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A community is a group of people - a geographic area encompassing a township; a wing in a hospital or gaol; it may be an entire school or one classroom; an individual family can be viewed as a community.

Healthy, safe and resilient communities don’t just happen. They are made to happen.

Utilising Community Psychology methods of research, undertaken by partnerships in the community, will uncover areas where changes are needed.

Research in action finds underlying causes of problem; plans are drawn up to remedy those shortcomings; plans are implemented; results are recorded to see if the plan is working; changes must be sustainable.

No one person is more powerful than any other in community psychology. Power bases are dismantled and all hold equal voice - children, adolescents, adults.

The same theories are applied to carrying out projects that increase community resources, such as construction or renovation of buildings and development of playing fields or swimming pools,

All children and adults in our communities at times need help and friendship. Utilising the principles found in Community Psychology, community members support one another.

One: Grim information about child abuse

The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children - their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialisation, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born.

UNICEF - Innocenti Research Centre

Report Card 5

Child abuse in New Zealand remains at disturbingly high levels. On average, a New Zealand parent, caregiver or other member of the public, kills a child every five weeks. Out of twenty seven member countries of the Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD), child homicide rates in 2003 in New Zealand, per capita, ranked the third highest, worse statistics being found only in the United States and Mexico. Little to no change has occurred in the last 8 years. For every child that dies from physical abuse in Australia, at least one hundred and fifty substantiated cases of maltreatment of children under fifteen were found. There is nothing to suggest that other countries fare any better than Australia.

The child homicide rate would be far higher without modern medicine. Medical professionals treat head and body traumas, burns and reset broken bones. These abused children may die later from injuries but are not included in the homicide rate unless they die within a stipulated time frame.

When insufficient evidence exists to prove a child was murdered, ‘undetermined intent’ child deaths can be added to each country’s total. In 2003, Portugal was reduced from eighth best to the very worst of the twenty seven OECD countries after the addition of these figures. The United Kingdom initially ranked sixth lowest on the scale of child death by maltreatment, but after the addition of the ‘undetermined intent’ figures, it was reduced to fourteenth lowest. The high rate of undetermined intent for deaths of children in some countries suggests children are being murdered yet it can’t be proved that the child died after being pushed from a moving car or dropped from a height.

Four countries, Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland have extremely low incidents of child homicide. Their cultures and traditions apparently operate in such a way that children are better protected than are children in many other parts of the world.

At times, injury to a child results from an escalation in the levels of physical punishment, from non-abusive levels to abusive levels - the caregiver loses control and the child is beaten not spanked. Most children who receive a spanking are not thrashed, yet a research study into violence against children found that children who were physically punished were 2.5 times more likely to be abused, suggesting that physical punishment and child abuse may have some common root. Children under 12 months old are abused the most. Almost 45% of all children under 18 who die from maltreatment are under one year old. Their helplessness in controlling their environment makes them vulnerable to abuse.

A spanking ban

Some child advocates say that children are the only members of society who have not, until recently, been protected by laws that prevent severe physical punishment. For years physical punishment has been prohibited in western-style gaols, in the work place and in the armed services, but beatings with little fear from outside interventions still take place in the home.

Many countries try to legislate against such abuse by banning physical punishment of children in the home as well as in schools. A spanking ban can increase levels of frustration and anger for those responsible for children’s behaviour and some children’s behaviour becomes more disruptive as they experience power and test new boundaries, aware that caregivers or school teachers cannot resort to physical punishment.

Sweden was the first country in the world to ban physical punishment of children and, internationally, it is held up regularly as an example of what a country can do to protect its children, although there are detractors. In an article in March, 2007, Ruby Harrold-Claesson, President of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, said, “Since 1978, thousands of parents have been reported, accused, arrested by the police, detained, tried in courts of law and sentenced to fines or prison as a result of the law.” She further states that Swedish children behave badly.

Others, such as Joan Durrant, speak highly of Sweden’s child protection methods. A report from Joan Durrant on Sweden’s child care statistics, since the ban, can be found later in this book.

A spanking ban does not address the use of verbal, mental nor sexual abuse or neglect in the home. These forms of abuse are sinister. There are no red welts to alert adults outside the family, such as teachers or doctors, that a child is being abused. When no easily discernable physical evidence of abuse exists, the exhibited behaviours and the language the child uses may be the only indicators that something is amiss in their home. These children often will not discuss the frightening happenings and much of this form of abuse continues for years without ever being reported.

When one adult in the family home is a child or spousal abuser, one of four things seems to occur: The abuser’s spouse or partner leaves the household and, it is to be hoped, takes any children with him or her; The non-abuser ignores the abuse, pretending it isn’t happening; The abuser’s spouse or partner justifies the actions of the abuser, saying things such as ‘That child needs firmer than usual treatment to make it behave’ or ‘I asked for it. I shouldn’t have criticized him/her.’ Or the abuser’s spouse or partner also becomes abusive.

All abuse – mental, physical, sexual, verbal and neglect – has long-lasting negative effects on children and adults. Banning physical punishment may be a step in the right direction and it may slowly change society’s attitude towards domestic violence, but many believe that more social support and education is needed if people’s attitudes towards abuse of any form is to undergo permanent change.

Corporal punishment, physical abuse and the effects on children

Researching the long term effects of physical punishment of children is time consuming and expensive and has ethical boundaries. Children cannot be placed in experimental situations where levels of punishment are controlled variables; that is, researchers cannot spank some children hard and unfairly and not spank others, whilst all the time recording a child’s responses, then examining the long term effects on the child as it reaches adulthood. Another major ethical boundary is that abuse must be reported to authorities if researchers find a child who is currently being maltreated.

Researchers Straus and Kantor in 1994 overcame some of those difficulties by reviewing information already collected from more than two thousand families. Among other things, they found that physical punishment of young teenagers contributed significantly towards the teenagers experiencing depression later in life, and it also contributed towards the thinking about suicide. Kantor said that suicide is a different phenomenon from depression. Suicidal thoughts in teenagers’ minds increased significantly when physical punishment was applied more frequently. The greatest increase in suicidal thoughts was for females who had been physically punishment as a teenager.

Contrary to the belief that regular corporal punishment teaches children to modify their behaviour, research studies now clearly suggest that a child is more likely to demonstrate anti-social behaviours when excessive physical punishment is used in the home. It is also likely that the use of other forms of abuse will have similar effects.

Excessively punished children tend to have low self-esteem. Some suffer from feelings of anxiety, withdrawal and depression, often believing that more powerful people control their lives. Conduct disorder and attention deficit disorder are just two disorders that can be found in depressed children. Some severely punished children externalize behaviours through acts of aggression and disobedience. Other children’s lives are made miserable by these damaged children who bully and violate the rights of others.

The social and emotional problems of severely physically punished or abused children do not end with childhood but follow them into adulthood, leading at times to criminality, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide and spouse or partner abuse. In an intergenerational effect, those who experience excessive physical punishment or abuse as a child are more likely later in life to inflict those same acts on their own children than are adults who experienced little or none. Child abuse tends to correlate positively with violent and homicidal crime. When childhood abuse increases, incidents of violent and homicidal crimes rise.

Reducing the levels of abuse in homes should reduce incidents of those crimes in society.

Three interventions aimed at reducing child abuse

1. Individual intervention - Identification of ‘at risk’ children;

2. Intervention through law change;

3. Intervention through social change and increased protective measures.

1. Identification of ‘at risk’ children

Government child-health authorities place an emphasis on early identification of ‘at risk’ children in attempts to reduce incidents of child abuse. Children believed to be living in ‘at risk’ homes are at times removed from the family by child protective services. Some researchers believe that four factors – competence, confidence, character and connection – affect the healthy and resilient development of children. All these four factors are severely threatened when children are taken from the family home. A safer alternative may be to remove the abuser from the household, not the child, leaving the rest of the family intact. A research study into criminality, reported on later in this book, showed among other things, that of the prisoners in gaol for violent crimes against persons, more of them had been removed from their homes as children than had the prisoners in gaol for crimes against property.

Identifying children who live in homes considered to be unsuitable for the healthy growth of a child is an individualised method of identification, and focus tends to concentrate on specific families – families living in poverty, mothers under eighteen years of age, single parent families, families with mental health disorders, families of minority races, or children or families already recognized as living in ‘at risk’ environments by child protection organizations.

Modern research indicates that severely physically punished children are found not only in certain minority family groups but are also found in middle-class families. In one study of white, intact, well-educated American families, researchers suspected that out of three hundred and twenty children, all from middle class backgrounds, perhaps as high as one third of the children were hit with whips, sticks, cords and paddles, suffering frequent or severe punishment.

Problems associated with Individual Interventions

An individualised intervention usually takes place after something happens. This means children have already been subjected to abuse or neglect before they are identified as being at risk and damage has already been done. Science has found that no illness has ever been eliminated through treating those already affected. It is probably safe to say that abuse and neglect of children cannot be eliminated by treating the affected children.

Domestic abuse is a crime committed in secrecy and frequently goes unreported for reasons varying from embarrassment, depression, insecurity, a fear that children will be taken from the family home, fear of authorities, of deportation, and a lack of emotional and financial support for an abused adult. Often the family ‘circles the wagon’ and authorities cannot identify the offender. No charges are likely to be laid if an offender cannot be clearly identified. Adults who were themselves brought up in violent homes are often unaware that domestic violence of any form is not acceptable.

2. Intervention through law change

The intergenerational aspect of physical punishment and child abuse suggests it will not go away of its own accord; generations of children will continue to be born into homes where severe physical punishment and verbal or mental abuse is the main method of child behaviour modification, and children will be born into homes where sexual abuse or neglect exists.

Attempts by governments through the introduction of new laws to reduce or eliminate child abuse in the home and in the community have, in the past, mainly failed, perhaps because this is not really a government problem. Government interventions, such as a ban on physical punishment, are aimed at reducing risk factors for children. This is logical in some instances. For example, if a parent or caregiver never strikes a child, then non-abusive levels of physical punishment cannot escalate to abusive levels when administers of the punishment lose control of their tempers.

Problems associated with law change

There is a strong possibility that the innocent will be captured by the law along with true offenders. It does bring awareness to the fore, but it does not address the roots of the problem. It is said that government organisations are already in place to help families but many families are afraid to contact these agencies because they fear the consequences – embarrassment, children removed from the home, wage earner locked in gaol or deported to name a few. Those affected by violence are usually reluctant to report incidents because it sets off a chain of events that are not manageable by an individual alone.

3. Intervention through social change and increased protective measures

Many researchers believe that the usual interventions are not enough to protect children from harm. A safe environment for children requires social change at the community level and social change requires education and more support for families and members in a community.

Along with education and support, further protective measures must be implemented. Implementing protective measures within a community requires a change of attitude in communities. An entire community can decide that children within their geographic area should be valued, not damaged. The community can decide that there is a need to construct a safe and healthy environment for the growth and development of all their children, whether in the home, at school or in the community’s environs. They can decide that they want a better community that improves the wellbeing of all members of the community, not only the children. Ideals can be achieved when a community works towards specific goals.

Sweden in 1979, was the first country in the world to ban all types of physical punishment and abuse of children. This total ban meant that offenders would have absolutely no legal defence for their actions if they hurt a child. Prior to this total ban, an offender in the 1970s was acquitted by the courts after seriously abusing his child. The Swedish people were appalled when the abuser was allowed to walk free. The Parents’ Code, already in existence, was reviewed and rewritten so an offender would not go unpunished. Sweden adopted the ideals for child care set down by the United Nations on the Rights of the Child, and amended their Parents’ Code to read:

Children are entitled to care, security, and a good upbringing.

Children are to be treated with respect for their person and individuality,

and may not be subjected to physical punishment or other injuries or humiliating treatment.

Most communities do not have a Parents’ Code but a law change is not a requirement for a change in public opinion. Entire communities can adopt high ideals for child care and can themselves introduce programmes that increase protection for the community as a whole. The community can form their own ‘Community Code’.

Families and individuals from all walks of life, at times, need help. It may be something as simple as a babysitter for a few hours or help with a child’s homework. A working parent may suddenly need help with meals for a short period. A person may need to be driven to shops or appointments because the bus route is inconvenient and needs to be changed. Or the problem may be larger such as a family having nowhere affordable to live or there may be a life-threatening problem such as family abuse or mental illness.

Within our communities, many residents would like to be helpful to others but obstacles, such as too few strategies that connect helpers with those who need help are deterrents; nothing gets done because the obstacles are too great. Added to the immensity of the task in connecting helpers with those who need help is a lack of theories that guide communities in how to promote and maintain a healthy environment for all community members.

Two - Creating safe healthy communities

A textbook by Geoffrey Nelson and Isaac Prilleltensky, titled Community Psychology demonstrates ways in which entire communities can fix individuals and problems within their environs. Introducing to communities the theories and practical suggestions found in this book and in material from New Zealand’s Massey University may succeed where other individualised interventions have failed.

The power of community psychology

In Community Psychology, members of the community take responsibility for what is going on in their own community. With professional help when necessary, they carry out their own research. Information about problems is gathered by community members, the information is used by community members to understand why a problem may have occurred, a plan of action is decided upon to fix whatever caused the problem and action is taken by the community members to put the plan into action; the affected person or groups of people are included in finding a solution to the problem.

This form of psychology believes that changes in the environment will create changes in the individual. Individuals are not blamed for their problems; instead, causes for their problems are sought in the community.

Currently, many young people who might have been helped early on in their lives slip through the cracks, causing an inordinate amount of pain and trouble for themselves and others. Very early intervention in the lives of these children, before extensive damage is done, could have helped to reduce the negative affects that the mentally and physically abused child will carry into adulthood.

Through research that identifies areas within the community that need strengthening and by instigating programmes to fix those weaker areas, community psychology fixes individuals at the same time as it fixes society and is more likely to lead to sustainable change because it is organised by the community members themselves, simultaneously addressing individual and environmental issues.

It is sometimes said that a community is composed of individuals, therefore treating many individuals in a community at the individual level should increase the community’s well-being but this theory often fails to address the roots of an individual’s problem. Fixing individuals without fixing societies ignores influences that predisposed the original risk. It has been found that individuals, after undergoing what appears to be a successful course of psychological treatment, are often returned to an environment where no change has taken place. The effectiveness of the treatment soon wears off and the original problems return.

All the work in strengthening a community is undertaken in partnerships. No one is alone or works alone. Offenders as well as victims are asked to join partnerships to research and carry out clearly defined goals to remedy whatever shortfall there was in the community that caused a problem to occur.

The practice of partnerships in addressing problems in a community is not new and has been tried many times, but in the past, partnerships have mainly been constructed on unequal levels of power. To be effective, all partners must hold equal power - children hold equal power along with the adults in a partnership. Problems are discovered, partnerships are formed, research in the community is undertaken, partners suggest remedies, plans are drawn up to remedy the problems, and the plans are put into action. Partnerships evaluate progress and prepare reports that are made available to the community. If a plan is not achieving what it should, then plans are modified and keep being modified until something is found that works.

It is essential that, early in the programme, the community sets up a centre where all community members, including children, can report any problems they encounter in the community. Problems in a community are diverse - school bullying, theft, acts of violence or intimidation, unsafe streets, housing problems, litter in the park, suicidal thoughts, poverty, unrealistic bus routes and timetables, problems with a child or siblings – nothing is too small or too big. Police are called if a serious problem appears to be ongoing.

Members in a partnership

Members of the many partnerships needed to strengthen a community include all residents, business people, students, members of the police force, members of medical teams and social service providers, local and national political figures, members of street or motor cycle gangs. There are no leaders in the partnerships and there is no judgment about who is right and who is to blame when incidents are discovered and discussed. The reason why an incident happened is to be found in weaknesses in the community.

Many problems happen because of unequal power in the community

According to Nelson and Prilleltensky (2004) there are some major values associated with power – social justice, holism and accountability being just a few of them. When these values are ignored, some people in a community are powerful and others are subordinate. The subordinate may demonstrate their own power by holding power over those with even lesser power.

Without social justice, there are injustices and discrimination. Without social justice, a community discriminates without knowing or caring about the story behind a problem and victims are blamed for their circumstances.

Without holism, individuals in communities do not enjoy well-being. Holism and well-being are about health, belief in oneself, participation in the community, meeting personal goals, compassion for others, supporting one another, respecting the beliefs of other races and religions. Holism may seem unrelated to power but holism is in the community where people live and grow. Where holism is absent, somewhere there is power that limited or destroyed the well-being of a person with lesser power.

Without accountability, injustices continue unchecked. The dominated either become more submissive or they fight back and are judged to be trouble makers.

The idea behind equal partnerships is to empower those who have previously been powerless. Inequality affects all members in a community. Inequality is demonstrated in many ways and may be visible through acts of burglary and assaults or bullying, and no-one in the community escapes some fallout. For example, industry is affected because individuals take time off work due to poor health that is in turn due to environmental stressors such as less than ideal living conditions; schools are affected and have to provide special-aid teachers not only to the instigators of problems but also to the children who have been adversely affected by anti-social children; burglaries or home invasion or unprovoked street assaults affect innocent community members.

In a few short years, the community’s children will be the adult population so it is sensible for a community to do its best to see that its children develop in a healthy and caring environment where their voices are listened to, their views are discussed and they are treated with respect. This helps to build confidence and resilience, along with a sense of responsibility.

Educate, not punish

Although community psychology looks for problems in the community it is not a parallel police force. The primary purpose is to educate not punish.

Many parents and caregivers are unaware that genetic, biological and physiological factors predispose a child to less than ideal behaviors. These factors are not the fault of the child. There may be genetic factors, inherited from a parent, such as a quick uncontrollable temper; there may be factors caused by less than ideal conditions when the child was in the womb or complications at the time of birth; the factors may be due to an imbalance of chemicals or proteins produced naturally in the brain. A research study reported in this book suggests that some children may be less resilient to stressful situations and even normal levels of any form of punishment can affect them more adversely than it does other children because their brains produce smaller amounts of a certain enzyme.

This type of information, usually, is not made freely available to the public. When someone does have access to psychological reports, the technical language used in the studies serves to withhold information from anyone outside the particular field of science. Yet the ones who would benefit most from the sharing of knowledge gained through research into children’s and families’ problems are parents and caregivers who are trying to understand what’s going on with their children. Community psychology is undertaken by the community for the community and information is freely available to all.

Three - Fix communities Fix individuals

The American anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Just three or four like-minded citizens can begin processes that bring about changes in a community. The principles found in community psychology are similar for small communities or entire towns. We will concentrate on utilising community psychology for a larger community.

Community psychology works within the environment, finding strengths and resources and correcting imbalances of power which cause subordination to some members of the community. It is about identifying needs within a community through participatory action research and creating change in a community before serious problems arise. A community may be composed of a small group of members such as one department in a factory that contains 15 workers who want better conditions in their workplace; it may be a school of 500 pupils that is trying to eliminate bullying; the community may be a larger group such as 200,000 people living in a particular geographic area who want improved safety on their streets at night. The principles are the same for any community although the types of problems will differ.

Most troubles in a community are rooted in the past, many years prior to trouble taking place. A similar set of problems that created problems for yesterday’s children will be found in today’s modern towns – extreme poverty, homes where children are maltreated through poor parenting, a child or adult homicide, teen or adult suicide, behavioural problems in the schools, children leaving school with inadequate education, graffiti on public property, dangerous streets in daytime or after dark, drug and alcohol abuse, boy racers on streets, gang problems, home invasions and robbery.

Small children are particularly vulnerable and have little power to control the environment in which they live, being wholly dependent on adults to provide the essentials of life. That dependency begins in the home. As they grow, they look to others for support and care. Schools are expected to provide a safe place where education and social development takes place and communities are expected to make resources available for the use of community members. Communities, like parents and caregivers, hold a stake in seeing children grow into healthy, self-confident people.

Currently, most forms of intervention for disadvantaged children and families takes place at an individual level – for example, counselling an individual member of the family or an entire family, supplying food parcels when money is short, teaching the practicalities of budgeting - with an expectation that the family will quickly take responsibility for its own predicament and conform with established societal norms. These intervention measures often aren’t enough to make any long-term differences.

Interventions usually take place only when a problem is brought to the attention of authorities. Inquiries into the family environment may establish that the root of the problems are due to a lack of vital elements in the home - poor parenting skills, inadequate education, inferior genes, few job skills, poor work ethics and so on. The family is given little credit for the fact that they may be trying to survive within a set of impossible parameters. In Community Psychology, there is no yardstick that measures where a family ‘should be’ if they are to be regarded as a functioning unit. Each problem is viewed without judgement and answers as to why problems occurred will be uncovered in the community. Each family, as problems are fixed, moves along a continuum that is unique to them.

Community psychology in all environments brings about social change by working to de-power existing relationships between the powerful ones and their subordinates. There are no hierarchies or experts in community psychology. Victim-blaming and judgmental attitudes are absent. It looks at social structures that define the ways we think and act, and dismantles the structures that fail to promote a fair and just society. The agenda of any research programme is open for all to see and take part in; members of the community participate as co-researchers within the research project.

As mentioned earlier, interesting findings and interpretations from traditional psychological research projects are often published in specialised journals and books which are not readily available to the general public. In contrast, in a community psychological research project, the community itself conducts the research then uses the findings and interpretations resulting from their collected data to construct a planned intervention to bring about changes in their own environment. Social power structures that give power to some are dismantled, judgements and criticisms give way to community structures that empower the unempowered, and as the powerful ones relinquish their power, the less powerful find their voices and their opinions are heard and acted upon and social injustices are addressed.

Strengthening the community

If a community is closely analysed, it will be seen that most communities already contain underutilised resources – volunteers offering free labour and services, vacant buildings, specialised skills, unfilled work positions. The difficulty has been in matching those in need with those offering a possible answer.

Every time the community utilises even one of its unused available resources the community is strengthened – a volunteer may learn new skills and develop new interests and their sense of self is heightened; someone’s need is fulfilled and their mind is eased and their confidence enhanced; a new mutually supportive relationship often develops between helpers and those who are helped. When the one who is helped is in a position to do so, then that person is likely to offer their services to the community.

Getting started

A reporting centre is needed where connections can be made. The centre, manned by volunteers, receives all phone calls offering help. It receives all reports about incidents in the community without judgement or criticism. Each case is delegated to a partnership that, in many instances, includes the affected persons who are encouraged to speak. The partnership conducts research in the community to discover the weaknesses that allowed an incident to happen. What has formerly been invisible becomes visible when root causes are exposed. Plans are formulated to fix that weakness and the plans are put into action.

Volunteers must be trained by professionals to learn the best way to approach situations as many reported incidents will require the expertise of qualified and trained personnel.

Offenders, when willing, are included in a partnership and may themselves offer ways to make restitution or to improve a relationship. The offenders are listened to and answers as to why they acted in the way that they did will be found in the community. Victims are in the same partnership as the offenders or, if preferred, in a separate partnership that looks at the problem and the victims themselves can make suggestions about how a repeat of the problem might be avoided by making changes in the community.

Some partnerships will be formed for a short term only and contain just three or four people to overcome a specific event such as a school bullying incident, whereas other partnerships may continue for the duration of an intervention - for example, funding of an intervention may require a long-term partnership between the community and a government department that is investing funds in a project such as a building for leisure time pursuits.

Record keeping

Right from the outset, at the pre-planning stage when just a few people are involved, accurate records should be kept of the discussions that take place and the decisions that are made and why. Progressive records will later be used to compare the pre-existing conditions in the community with the conditions existing at various times throughout the project. It is likely that the research and action taken in one community will be of interest to other communities and records and notes can be shared. The entire community is being asked to invest time, energy, skills and finance in a project and will want to know if an intervention is working. It is vital for all those reasons that accurate records are maintained throughout the entire programme.

Defining the geographic area of the community

The geographic area for a community should be defined. In a large community this will include schools, technical colleges, universities, nursery schools, industrial estates, service industries, medical surgeries, public health and family service organisations, hospitals, a police station, retirement villages and assisted living homes, residential homes, churches, shops, public parks, plus many informal groups that meet regularly.

Analysing the community and its problems

Discussions amongst the small group of people who are involved at this early stage should include matters such as: Are streets unsafe at night for children and adults? Are children bullied at school? Is school absenteeism happening? Have children been hurt in their homes? Have adults been attacked in their home or on the streets? Is theft a problem in the community? Is there poverty in the community? Are teenagers leaving school with too little education? Usually, the answer to most of these questions will be Yes.

Collect facts about the community

Factual and accurate information on community crime and social problems can be obtained from schools and colleges, police, hospitals and health providers, doctors surgeries, community centres, and from government statisticians or other places where accurate records have been kept. There are two major reasons why these statistics need to be collected:

First, these actual figures will be used to gain support for the project from other members of the community. Most people inside a community have very little awareness about the number of problems that are occurring until they are personally affected.

Secondly, those statistics will be used later as comparisons once a programme has been in force for a specific amount of time. The community will be able to see whether the plans to strengthen the community have actually worked. Is the rate of school absenteeism down? Has the number of robberies decreased? Are people walking safely on the streets at night?

Finally, the time will come when investors are needed to finance a particular project and these records will show what the problem is, what has been done to date, how investors’ funds will be utilised, what are the expected results over the longer term.

The collected data should go back at least five years, and in some cases it may be necessary to go back further.

The gathered information should include the number of child and adult homicides and suicides (if any) over the last six to ten years; the number of reported incidents of child abuse in the same period; any rapes and assaults on any person; the number of children currently considered to be ‘at risk’ because of unsafe homes; the number of burglaries and home invasions, incidents of property destruction including community property; annual figures on school absenteeism and children leaving school with inadequate education, the number of recorded incidents of bullying inside and outside the schools; the number of incidents of boy racers on the streets or assaults at night on the streets, cases of drug and alcohol abuse, any gang problems, an estimate of how many people are suffering from poverty.

Any other problems that occur in the community should be researched and the regularity with which they occur should be accurately recorded. Sometimes crimes are seasonal or increase or decrease in school holidays. Recording statistics in monthly or quarterly blocks should lead to greater clarity on where a problem lies.

Encouraging others in the community to join the project

Armed with facts and statistics that accurately demonstrate existing problems in the community, it should not be too difficult to draw other community members into a project that is intended to improve the lives of all members within the geographic area. Members of the community must be made aware of the proposed project through local papers, newsletters, bulletin boards, talks at clubs and special interest group meetings, talk-back radio and community television programmes, internet chat rooms or a website, and all members of the community should be asked to support this project. There will be dissenters who will actively try to disrupt the project and strategies must be in place to deal with this.

As the number of interested people increase, so will the skill pool increase. There will be people who are skilled in research, project design, promotion, implementation of projects, evaluating projects. Others will be pleased to help with phones, fund-raising, training individuals, joining partnerships to resolve problems, even knitting groups who will knit warm clothing for community members in need.

At this stage, the interested parties may include school and pre-school teachers, members of the local health and social welfare centres, individual police officers, business people, students, unemployed teenagers, parents, gang members, as well as community residents from all walks of life who will want to discuss areas where they believe problems exist and will want to offer what they believe to be solutions.

Prepare a brief questionnaire

A prepared brief questionnaire seeks opinions. If part of the focus is on the better care of the community’s children, the clause from the Swedish Parent’s Code can be cited and those surveyed could be asked if they agree with these ideals for the children.

‘Children are entitled to care, security, and a good upbringing. Children are to be treated with respect for their person and individuality and may not be subjected to physical punishment or other injuries or humiliating treatment’.

Survey Research

Approaching the people and asking for their opinion on a matter is called survey research and is a vital part of community psychology. Many community members will agree that the community can be better but others will not. Objections that are raised are carefully listened to and recorded along with positive opinions. Objections will have to be addressed later if the project is to go ahead. All views are treated with respect and the results from the survey must be compiled into various categories such as ‘Agreement with the idea but a belief that it will not work because …’

Right now is not the time to defend the proposed project. It is simply a process that investigates people’s opinions. A survey such as this starts people thinking about the issues mentioned in the survey and many will talk to others about where changes in the community are needed.

Computerised categorisation allows for fast, accurate interpretation of the collected data and will give percentages for and against. This needs to be prepared in advance so it is ready to receive the questionnaire data. Survey results may show more people are against making the changes needed to improve the community. This does not mean the project will not be accepted in a community. The concerns of the community will have been identified and these concerns are reported back to the community, along with the results of the survey that show the number of people surveyed, where the survey took place, how many were in favour and how many were not.

At this preplanning stage, a number of partnerships will have already been formed. Partnerships of people have compiled facts about the community, others have researched what questions should be included in the questionnaire by talking to psychologists or other professionals and researching data collection methods in past research projects, others will have helped to compile the questionnaire, other partnerships will have been formed to train a partnership of presenters on how to present the questionnaire, other partnerships load the questionnaire results into computer files. Another partnership coordinates the work of the partnerships. There is no single person or partnership in overall charge of the project or projects. The survey research is completed through participatory partnerships made up of members of the community, plus assistance from outside professionals or others when they are needed.

Most work to this stage will be achieved using volunteers and office equipment in private homes or businesses, thereby incurring few expenses other than paper, printing or photocopying costs although some professional fees may have to be paid for advice. Funding will be shortly needed for projects if the community decides to support the idea, so partnerships need to be formed to investigate how they should go about raising money. Investors of funds, including governments, require detailed plans showing what has been done to date, how much money is needed at each stage, when it is required and what the money will be used to achieve.

Planning stage and listing ideals

Here the goals of the proposed project are defined and available resources in a community are identified. Resources are limited commodities and include such things as people, buildings, money, land, existing programmes in the community.

Defining the goals of the intervention requires asking the question - what is the ideal state that the community is aiming for? Some goals may be obvious. A zero tolerance towards violence in the community may be one ideal and this could be broken into a number of subheadings, such as violence in the home, on the streets and in schools. Also, these subheadings could be divided again to clarify what form the violence is taking. Is it motor bike gangs on the streets, bullying at school, violent adults in homes?

All goals or ideals should be measurable to allow evaluation of the effectiveness of an intervention. The initial records from police, hospitals, schools and other organisations show the existing state. These will be compared with records compiled after the intervention.

Community psychology is about defining ideals in communities, and through community participation and partnerships, making what was deemed to be an ideal a reality. In a community, people turn a blind eye towards things they don’t want to see, mainly because they cannot change them or they fear the consequences from stepping out, thereby creating the belief that the community is powerless. This belief will change when members begin to take responsibility for their environment and begin to report anything that is not quite right whether it be, for example, a crime, vandalism, or a person or family in need.

Developing an intervention plan requires patience and creative thinking, and past research has shown that involvement of the community at the planning stage strengthens the resolve of a community to see an intervention succeed (Nelson & Prillensky, 2005). Therefore a lot of input from community members is essential at this stage. Most community members have ideas but have never been asked their opinions, nor have they been requested to identify problems or to offer solutions. The greatest error that seems to have happened over the years is that well-meaning community workers do not listen to what people are telling them.

After much discussion, it may be found that a majority of the members of the community are prepared to trial specific programmes for a set period such as 18 months or two years. Information gathering and planning of procedures such as gaining community support, fund raising, training of volunteers and salaried personnel, problem identification and determining remedies could take up to a year to complete, so realistic time frames must be considered before a date to commence the project is established.

What is certain is that unforeseen problems will occur. In some conditions risk factors may be increased, not decreased, by the proposal of an intervention which impacts on the home and people’s lives. For example, a focus on eliminating domestic violence may promote violence where a person feels his or her rights to control a child or partner are about to be violated. School bullying may intensify as the aggressors decide to show their power before a total ban is in force. A family may move into the area and refuse to comply. Visiting grandparents may refuse to comply. Children may become more ill-behaved once they know the threat of physical punishment is about to be removed. Some community members may ask for help before processes are fully developed.

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