Communities That Care

The Rotary Club of Melbourne Inc is a very proud and strong supporter of the Communities That Care program.

Communities That Care Ltd is a not for profit training and consulting company formed through a collaboration between the Royal Children's Hospital and the Rotary Club of Melbourne Inc.

It has the objective of implementing, evaluating and disseminating strategies for building community prevention capacity in Australia.

The company vision is to promote the healthy development of children and young people through long term community planning to prevent health and social problems.

To find out more, please click here, or on the CTC logo above, to access the Communities That Care website.

In April 2010, Professor Richard Catalano spoke to the Club about the successful outcomes attributed to the Communities That Care (CTC) process based on extensive evaluation data.  Professor Catalano is the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence, and the Director of the Social Development Research Group from the University of Washington.  Research clearly shows how youth exposure to increasing risk factors and reduced preventive factors, leads to increasing levels of anti social behaviour.

Richard described how the CTC process not only identifies risk and preventive factors within communities, but also involves community groups selecting specific interventions, based on hard evidence, which overcome the particular problems being experienced by their community.  The interventions can have a significant cost benefit payoff for communities if tested and effective programs are selected. 

Richard pointed out that not all prevention programs have been found to be effective when tested, and community members should seek evidence of effectiveness before supporting specific programs.

Finally, Richard described the CTC program in Australia and encouraged our Club to continue to support the program and encourage greater public investment in prevention.

A copy of Richard’s presentation can be viewed by clicking here.