Violence and Youth - A Conversation with Dan Offord

The following focuses mainly on the dialogue between Stuart Auty and Dan Offord.

Q. There has been an increase in school violence with both children and youth. Dan, do you believe the roots of violence have changed? If so, why?

A. We need to distinguish between the rate of violent behavior and the form it takes – instead of using fists in fighting, children and youth are using weapons and guns. Things happen now that didn’t happen in the sixties. In order to understand the roots of violence we have to look at how families and society as a whole has changed and is changing.

Today’s families are changing. There are families where both parents work, where the kids are cared for outside the home, and there are increasing numbers of single parents or reconstituted families.

How the Social Climate has changed since the 60s

In the 60's kids’ behaviours were influenced and regulated by the family, the school and the church, but today the media & peer groups have become more important than they were before.

Television:

• The kids most at risk for violent behaviour are the ones that apparently watch the most TV and the most violent programs.
• The other effect of TV is that it highlights the contrast between the background of the viewer and the idealized background being portrayed. So kids know now whether they’re poor or not, know the extent to which they are included in mainstream advantages of society in a way that kids of the 60s didn’t know when they were growing up.

• The kinds of services that have been in place to deal with kids who are showing the initial stages of violent behaviour are really designed for traditional families. These days there may not be a parent who can take time off work to accompany a child to see a clinician. It’s been very difficult to get services to families and kids who are at the beginning stages of violence – it’s hard to get the families to services and hard to get the families to be compliant.

• Sense of community may have weakened. A generation ago, in many instances, there was the feeling that a community had much more responsibility.

Q. Do you feel that group/gang involvement is in fact filling a gap that the families don’t provide?

A. Yes, and I believe that it has become an extension of normal adolescent development. It’s not just that the families don’t fulfil young people’s needs but also that the other mainline institutions are not fulfilling them either, including community recreation programs and the schools. I think that there is a role for these other mainline community services and institutions to take responsibility for some of the needs that adolescents have.

Universality for children & youth:

• The test of universality includes not just equal access but equal participation and, in the end, equal outcomes. Universality must include all the outside-the-home programs that we value for our kids but that tend not to be available for kids who are at risk for violence, regardless of whether we say they’re universal or not.

Q. One of the criticisms of student organizations is that they don’t include the kids that need the help the most. How do you see getting at that issue?

A. I think that is an issue that has to do with accountability. Take peer counseling as an example. Peer counselors tend to be "all-Canadian" kids, and they also tend to be ones that are doing well, and they are almost all girls. There is a lot of money being spent on peer-counseling programs, and we don’t know the extent to which these programs do more good than harm and for what groups of kids. There is a need for models where the peer intervention would appeal to at-risk kids. There is evidence that when at-risk kids are given equal access with no stigmatization, they do come out in large numbers.

Q. In earlier times, the child worked and helped to support the family. Today the child isn’t really needed within the family unit for survival purposes. Are kids looking for reasons to be?

A. In a survey across the province we asked kids 6 to 20 what they felt about their life in Ontario. One of the themes that came out was that these children wanted an opportunity to give back. They wanted to be seen as meaningful participants: they were willing to volunteer; they wanted to volunteer; they wanted opportunities to do this.

Q. Dan, would you comment on the importance of early intervention?

A. Most of the focus is on kids who are violent. Clearly these kids have to be dealt with effectively, but the problem is that there are needs for other kinds of programs, some of which all kids get and some which may be targeted. We have to take a look at programs throughout the developmental cycle at all levels. In each case, these programs have to be evaluated for their effectiveness. One project we are involved in (Helping Children Adjust) is to see to what extent you can turn off anti-social behaviour in its beginning stages if you work with kids from kindergarten to Grade three.

Q. Were you able in the evaluation that you did to differentiate between programs that in fact were people-driven and entirely dependent upon the person who had developed and implemented the program as opposed to transferable programs that would stay in place after that initial burst of energy dissipated?

A. You have hit on a major issue. The programs that work tend not to be transferable, not to help any other group of kids except the ones for whom they were originally put in place. In addition, if a program appears to work, it won’t be long before the middle class takes it over and the kids for whom it was intended in the first place are left out. There is a long list of activities that started off as something for poor kids and then the middle class took them over. These include things like: summer camp, recreation programs & Montessori schools.

Q. In terms of early intervention, how do you get at those children in an effective way?

A. I would recommend having prenatal programs evaluated, to see the extent to which they can attract high-risk parents. Violence and child abuse are high-profile issues, but they are embedded in major problems that we have with kids. The solution lies in interventions that are planned carefully for all kids, and then for kids with problems – all throughout the life cycle. That’s what is needed.

Q. Another question that seems to pop regularly deals with the intensity of violence that youth are prepared to engage in. Do you have any feeling on the changes in behaviour that have caused this?

A. There is a desensitization to life and to violence. You see it on TV, you see people killed in wars. You see it night after night and you become kind of immune to it.

Q. How can fear of violence, fear for personal safety, have an effect on the school environment?

A. The data on communities are generally concerned about how the communities see themselves. One could imagine that people see themselves as being in more danger than they actually are, but the fear must have an effect on the school situation. It must promote a gap between the teachers and the kids, and it also must make dealing with these kids like walking on eggs. You don’t confront them; you walk around them. So there is never an honest exchange. If one is a teacher, and an authority figure, the feeling seems to be that one must be in a defensive position.

Q. The Ontario government has mandated and supported the "zero tolerance" concept. I’d be interested in your views on the implications of zero tolerance and limit-setting and how this is played out in the school milieu.

A. What happens to the kids after they are kicked out? There has to be some responsibility. You can’t just kick them out. Where do they go? We know that when they are on the street they are at higher risk and probably marginalized to such an extent they get in much more trouble than they ever wanted to get in. If it is seen as the major approach to dealing with violence, I think that’s a mistake.

Q. The underlying concept of zero tolerance is essentially that there be a limit-setting and a demonstrated consequence to an act of violence. Do you see limit-setting as a deterrent?

A. One can make arguments that it might make things worse. We don’t know. I think if there is zero tolerance, it has to be fairly applied so that there’s no scapegoating going on. And certainly there has to be a safety net for kids who are suspended or expelled under the zero tolerance policy.