Making the Case: “Why Prevention Matters”
Consistent decisions to support the needs of children are at the heart of a bright future. Hear from experts across the spectrum on why prevention matters.
Author’s note: Over the last decade, we have learned—through both research and experience—the significant long-term economic and social impact of reducing the incidence of child abuse and neglect. We also have learned a great deal about “what works” in prevention. We are now in a position to sustain “what works” and to build on what we’ve learned to achieve significantly improved outcomes. We can now design and assess policies, strategies, and programs that will be increasingly effective, despite current economic constraints.
What follows are four lessons learned that will help legislators and other public officials, funders, service providers, community coalitions and advocates take advantage of today’s unprecedented opportunities to prevent child abuse and neglect.
Done well, the indicators will establish baselines and trend lines, will provide public and philanthropic funders information on which to base investment decisions, will allow managers to continually improve effectiveness, will help in putting the issue on the advocacy and policy agenda, will maintain accountability, and will make it possible to compare effectiveness among preventive interventions. The objective is to assure that what gets measured is the most authentic possible representation of what citizens and policymakers value as they consider the results of their investments. This is extremely hard, and takes a lot of work because:
Rather we must analyze past successes—and failures—to generate new hypotheses, and new solutions. We must build on “what works” by seeing proven programs and best practices as a starting point, not a destination. We must improve the design and implementation of successful interventions as they are scaled up to increase the magnitude of their effects for entire populations.
We need a range of measures and analysis, all of which must be rigorous and reliable, so that we can match how and what we measure with what we need to know. The push for evidence and accountability is immensely useful unless evidence is defined so narrowly that only numbers that come out of randomized experiments are considered credible. Other methods can encompass the knowledge and practice that can be harvested from experience, and be more relevant in obtaining usable information about preventive interventions that tend to be complex, interactive, evolving, and must be adapted to unique local circumstances. These methods must be based on strong theory, drawing on research and practice to connect interventions and results. They must also reflect a robust, quantifiable set of findings from empirical outcome data that establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the observed change has a high probablility of being the result of the practices, strategies and programs under consideration.