A Review of the Evidence on the Effects of Community-based Programs on Young Peoples Social and Emotional Skills Development

There is a growing body of international research which shows that social and emotional skills development programs lead to positive outcomes on a range of educational, health, social and behavioral out-comes for young people. However, the evidence is less well developed outside of the US and there is, therefore, a need to determine how well these programs can be implemented and scaled up in other countries and policy contexts. This review provides a narrative synthesis of the evidence on the e #64256;ectiveness of community-based interventions for enhancing young peoples social and emotional skills in the UK. A range of electronic databases were searched and responses to a call for evidence to youth organizations were analysed. A total of 14 intervention studies employ-ing experimental designs that were conducted in the UK in the period from 2004 to 2016 ful #64257;lled the criteria and were selected for full review. Seven of the studies evaluated the impact of youth social action interventions, #64257;ve focused on mentoring programs and two on community arts and sports interventions. Six of the intervention studies were con-ducted within the last 2 #57345;years, primarily with young people living in deprived communities, and #64257;ve studies employed randomized control trials. The results indicate that there is a small number of robust evaluation studies that provide evidence of the impact of social action trials (N = 4) and mentoring programs (N = 2) on enhancing young peoples social and emotional skills, community engagement and reducing behavioral problems. However, none of the stud-ies were rated as strong and eight studies received a weak quality rating indicating poor quality evidence of interven-tion e #64256;ectiveness. The current evidence base needs to be strengthened to determine the e #64256;ectiveness of commu-nity-based youth programs, including which intervention approaches are most e #64256;ective, and their long-term impact and sustainability.Keywords