Evaluating ‘Communities that Care’

Abstract

I am very grateful to the editor for the opportunity to reply to Pawson and Tilley's (1998) critical comments on my proposals (Farrington, 1997) for evaluating Communities that Care (CTC) in the UK. Of course, I agree that it is valuable to compare alternative research designs. However, I think that most of Pawson and Tilley's comments are based on assumptions about the nature of CTC that differ greatly from the assumptions on which my article was based. Briefly, whereas I assumed that CTC was a well-developed technology that was ready to be tested, Pawson and Tilley assumed that it was an iterative, evolving, ill-defined, highly variable procedure that essentially required further exploratory and developmental work. However, it seems to me that these comments apply far more to a ‘scientific realism’ evaluation than to CTC. I should perhaps add at the outset that I have no personal stake in CTC and suggested it mainly because I thought that it was the best-developed vehicle for delivering risk-focused prevention, which I strongly recommended.