Training school social workers to lead “talk therapy” sessions during the school day can help teens and pre-teens recognize and begin to overcome mild depression, anxiety and anger problems, research is showing.

A pilot study of the approach, presented earlier this year at a national meeting by a team from the University of Michigan, suggests that in-school therapy sessions could help address some of the unmet mental-health needs of young people. Previous studies have indicated that many students don’t access or can’t afford treatment in the community, even when it’s recommended to their parents by teachers and counselors.

Over all, several standardized measuring tools showed significant improvement nearly across the board after students completed the multi-week program. Signs of improvement included better mood and cognitive skills among the depressed students, and decreases in angry feelings toward teachers and improvements in problem-solving ability among those who received counseling for anger issues.

Read more here...

NOTE: The authors’ manual for social workers and other mental health professionals who wish to implement the strategy in their area is available by request for free by sending e-mail to dneal@umich.edu and mruffolo@umich.edu.

Posted on January 11, 2007

print   e-mail

After-School Programs That Promote Social Skills Better for Youth, Report Finds

Youth who participate in after-school programs using evidence-based approaches to enhance personal and social skills show significant improvement compared to their peers, a new report from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning in Chicago finds.

Funded by the New York City-based William T. Grant Foundation, The Impact of After-School Programs That Promote Personal and Social Skills (50 pages, PDF) is the result of meta-analysis of seventy-three evaluations of after-school programs by researchers Joseph Durlak and Roger Weissberg. They found that youth programs were most successful at improving outcomes when their activities were sequenced, active, focused, and explicit (SAFE). When compared to programs that did not have these characteristics, SAFE programs showed improved youths' feelings of self-confidence and their positive feelings toward school, grades, and achievement test scores.

"This review is enormously important for after-school policymakers and practitioners," said Robert C. Granger, president of the Grant Foundation. "It shows it is possible for after-school programs to affect a range of outcomes that are important to school and non-school audiences alike. It also underscores the importance of program design."

“The William T. Grant Foundation Announces Important Findings on After-School Programs.” William T. Grant Foundation Press Release 1/08/07.

Primary Subject: Children and Youth
Secondary Subject(s): Education
Location(s): Chicago, Illinois, National, New York, New York City

FC009959

Nobel prize-winning economist and early childhood education expert James Heckman from the University of Chicago has released an important study today that show the dramatic benefits of systematic interventions throughout childhood and adolescence for children at risk.

"Childhood is a multistage process where early investments feed into later investments. Skill begets skill; learning begets learning," wrote Heckman in the paper, "Investing in our Young People." Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, co-wrote the paper with Flavio Cunha, a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago. The study is being released in Washington, D.C. November 15 as part of a larger report by America's Promise Alliance's titled Every Child, Every Promise: Turning Failure into Action.

The scholars studied data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth to estimate a model that would describe how different inputs contribute to the accumulation of abilities. They used the model to predict the outcomes of children born to disadvantaged mothers when the children received a variety of extra learning assistance. In particular, they simulated the potential outcome of continued high-quality interventions beyond preschool.

Because programs for young people now focus on one period in a child's life, such as preschool, or high-school, little research has been done studying a group of students receiving continued interventions systematically.

Heckman and Cunha's computer simulation showed that the sustained investments in disadvantaged children would have dramatic results. The attention would improve the children's school performance as well as their social skills. The children who perform better in school, would likely complete more education and not become involved in crime or dependent upon welfare. With no early childhood investments, only 41 percent of the students would finish high school and more than 22 percent would be convicted of crime or on probation. Just 4.5 percent would enroll in college. The study also showed:

With early childhood intervention, high school graduation rates would increase to 65 percent and college enrollment to 12 percent. Participation in crime would decrease.

With skill-building investments in high school, graduation rates also would be 65 percent, while convictions and probation for crime would fall dramatically.

Combining early childhood intervention with high school intervention would increase high-school graduation rates to 84 percent and college participation rates to 27 percent.

Disadvantaged children who received balanced additional attention throughout childhood would fare even better. More than 90 percent of those students would graduate from high school and 37 percent would attend college, while conviction and probation rates would fall to 2.6 percent. The additional investments throughout childhood could include extra enrichment and tutoring in school as well as opportunities provided by parents and institutions other than schools.

Other research has shown dramatic economic advantages for society when more students complete high school and attend college. The costs to society decrease beacuse fewer people would be involved in crime. Among African Americns, 30 percent of men who did not graduate from high school are in prison, studies have shown. Crime costs Americans more than $600 billion per year.

Heckman and Cunha's work shows that the benefits of increased investments in young people come from improving both cognitive and noncognitive skills. Although preschool can have an impact on improving cognitive skills, interventions later on can improve noncognitive skills such as perseverance and self-control, they wrote.

Paying attention to the skills gap is vital to the future economic success of the country, Heckman said. College attendance rates have stalled, and the percentage of students completing a conventional four-year high school program is decreasing. "Currently 17 percent of all new high school credentials or GEDs are issued to people who earn about as much as high school dropouts.

"The growth in the quality of the workforce, which was a mainstay of economic growth until recently, has diminished," Heckman said. This trend must change or America's economy will be undermined, he said.

Read the related article in Ed Week.