Strategies Ages 6-11

Prevention

• Conduct a communitywide assessment of risk and protective factors for delinquency and gang involvement.
• Conduct a communitywide assessment of the gang problem.
  1. Acknowledge the gang problem.
  2. Form an agreement among stakeholders to work together in addressing the gang problem.
  3. Set goals and objectives.
  4. Develop and integrate relevant services and strategies.
  5. Create a one-stop center that addresses gang involvement and general delinquency involvement with individual problem assessment, services, service referral, and recreational activities.
  6. Implement an evaluation of outcomes.
• Develop a strategic action plan to address the interrelationship of juvenile delinquency and gang problems, consisting of prevention and intervention programs and activities.
• Involve community stakeholders in establishing clear and consistent social norms and effective social policies.
• Steer at-risk youths from delinquent peers to prosocial groups and provide positive peer modeling.
• Increase parental supervision and monitoring of children.
• Educate youth to modify their perception that gang membership is beneficial.
• Involve grassroots organizations in the creation of violence-free zones.
• Provide social support for disadvantaged and at-risk youth from helping teachers, responsible adults, parents, and peers.
• Provide teachers and caregivers with a blueprint for daily routine, playground organization, classroom management, and teacher-child interaction, all designed to create a warm, supportive learning environment.
• Assist teachers with a classroom management strategy designed to improve aggressive/disruptive classroom behavior.
• Provide family-strengthening/effectiveness training to improve parenting skills, build life skills in youth, and strengthen family bonds.
• Promote emotional social competencies in elementary school-age children, while simultaneously enhancing the educational process in the classroom.
• Promote school bonding; development of students’ interpersonal skills; and a climate of safety, respect, caring, and helpfulness in classrooms and schoolwide.
• Improve parents’ involvement in and support for their children’s academic progress.
• Engage community groups, individuals, and institutions to respond to the multiple needs of youth and their families through case management for the highest-risk youth and their families and a provision of an array of services, after-school activities, and community activities to strengthen families.
• Mobilize community leaders and Boys & Girls Club staff to recruit at-risk and gang-involved youth into club programs in a nonstigmatizing way through direct outreach efforts to discuss local gang issues and design a strategy to offer youth alternatives to the gang lifestyle.