This leaves the question of which skills to teach them and how. However, participants also felt that schools cannot act in isolation from other community groups, parents, police, child care workers and other stakeholders in crime prevention. A comprehensive approach is recommended so that all facets of problem behaviour can be explored and a variety of solutions put together to help the child, in and out of school. A shift is needed to look at the whole child, including the child's family and social milieu. There is often a wide gap between what children understand and are used to at home or with their peers and what is expected of them in school in terms of appropriate behaviour.
Schools have to understand what the gap is if they are to help.
Governments must work together, federal, provincial, municipal and school boards to ensure that crime prevention programs are properly funded, implemented and sustained. There needs to be co-operation if scarce resources are to be used in the most effective manner possible. At the moment, many of the model programs in the area of crime prevention are pilot programs. Schools must be able to move beyond the pilot program stage if they are to be effective in the long run, and funding needs to be sustained beyond an initial try-out period. Teachers will not commit to a program unless they are trained, and that takes time and resources.