The effects of At Home in the Street (TOS): results of a Dutch community intervention in a four-year study

Purpose Research shows that growing up in unsafe neighbourhoods is a risk for the social and emotional development of children. At Home in the Street (TOS) is a community intervention that aims to create a clear, decent and emotionally safe environment for children in neighbourhoods. This programme is implemented in many communities in the Netherlands. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effectiveness of TOS. Design/methodology/approach This study has a longitudinal (three waves), quasi-experimental design, which includes 644 children who live in either ten experimental or ten control neighbourhoods. The effects are examined by using the strengths and difficulties (SDQ) instrument and propensity score matching control techniques. Multilevel methods were used on multi-imputed data sets. Findings The intervention does not have a statistically significant effect on the social and emotional development of children. However, exploratory analysis suggests that it may have a positive effect if the intervention is used more intensively. Research limitations/implications Future research may be conducted for a longer period to identify more precisely the different effects of the intervention on the development in SDQ scores in relation to age and gender. Practical implications The intervention may be effective in the case of high programme quality. Developers should therefore continue to invest in programme quality. This also applies to other social interventions: in order to accomplish effective social investments, these should be combined with sound research, as shown in this study. Originality/value This study suggests that community interventions may be effective if used with particular regularity. The authors have also demonstrated that implementing this type of complex research is feasible if certain methods are used that help overcome these challenges.