Overview of Part II

The six articles in Part II examine the response of the child welfare, health, and youth justice systems to issues surrounding the safety, health, and well-being of children and youth. In the first paper (Chapter 5), Mike Boyes, Joseph P. Hornick, and Nancy Ogden discuss the results of their evaluation of a sample of Healthy Families early intervention projects. They note that while crime prevention models have included early intervention as a component, the incorporation of a development perspective is new. The development perspective provides insights into longitudinal causal mechanisms related to the risk of involvement in criminal behaviour. They note the importance of identifying risk and protective factors but argue that we must go beyond simply identifying these to developing a greater understanding of the multiple contexts in which development occurs.