Law Enforcement/Community Policing

If your department is looking for a proven, innovative way to reduce juvenile crime and improve its community policing efforts, you should consider the Parent Project®.

The Parent Project® is a parenting skills program designed specifically for parents with strong-willed or out-of-control children. Because of its success in preventing, identifying and intervening in the most destructive of adolescent behaviors, the Parent Project® has won three state awards in California and has been adopted for use by public safety agencies and other community based organizations throughout the nation.

Parent Project® classes are generally presented as a community service by law enforcement agencies, school districts, churches, mental health or other concerned community organizations, individually or collaboratively.

The Parent Project® addresses the critical issues parents face and offers practical, no-nonsense solutions. It is the only program of its kind designed specifically to address the most destructive behaviors of high-risk adolescents. It is supported by ten years of development, research and real-life experience. In short, it works. Here’s why:

Nobody questions that parents should be the primary provider of guidance and influence in a child’s life. Generally, they have the love, the desire and the access it takes to make a difference. Juvenile courts recognized the central role of parents long ago and started mandating parenting programs. Still, many of these moms and dads watch helplessly as their children sink deeper and deeper into trouble.

As you handle calls involving out-of-control juveniles, you ask, "Why don’t these parents do something?"

While the vast majority of parents deeply love their kids and want desperately to help them; parents simply don’t know how to intervene. Repeated failures and frustrations have left those parents feeling overwhelmed. Many have simply given up what they consider to be a losing battle.

The answer: give parents the specific tools and support they need to successfully intervene. Strengthened with knowledge and action focused strategies, parents can re-assume their rightful role and support positive change.

Many departments have made referrals to parenting classes only to hear that they offered no real help to parents of out-of-control adolescents.

Why? Most parenting programs stress communication. They assume that if parents make their desires clearly known in an appropriate way, children will respond positively.

The truth is, even when parents communicate skillfully and kids know exactly what parents want, many strong-willed children refuse to change their behavior. Parents are ignored, ridiculed, threatened, even hit. Communication certainly isn’t bad, it just isn’t enough. It takes more than talk to motivate kids to change. Motivating and influencing our children’s positive change is what the Parent Project® is all about.

The Parent Project® gives parents much more than communication skills. It teaches proven strategies which powerfully influence children to change even the most destructive behaviors, including alcohol and drug use, gang affiliation, truancy, family conflict, violence and running away. To date, more than 100,000 parents have completed our award-winning program.

The Parent Project® is currently the largest court mandated or juvenile diversion program in many areas, including the entire state of Idaho. (County probation departments in Idaho, report one year recidivism rates as low as 4%, and a 33% reduction in juvenile petitions after mandating Parent Project® classes.) It has been adopted for use by local law enforcement agencies, state departments of education, school districts, courts, probation departments, mental health care professionals, the United States military and communities in 30 states.

As discovered by PreQuest’s researcher, Carolyn Coen, in reviewing a three-year Parent Project® outcome study with data provided by the State of Idaho:

• Police intervention using Parent Project® classes is significantly helpful in decreasing involvement of youth with the juvenile justice system.
• Preliminary data show clearly that school involvement together with Police, parents, and a whole community cooperative effort, is the most significant intervention.
• Nothing in more recent data suggests that this significance will be contradicted.

Click Here to see the Minidoka Study Outcomes