Jennifer Owens documented a project that used photovoice to do just that. Participants identified and photographed neighborhood characteristics that promoted or protected against violence, and subsequently organized to create an art and garden space where a highly visible vacant lot has been (Ohmer & Owens, 2013). In addition to creating a physical change in the neighborhood, the process of doing the project increased social ties among neighborhood residents.
Strategy: Community and Recreation Centers
Community and recreation centers are gathering spaces that provide a variety of programs, services, and resources. These centers can be either for the general public or for a specific group, such as youth or senior citizens (County Health Rankings and Roadmaps).
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Community centers may serve to strengthen civic engagement, a sense of citizenship, and social ties, as well as provide spaces for youth, adults, and seniors to interact in healthy and enriching ways (Maton, 2002).Both the informal connection of interacting with familiar people in casual ways, and the formal sense of community related to civic engagement can bolster community connectedness.
Strategy: Neighborhood Associations
Neighborhood Associations are "groups of residents who work together to improve and enhance the geographic area in which they and others live." (What Works for Health, Wisconsin). Research in Flint, MI found that the combination of community gardens and neighborhood association involvement had a stronger effect than neighborhood associations alone, suggesting that there could be a benefit to pairing these two strategies (Alaimo, Reischl, & Ober Allen, 2010). The effect of neighborhood associations on community connectedness is stronger among tenants than among homeowners (Reuf & Kwon).
Why is it important to violence prevention?
The CDC recommends neighborhood associations as a strategy to increase social capital and social cohesion in communities, which are related to a number of protective factors that contribute to community connectedness. Research also shows they facilitate increased communication and community activities, higher neighborhood satisfaction among residents, and greater political activities for association participants (Hur and Bollinger, 2015, Hays and Kogl, 2007).
Strategy: Participation or volunteerism
Participation and volunteering in neighborhood organizations can take a variety of forms – ranging from membership or service with a local non-profit to informal participation in an interest-based meet-up. Other examples include civic engagement activities such as "get out the vote" efforts, and involvement in activities organized by faith-based communities.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
In a study published in 2007, Mary Ohmer found that "volunteers involved in [an] organization's everyday activities and in decision making received the most benefits, including increased self-efficacy (leadership, policy control, neighborhood policy control, and knowledge and skills), organizational collective efficacy, and sense of community."
Strategy: Intergenerational mentoring
Intergenerational mentoring programs are designed to connect children and adolescents with older adults in an effort to foster mutually supportive relationships.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Mentors and mentees often form meaningful relationships that can reduce social isolation among seniors as well as improve educational outcomes for youth. Reciprocal non-family relationships serve to bolster the youth’s connection to a caring adult, as protective factor that protects against both suicide and youth violence.
For more resources on Community Connectedness, visit our Resources section.
Key Strength: Positive School Climate and Connectedness
Levels of the Social Ecology:
CommunityInterpersonal
School Climate and Connectedness is about creating supportive and welcoming school environments in which students feel engage and cared for by the school personnel and their peers. The strategies that are used to build this key strength tend to be at the interpersonal and community level. Interpersonal strategies can be very important for the development of strong emotional and relationship skills that are important for healthy relationships within the school environment and beyond. However, because there is regular turnover within the school population, the strategies at this level have limited ability to affect school climate and connectedness in a lasting way. Community efforts, such as supportive, school-wide policies and partnerships with community partners that help bolster supports across the community, are the most effective at making sustainable growth towards positive school climate and connectedness.
Strategy: Positive Behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS)
Positive Behavioral interventions and support (PBIS) is a three-tier approach to providing supports and implementing practices that improve school climate. This approach combines universal practices that impact and support all students as well as targeted strategies that provide additional supports to students who need them. The National Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports provides technical assistance to schools, districts, and states.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
PBIS is a framework that helps change the approaches used throughout an entire school. Because this framework impacts all aspects of the school community, the changes made to the school environment more sustainable. In addition, this framework recognizes that not every student had the same need and ensures that students with additional or different needs receive the necessary attention and supports. The program improves students’ academic performance, students’ social and emotional learning, perception of school safety, and overall school climate. It also reduces bullying, substance use in students, and various disciplinary actions that remove and isolate students.
Strategy: Policies to improve school climate
School climate is the sum of multiple aspects of a school’s social and physical environments, which are influenced by the norms and values of the surrounding community. Therefore, individual programs to improve school climate are likely to fall short in the absence of supportive policies at the school, district, state, and national level (Center for Social Emotional Education and the Ohio Department of Education, 2009)
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Policy change is one way to make changes to school climate at a community level. By changing policies, a school community can make positive, sustainable changes that benefit every person in the school. Enabling and empowering authentic student participation in decision making processes at the school and district level and creating open and regular communication and feedback loops with teachers, staff, volunteers, and community members are examples of policies that can improve school climate(Center for Social Emotional Education and the Ohio Department of Education, 2009). Policy change can also help to bolster and improve the effectiveness of individual and relationship level prevention programs and strategies that are happening in that school (Shifting Boundaries research).
Strategy: Communities that Care
Communities that Care (CTC) is a structured approach to engage a broad coalition of community partners to prevent youth risk behaviors, delinquency, and violence. CTC includes 5 phases that allow for communities to build partnerships, define goals, learn more about the needs and strengths of the community, create a plan, and implement and evaluate the plan.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Research has shown that communities that engage in CTC see a significant reduction of lifetime prevalence for substance use, delinquency, and perpetration of violence (Hawkins et al, 2014). This approach also is an example of a community approach to violence prevention and it demonstrates the powerful potential of community level prevention work in improving youth outcomes.
Strategy: The Whole Child model
The Whole Child model is a school-based approach to holistic student well-being. Schools implementing this model offer programs and policies to support children in being healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
The Whole Child model is a program that helps change the approaches used throughout an entire school, including policies, professional development for staff, approaches to classroom instruction, and more. Specifically, the Whole Child model aims to teach students social and emotional skills, increase physical and emotional safety of the school environment, increase students’ connection with caring adults, and increase academic achievement for all students. Because this model impacts all aspects of the school community, the changes made to the school environment more sustainable and effective at creating change.
Strategy: Anti-bullying policies and programs
Policies and programs to reduce bullying are an essential component of improving school climate. Anti-bullying policies and programs that specifically condemn harassment and bullying based on gender identity and sexual orientation are important to reduce bullying of LGBTQ students (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)).
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Policy change is one way to make changes to school climate at a community level. By changing policies, a school community can make positive, sustainable changes that benefit every person in the school. Policy change can also help to bolster and improve the effectiveness of individual and relationship level prevention programs and strategies that are happening in that school. GLSEN promotes association with pro-social peers and connection to caring adults through programs like student led Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSA). GLSEN also provides schools and policy makers with guidance on how to implement anti harassment policies that address violence in schools. This also helps to promote social norms of intolerance of aggression towards others.
Strategy: 3 Bold Steps
A framework for creating child and youth-focused, positive social change through community partnerships. 3 Bold Steps can be used to implement comprehensive bullying prevention and to promote social emotional learning. The first step is to partner with a range of key community members who can work together to address large community issues from many angles. The second step is to gather information about what is really happening in the community and then create a clear plan for how your team will address it. Finally, the third step is to put the partnering and plan into action.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
This framework improves and promotes social and emotional learning and overall mental health in students. In addition, it has been shown to prevent bullying as well as substance overuse in students.
Strategy: Programs to enhance Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is "the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions." (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)). There are many programs that help teach children these important skills. CASEL has a guide share information about these programs and rates them on they quality and effectiveness.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
SEL programs can improve students’ behavior, skills in regulating and expressing emotions, attachment to school, and academic achievement (Durlak et al, 2011). Because these factors can help students develop skills in solving problems non-violently as well as skills for building mutually respectful and trusting relationships, they buffer against multiple forms of violence. In addition, social and emotional learning is connected to fewer behavioral problems and aggression in students.
For more resources on Positive School Climate and Connectedness, visit our Resources section.
Key Strength: Parent-Child Connectedness
Levels of the Social Ecology:
InterpersonalIndividual
Most initiatives to support parent-child connectedness are education or counseling programs working with parents and children at the interpersonal or individual levels. However, some strategies work more broadly to facilitate stronger parent-child positive bonds, such as policies that increase the amount of time working parents have available to spend with their children. In addition, there are strategies that help to build community networks that support families in building safe and supportive home environments.
Strategy: Family Friendly Business Practices
Family friendly business practices are ways that business and employers can help support more balanced lifestyles for employees. These strategies can include more flexible options for work schedules, and more autonomy for workers over their schedules, more opportunities for remote work and telecommuting, and additional supports like child-care and flexible paid family leave.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Work stress can contribute to violence against children. Increases in violent behavior also have been linked to perceived feelings of stress, isolation, and lack of support. Stress has also been linked to increased risk of child abuse. Family friendly business practices and policies can help to mitigate feelings of stress and isolation by making employees feel more supported and ensuring that they are able to balance work and caretaking responsibilities without fear of losing their employment. One important example of a family friendly business practice that helps to build parent-child connectedness is paid family leave. This is a policy that I often used for the birth or adoption of a new child into a family. This is a critical transition period for parents, including birthing parents and non-birthing parents, to adjust to the parenting role and bond with the new child. Providing parents have generous paid family leave gives them the time and space they need with their children, mitigates feelings of economic stress, and increases employment stability.
Strategy: Communities strengthening families
Both formal and informal community networks can support and strengthen families. Formal networks bring together various organizations who focus on child development, child care, parenting, foster care, health and wellbeing, and education. Together these groups coordinate their services and work together to improve community supports for families. Informal communities can include any group of people who come together and provide mutual support. This strategy includes elements from some of the other strategies that can build parent-child connectedness.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Evaluation of these networks shows that they have the ability to strengthen families and reduce referrals for child neglect and abuse (First 5 LA). Specifically, community networks can build parents’ ability to manage stress and bounce back, social connections, formal and informal supports during times of need, parenting skills, and children’s social and emotional skills.
Strategy: Family support centers
Family resource centers serve as community hubs for families. They offer an array of services and opportunities to help parents build support networks and increase parenting knowledge and confidence (Finn-Stevenson et al, 2009). These services can include things like parent education, child development activities, resources and referrals, peer support, life skills supports, financial development supports, and mental health and wellness programs.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Family resources centers are intended to be a place where families can access comprehensive supports and resources. These resources can support and strengthen many aspects of wellbeing for families (Vehicles for Change, Evaluating Family Resource Centers) . These programs can improve parenting skills, social supports for families, academics skills and connection to school, and the community’s and schools’ sensitivity to the needs of families.
Strategy: Parent Education Programs
Parenting, like all other social behaviors, is learned. And many new parents find themselves bewildered by a barrage of advice from all kinds of sources. Parent education programs can be a way to help new parents learn about child-development, strategies to make their home a safe and supportive place for their child, as well as positive coping method to navigate an often stressful transition.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Effective parent education programs build family protective factors like positive communication, support, and spending time together (University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, 2008). By strengthening these supports, the programs can help prevent various forms of violence and improve overall health and wellbeing of children and families.
Strategy: Parent support groups
Parenting can be wonderful as well as challenging. Parenting support groups can help parents find the connection and confidence that they need as they learn and grow as a parent. While there are many models for parents support groups, the key functions include emotional sustenance, counseling, advice, guidance, access to information and resources, skills acquisition, and group norms and values (Gay, 2005).
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Parent support groups can provide space where parents can effectively problem-solve and cope with stress (Gay, 2005) by engaging in mutual support with other parents. Some groups also provide referrals and concrete supports for low-income parents. All of these benefits can contribute to improved parent-child relationships and safe and supportive home environments.
For more resources on Parent-Child Connectedness, visit our Resources section.
Key Strength: Healthy Social and Emotional Development
Levels of the Social Ecology:
InterpersonalIndividual
Healthy social and emotional development helps individuals manage difficult situations and learn to solve interpersonal problems without engaging in violence. The most common strategies to address this key strength focus on influencing risk and protection at individual and interpersonal levels, but there are also ways to affect this key strength with social policy and community-wide efforts.
Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has shown a correlation between experiencing social-environmental difficulties as a child and numerous health conditions in adulthood. The protective factors that fall under this key strength can be especially challenging to foster when the surrounding environment is unstable, threatening, or traumatizing, and the events that qualify as ACEs occur at much higher rates among communities that have been systematically marginalized. The “Pair of Aces” model depicts the interconnectedness of Adverse Community Environments and Adverse Childhood Experiences, highlighting importance of addressing this Key Strength across all levels of the social ecology as well as in the “groundwater” of structure and culture.
Strategy: Lead abatement in aging housing stock and other sources of environmental exposure
Although it is fairly common knowledge that exposure to high levels of lead as a child causes lasting neurological damage, recent research into environmental lead exposure indicates that there is no safe level of lead for children. In the U.S. “preventing these [lower] levels of exposure in young children will require controlling a significant and persistent cause of lead poisoning: lead paint used in housing before its ban in 1978. Although pre-1950 house paint has the largest concentration of lead-based paint hazards, house paint produced in 1950–1978 also contains substantial lead content.
(Gould, 2009)
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Because of the age of housing stock in communities historically segregated by race, community-wide lead abatement initiatives have the potential to positively influence healthy social and emotional development among large numbers of structurally vulnerable children. “Poor, urban minorities disproportionately reside in housing units containing lead-based paint hazards, creating significant inequity in health and neurologic outcomes by ethnicity and socioeconomic status (CDC 2004). Because the costs of lead paint abatement are nontrivial and the removal must be done on a unit-by-unit basis (rather than imposed at an industry level), there must be substantial commitment to further reduce lead poisoning among vulnerable children.” (Gould, 2009)
Individual childhood exposure to lead can cause cognitive and behavioral problems, such as increases in aggressive behavior, inattention, or hyperactivity - but at the population level - lead exposure has also been linked to substantial increases in violent crime.
One recent study done using data from Charlotte, NC, found that children whose blood lead level tested consistently high enough to qualify their families for abatement and nutrition services experienced remarkably better long-term life outcomes than similar children whose lead levels were similar, but just under the threshold needed to receive services. Due to the imprecise nature of available blood lead tests, in order to qualify for services a second test is required to verify the accuracy of the results from the first, and children who test over the threshold once, but not twice, do not receive any intervention. The researchers assumed that some children whose blood lead levels were over for the first test, but just under for the second, had true lead levels sufficient to cause harm but did not qualify for services. They compared the two groups by examining school records and adult arrest records and found that those who received intervention exhibited less antisocial behavior, and experienced fewer arrests for violence crime (Billings and Schnepel, 2018).
Lead abatement options range from municipally managed programs to private market options, such as LockUp Lead.
Strategy: Build resilience in youth
Resilience is both a developmental process and an outcome – but not a personality trait. Resilience describes a pattern of positive, adaptive behaviors that support well-being in the face of adverse circumstances. It is highly contextual. According to a report published by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, understanding the context-dependent nature of resilience means recognizing that “individuals may demonstrate adaptive behavior in response to negative experiences at one point in time or in one setting, but not at other times or in all settings; thus, resilience is not absolute.” The report also advocates extending the “concepts of resilience and strengths-building to family, institutional, neighborhood, and community levels of analysis” by examining the social, political, cultural and ideological factors at play in the situation – particularly with respect to systems of advantage and oppression related to race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Building resilience is a process that involves bolstering several protective factors related to Healthy Social and Emotional Development, such as skills related to emotional regulation, executive function, and stress management. The process also touches on other key strengths, like community and school connectedness. The Youth Thrive Framework report published by The Center for the Study of Social Policy provides numerous examples of specific skills and resources to build resilience among young people.
Strategy: Increase problem-solving and conflict resolution skills in children and youth
Strong communication skills and the ability to self-regulate challenging emotions during conflict can provide the foundation for secure and nurturing relationships - but these skills are not innate. They must be learned through interaction with peers and caregivers. People of all ages often struggle to name their needs and emotions, but children in particular need support from caregivers to learn how to respond to their emotions in ways that respect others and themselves.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Problem-solving skills help children learn to work through conflict and other frustrating situations peacefully. According to the World Health Organization, “Life skills are cognitive, emotional, interpersonal and social skills that enable individuals to deal effectively with the challenges of everyday life. Evidence shows that preschool enrichment and social development programmes, which target children early in life, can prevent aggression, improve social skills, boost educational achievement and improve job prospects.”
Strategy: Increase pro-social behavior in children and youth
Pro-social behavior is a term that researchers use to describe the actions typically associated with altruism – sharing, giving, kindness, volunteering, etc. An important aspect of pro-social behavior is that the intent is to benefit others rather than for personal gain. Kidron and Fleischman (2006) explain the importance of supporting pro-social behavior in children and provide guidance to educators and parents.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
The opposite of violence is actively caring for other people and engaging in behaviors that have a positive impact on other people. Teaching children how to care about other people – in a pragmatic way – gives them the social skills to seek and cultivate relationships that are built on positive mutual regard rather than on seeking power and control over others.
Strategy: Enhance emotional regulation and executive function in children
Executive function is essential to a child’s ability to “focus, hold and work with information in mind, filter distractions, and switch gears.” Activities to enhance emotional regulation and executive function can begin as early as six months and continue well into adolescence.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Emotional regulation and executive function are part of a foundational set of skills that help people handle the stresses of everyday life and form healthy social connections. This supports the protective factor of social-emotional competence, and can help address the risk factor of poor behavioral and impulse control.
Strategy: Encourage secure caregiver-child attachment
Secure caregiver-child attachment forms the basis of trust and relationship throughout an individual’s life. Attachment begins to form at birth, as an infant learns to expect their caregivers to respond consistently and sensitively when the child is distressed. Often, discussions of attachment focus on the parent-child relationship, but other caregivers, such as teachers, extended family, and child care workers, are also important because a network of consistently secure relationships can be influential on children’s long-term ability to thrive.
Why is it important to violence prevention?
Secure attachment is a core element of a child’s sense of physical and emotional safety. When an infant or toddler does not experience warm, trusting relationships with their adult caregivers, they may begin to view adults and peers as threatening or dangerous. On the flip-side, secure attachment can provide children with the foundation for a strong sense of self-worth, ability to access to emotional support, and embodied knowledge that relationships can be a reliable source of nurturance. Secure attachment is connected to risk and protective factors under this Key Strength in that it can protect against mental health problems later in life, cultivates empathy, and provide a relational context for learning social-emotional competence.
Nurse home visiting programs have emerged as one highly successful method for teaching caregivers of infants how to foster secure attachment with their children.
For more resources on Healthy Social and Emotional Development, visit our Resources section.