Released April 15, 2008

CLEMSON, S.C. -- New research shows that children in participating communities in South Carolina’s Upstate are safer as a result of a major Clemson University initiative.

In random surveys conducted in 2007 in the service area of Strong Communities for Children, parents of young children reported better care for their children than did parents interviewed in 2004. However, the opposite was true among parents surveyed in comparison communities elsewhere in South Carolina.

Parents in the area served by Strong Communities described more positive behavior toward their children (for example, hugs and other expressions of affection), more careful supervision, more use of household safety devices (for example, baby gates at staircases) and, in general, less neglect.

An analysis by faculty of Clemson’s Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life of the state Department of Education’s annual survey of children, parents and teachers showed that each of these groups believe that elementary schools in the Strong Communities area have become safer. Local respondents also indicated that children are safer while in transit to and from school and that schools have become more responsive to parents. The opposite pattern was seen in schools in comparison communities.

Based in southern Greenville County and Anderson School District 1, Strong Communities began in 2002 with a grant from The Duke Endowment. Planned to be a decade-long project, Strong Communities so far has attracted endowment funding of approximately $10 million. Additional funding has been requested for the remaining years of the initiative.

Strong Communities is the largest grant project in Clemson social, behavioral and health sciences. Along with a parallel project at Duke University, Strong Communities may be the largest social science grant that any university has received from a single source.

The community survey was conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and Westat, a private research firm, in collaboration with researchers in Clemson’s Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, the base for Strong Communities.

Studies of how the Strong Communities initiative has worked are the focus of the entire April-June issue of the professional journal Family and Community Health.

Introducing the issue, Dr. Richard Krugman, dean of medicine and vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Colorado in Denver, said, “The goal (of Strong Communities) is fabulous: should any child or family have reason to celebrate, reason to worry or reason to grieve, someone in the community will notice, and someone will care. That five years into the project Strong Communities for Children is beginning to show success is even more fabulous.”

The journal editor, Dr. Jeanette Lancaster, dean of nursing at the University of Virginia, added, “What we see is that not only are community efforts to protect children effective, but that communities are enlivened and renewed through their collective efforts to protect their most precious and vulnerable resources, their children.”

Dr. Lancaster described Strong Communities as “the first large-scale initiative to address child abuse through research and community-based prevention and intervention concepts.”

Dr. Gary Melton, the director of Strong Communities and the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, praised the Anderson and Greenville communities that have participated in the initiative: “The response has been simply stunning. It is especially remarkable given the generation-long trends toward ever greater isolation and alienation among young parents.”

In the first six years of the initiative, 5,000 volunteers recorded about 60,000 hours of service to Strong Communities — a number organizers believe is an underestimate.

Churches and neighborhood groups were the biggest sources of volunteers. Public safety agencies, especially firefighters, have been especially reliable volunteers in Strong Communities. Scores of businesses and civic organizations also have participated, as have all of the local governments in the service area.

“The volunteers are a cross-section of the community,” Melton said. “Bringing the Golden Rule to life, they are ordinary citizens making extraordinary contributions.

Interviews with the 44 leading volunteers showed they believe volunteering in Strong Communities has been a distinctive and transforming experience for them and the communities.

One volunteer, an apartment manager, told researchers, “I have grown tremendously. I feel that I can conquer a mountain... Each year working with Strong Communities volunteering, I just get more energy. My wife tells me I can’t save the world, but I can sure try.”

Since 2006, the resources generated in Strong Communities often have been applied in Strong Families, the initiative’s volunteer-delivered services for families of young children (for example, parents’ nights out). Approximately 3,000 families have enrolled in Strong Families, and thousands more have participated in particular activities.

Not all of the news arising from the Strong Communities research has been good.

“The challenges to young families keep increasing,” Melton said, “and I worry about the situation for young children in a time of recession.”

In the community survey, parents in the Strong Communities service area reported increasing social support. However, most other indicators of community well-being (for example, memberships in community organizations) were down in all of the areas studied in the survey in the Carolinas. Even in the service area, about one in five parents reported serious isolation. The isolated parents were unable to name children in other families in their neighborhoods or to identify a source of emergency child care.

Contrary to research on previous volunteer-based initiatives, community engagement was greatest in the most disadvantaged areas.

“Strong Communities thus has the potential to keep kids safe in both high-need and wealthy communities,” Melton said.

To learn more about Strong Communities, visit http://www.clemson.edu/strongcommunities. For more information on this initiative and IFNL, visit http://www.clemson.edu/ifnl.

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http://www.clemson.edu/newsroom/articles/2008/april/strong_communities.php5

Contacts: Sharon Crout, (864) 688-2251, scrout@clemson.edu

Dr. Gary B. Melton, (864) 656-6271, gmelton@clemson.edu