Research Intervention And Prevention Programs

For my senior year field placement, I am currently working at Elwyn’s Media campus in the Children’s Behavioral Health Services Outpatient program. At the outpatient program I am working with the Director of Clinical Operations, Ellen Chung. I also work with Jennifer Torrey who is the Clinical Coordinator for Elwyn’s Media location’s Outpatient program. I also work one on one with the Outpatient Case Manager, Shaneen Brown. I am also working in the Therapeutic After School Program (TASP). At the TASP I work with the Case Manager Jennifer Ziegler and the Clinical Case Manager Denise Georganas. The outpatient therapy team at Elwyn is a multidisciplinary team that works to help children reach their fullest potential. Some services offered by the Outpatient program at Elwyn are psychiatric evaluations, individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy, medication management, client/family education and community resources. The goal of the Therapeutic Socialization Program is to facilitate socialization and communication skills and to decrease problematic behaviors through participation in fun and engaging in activities. This program is based on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis and other proven approaches to develop individually tailored treatment protocols to help children, adolescents and young adults in the areas of socialization, self-regulation and communication. The TASP also focuses on providing parents with new information to better understand their child’s

A growing body of research suggests that natural mentors, that is, caring nonparental adults, such as extended family members, neighbors, teachers, and after school staff, who provide young people with ongoing support and guidance, play an important role in healthy development, particularly during adolescence (DuBois & Silverthorn, 2005b; Hirsch, Deutsch, & DuBois, 2011; Rhodes,Spencer, Keller, Liang, & Noam, 2006; Theokas & Lerner, 2006). Based on these studies we determine that mentors play a vital role in helping youth navigate the uncertainty of the adolescent years. Studies show that youth are less likely to engage in high risk behaviors ranging from use of illicit substances, truancy, and teen pregnancy. Dropout rates were also found to significantly diminish with the presence of a natural or volunteer mentorship. The use of mentoring programs to improve outcomes for at-risk youth has grown steadily in recent years (Rhodes & Roffman 2003). Resilience research has consistently identified the presence of a supportive and caring nonparental adult in the lives of children and youth who succeed despite adversity and hardship (Masten & Garmezy 1985; Werner 1992). Both natural mentors and volunteer mentors can buffer youth from poor outcomes by (1) providing a

The school environment was measured by its implementation of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) approach. SEL is a framework that focuses on resiliency and teaching social and emotional competencies to children and youth (Hong, Espelage, Grogan-Kaylor, and Allen-Meares, 2011). Specifically, SEL uses social skill instruction to address behavior, discipline, safety, and academics to help students become self-aware, manage their emotions, build social skills, and make positive decisions. A meta-analytic study of more than 213 maltreatment intervention programs found that SEL-implementing schools could expect better student behavior and an 11-point increase in standardized test scores (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, and Schellinger, 2011). The affluent school with abundant resources implemented SEL to promote resiliency. The less-affluent school with limited resourced did not implement SEL; therefore, its students did not have access to any resiliency

There is a range of prevention and intervention strategies that schools can out in place to promote and maintain student engagement in the mainstream school setting where possible. The strategies are outlined in depth in the Student Engagement Policy Guidelines and they include some of the following:

Brief Description: Due to the chicken and egg dilemma surrounding co-occurring disorders, for years researchers have faced the challenge of what to treat first, in other words identifying the main issue. Now after twenty years and being given the title of an evidence-based practice, researchers have come up with a holistic approach in treating co-occurring disorders. Researches coined this evidence-based practice as integrated treatment, which is basically a marriage between health and mental health services/treatment/interventions.

This stress and the extra burden that is put upon children because of their parent arrest weakens their ability to focus and succeed in school. As well as the addition of stress, the lack of motivation could also play a major role in the issue. Pushing themselves to succeed may not be something that they are familiar with, nor are they interested in doing. Unfortunately, they are the ones that suffer in the long run, which was all rooted in the incarceration process. The caretakers or social workers may also have a hard time getting them involved in school. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “…young children exhibit externalizing behaviors such as anger, aggression, and hostility toward caregivers and siblings” (Parke 2). Getting children to be encouraged after a traumatic experience can be difficult to nearly impossible. Complicated situations like parental incarceration can have a long lasting effect on children, resulting in problems that the minor will suffer from that social workers cannot solve. However, certain age groups struggle more than others. According to a study from the National Education Association, “For older children (12 to 17) with incarcerated parents, there was no discernible effect on school engagement. ‘This may reflect the timing of parental incarceration, or it may reflect that children at different developmental stages react differently to the

Brooke Hampton, an author, once said, “Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become.” When a precious newborn baby is born the parent’s duty are to love, protect, cherish, nurture, and to give their child encouragement to chase their desires, dreams, and aspirations. It has often been proven a child who is raised in a stable home environment will have less anxiety and a higher threshold of security, but what happens when a child is neglected, abused, abandoned, or forced to live a traumatic experience that will haunt their dreams for

For my Family Service Report, I met with and talked to Katie Conklin, Director of Services for the program Tuesday’s Child. Tuesday’s Child is a non-profit program that is operated out of DePaul College Prep. The program was established as a means to help parents with children ages 18-months to 6-years-old who are experiencing behavioral issues. The training is completed with both parent and child, and done with one-to-one peer assistance––with each family being paired with their own counselor. The individualized attention ensures that each family is given the appropriate amount of assistance to problem solve their specific needs. Tuesday’s Child’s mission statement is as follows: “Tuesday’s Child enables families to thrive through positive parent training, inclusive behavioral classrooms and support services. Our proven model impacts home, school, and the community.”

As a beginning point in the selection of an evidence-based program (EBP), it is crucial to distinguish the extent of the EBP. This process has four (4) elements: 1) intended population; 2) intervention target; 3) baseline severity level; and 4) intervention delivery characteristics (Durlak & DuPre, 2008).

The value to using specific approaches such as CBT is that they are evidence based interventions that teach the client a better way to think which then leads to making better behaviors and choices. If a social worker uses their own approach as an intervention, then the outcome to the treatment may not be a proper one. Barth et. al (2011), explain that evidence based approaches are not always used by social workers in their interventions even though it is important to do so. On the other hand, I think that using common factors approach gives social workers a chance to be more original in their practice and give flexibility to their interventions. It provides the client with a more unique treatment that was customized for their own needs. Barth

Students can be identified as having a learning disability by using a process based on their response to research-based interventions along with an IQ-achievement discrepancy. These scientific, research-based interventions, which are tiered approaches to school based service delivery, are generally known or called response-to-intervention (RtI) models. RtI models are early intervention approaches that involve children’s responses to evidence-based interventions which are implemented on three different levels of intensity. To achieve prevention goals, RTI schools are structured, arranged, staffed, and lead differently than traditional schools. Along with using a tiered approach, schools that use RtI models also use progress monitoring. They use a vital flow chart of students, within and across tiers of services, to maintain a positive response to intervention. School-wide RtI is characterized by multiple tiers of risk and support. Students within RtI schools are considered to be placed across three, sometimes four, tiers of risk ranging from no risk to very high level of risk. There is no right or wrong amount of tiers schools can use, but the majority of schools use a three tier system. The expectation of Tier 1 is that about 80% of students will be making expected progress in

For my evidence based intervention I understand the importance of scientific research to inform my practice, however, I believe that the consideration of individual characteristics is just as important. I must consider the issues of lack of confidence, purpose and effort for each of my students and use research to develop strategies that may work for my students. I have developed a range of data on the students’ academic results, attitudes in classes, students learning style, teachers’ comments on these students in a range of classes, students’ self-belief as well as their belief about education and where their goals for education and where they see themselves going after school. Evidence based intervention allows for a targeted group of students

According to Friedman (2014), the quality and productiveness of clinical care have become most important in many Western countries as the cost of health care continues to rise. Public facilities such as clinics are advice to assess and improve their treatment services as well as tools to target evidence-based practice interventions (Levy et al., 2014). On the other hand, treatment effectiveness, clinical accountability, higher standardization, and cost-effectiveness is another important factor to the administrators, policymakers’, clinicians, and patients alike, complexities comes when controlling what evidence is contemplate acceptable. Some researchers in the field of psychotherapy have suggested that clinicians are not well-enough trained

I graduated from high school knowing I wanted to work with adolescents. I just did not know in what aspect. I knew I wanted to work with children who are growing up in urban areas, and struggling to stay out of trouble. So, in college I major in sociology but I was still unsure how I could use the degree to work with adolescents who struggle with behavior issues. The courses helped me realize it’s not just children who grow up in urban areas that struggle with peer pressure, drugs in their community, living with single parent, verbally aggression, physical aggression, etc. It was then when I started to focus more on the mental health to help all adolescents who struggle with behavioral and aggressive behaviors.

Future researchers: research on the life of international students in the US has not been much because the students’ life was not documented. The oral history project would fill in the gap.