HOUGHTON – The goal of Communities That Care is to implement processes that result in better, healthier communities where children grow up with more hope, more opportunities, and better outcomes.

There are five phases employed through CTC, Ginny Machiela, CTC coalition coordinator for Houghton and Keweenaw Counties said. The first phase was the Key Leader Orientation, which was held on Tuesday, June 28, and was attended by 40 community leaders. The second phase will be to assemble the community board, which will comprise people interested in making CTC succeed. When those two phases are completed, the third phase will entail having a survey conducted in the area schools to be taken by students of all grades.

The survey consists of 141 confidential questions that, when completed and analysed by off-site source, will provide the CTC with necessary data to move on to the next phase. The data gathered from the collection of surveys will determine risk factors to area youth. Michiela said provided the schools consent to the student survey, the data will be invaluable. The data from the survey will reveal risk factors area youth are facing.

“The survey is really a critical piece, because if we don’t have the information from the kids, we don’t really have the risk factors known,” Machiela said.

“What we do once we get our data back, we look at the top four risk factors that our youth are dealing with, and then we put them out to the community and say ‘this is what is what is really effecting our kids here in Houghton and Keweenaw Counties – here are the four biggest risk factors,” Machiela said

The community will then be asked to choose which two of the four highest risk factors CTC should focus on. Machiela said financial limitations prohibit CTC from addressing more risk factors at a time.

Once those two priority risk factors are agreed upon, “then, we start with the really hard work of creating an action plan and figuring out what programs we’re going to start with – any programs we put into place that are going to be evidence-based to work specifically on that risk factor,” Machiela said.