By Jane F. Gilgun and Samantha Hirschey, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA

There are many interventions programs for children with aggression issues. Some are school-based, some involve both schools and families, and some are primarily family-based. Some make efforts to address issues of racial disproportionality, but, for the most part, this remains an issue that goes largely unaddressed. Many of them are school-wide programs and others target young people who have issues with aggression. Some of the interventions we discuss in this blog are well-evaluated systematic programs, while others are approaches intended to increase self-awareness, awareness of others, self-regulation, and executive functions.

Child protection workers who are familiar with these programs and approaches are positioned to make recommendations to school personnel about programs that fit work within their particular settings. We describe several of these programs. Each of them is based on at least some of the principles we have discussed earlier in this series of blogs.

Preventing Relational Aggression In Schools Everyday (PRAISE)

PRAISE is a school-based intervention that addresses relational aggression in urban areas. Implemented school-wide, PRAISE is a universal prevention program that does not single out particular students, thus reducing the possibility of stigmatization. PRAISE is delivered in 20 sessions, lead by therapists and a classroom teacher. The program consists of role plays, videos, and culturally adapted cartoons to raise awareness of the nature of relational aggression and its consequences. The program is for both aggressors and targets of relational aggression. Some young people engage in both roles, as discussed earlier.

Evaluations show that the program is effective for girls but not for boys. Girls show increased knowledge of relational aggression and increased capacities for anger management and the processing of social information. Also, participation in the program reduces girls incidence of relational aggression. PRAISE had no such effects for boys.

School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS)

SWPBIS is a program that has been implemented in 16,000 schools in the United States. The program sets clear expectations and rewards prosocial behaviors. Evaluations show that the program increases students’ sense of safety in schools and reduces acts of aggression. The model is three-tired. The first tier is a school-wide intervention where school staff teach students definitions of types of behaviors and set expectations. Through tracking incidence of acts of aggression, school staff identify students who would benefit from more targeted interventions. These interventions include teaching skills targeting self-regulation, the development of friendships, and conflict resolution. The most intensive level of interventions involves work with parents and teachers to develop strategies for dealing with aggressive and disruptive behaviors.

Boneshefski and Rung (2014) have suggestions for how school personnel can identify whether disciplinary practices result in racial disproportionality. If disproportionality is found to exist, the authors suggest ways of identifying the behaviors that lead to disproportionality. They include observations of interactions between students and teachers, teacher surveys, and self-study for school personnel.

Families and Schools Together (FAST)

FAST is an eight-week to ten-week program for parents and children from three age groups: elementary, middle school, and high school. For each age level, parents and children engage in activities together, parents have activities with other parents, and children have activities with other children. The intervention takes place in multiple-family groups of about ten children and families with group leaders who are representative of the populations and settings that are served. The team of leaders are teachers, parents, and community-based professionals. Teenagers are part of the leadership team for the middle- and high-school groups. The ethnicity of team leaders is consistent with the ethnicity of program participants. Each team leader receives intensive training and certification. Once the eight to ten week part of the program ends, parents meeting weekly for two years.

The purposes of FAST are to build parent-child relationships, to provide parents with ideas and skills that they use to help their children develop social and self-regulation skills, improve school climate, and build relationships between parents who often are otherwise isolated. Research show that FAST is an effective intervention that has a high rate of success in meeting program goals. Further information about FAST is available on the internet and through evaluation of reports, such as (Guerra & Knox, 2008). McDonald et al, 2012).

Interventions to Increase Executive Function and Self-Regulation

Since aggressive behaviors are associated with belief systems and difficulties with capacities for self-regulation and executive function, it makes sense to teach children ways to become aware of their beliefs, the consequences of their beliefs, and how to regulate their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Mindfulness-based practice, yoga, and meditation can do that. In fact, they are increasingly part of school curricula. School social workers and child protection workers who want to initiate such programs into schools either required specialized training themselves or have funding to hire specialists.

Examples of interventions that can increase executive function and self-regulation include computerized training for executive skills, aerobic exercises that have been show to increase executive functions, martial arts, mindfulness-based practices, yoga, meditation, and music and dance therapy. Research shows that combinations of these activities are more effective than any one individual activity.

Research shows that mindfulness-based interventions are associated with increases in self-compassion and compassion for others in adult and in high school students. These findings are based on programs for adults. At present, school-based programs appear not to have been evaluated regarding impact on self-compassion and compassion for others.

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is a growing national and international movement that brings survivors and perpetrators together for the purpose of healing the hurt and repairing relationships that aggression and violence have harmed. Victims, offenders, and persons important to victims and offenders come together to find solutions that include accountability and that promote healing and reconciliation. Restorative justice represents a shift from punishment to reconciliation and gives opportunities for survivors to tell perpetrators what their behaviors mean to them. Other persons affected, such as family members and friends also have such opportunities.

Trained service providers spend as much time as necessary to prepare persons for restorative justice dialogues. Some perpetrators, survivors, families, and friend decline to participate, but those who do report its benefits. Restorative justice is a promising response to punitive and ineffective policies that we discussed in the first three blogs in this series.

Restorative justice programs are a grown trend in schools. They require extensive training of school staff, students, and parents. A recent evaluation concluded that good outcomes depend upon a goodness of fit between the settings and the programs. After reviewing research on school-based restorative justice programs Armour (2013) and Gonzalez (2012) concluded that they have disrupt the school to prison pipeline.

Summary

There are many well-evaluated school-based programs that are effective in reducing incidence of aggression and fostering increased self-regulation and executive functions. In addition, there are promising approaches such as meditation, yoga, physical exercise, and martial arts whose research based suggest effectiveness as well. Restorative justice programs, too, have increasing levels of documentation that show that they are effective as well.

These interventions are based upon many of the principles we discussed in this blog series, such as the centrality of relationships and the importance self-regulation, executive function, self-compassion, and compassion.

Questions to Consider

Please feel free to leave a comment on today’s blog. If you think we’ve left something out, please let us know. If this blog has given you something to think about, we’d like to know your thoughts. Please consider the following questions.

  • For programs to be effective there must be a goodness of fit between programs and settings. Do you agree with this statement or have a some disagreements? Why or why not?
  • How feasible do you think the programs discussed in this blog are for schools in which you as child welfare social workers collaborate? What might facilitate the effective implementation of these programs and what might get in the way?
  • Can you name other programs that you know from experience work well in school settings? What are they? Why do you think they work?

Next Blog

In the next and final blog, we discuss strategies systems change. Programs are likely to be effective in settings where the persons involved understand the issues and the elements of the program and have the motivation and time to be involved. Child protection workers can contribute to systems changes through relational interviews and organizing parents, teachers, and concerned others into action groups.

About the Authors

Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW, is a professor, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA. She was a child welfare social worker for more than eight years and has taught courses and done qualitative research on high-risk children and families for many years. A special focus of her research is factors associated with good outcomes when children have experienced complex trauma. Professor Gilgun’s articles, books, and practice manuals are widely available on the internet. Many of them are free.

Samantha Hirschey is a second year master’s student at the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, USA, and Professor Gilgun’s research assistant. She did her first year internship at the St. Paul Public Schools and her second internship will be at the Community-University Health Care Center that provides mental health services to residents of the inner city of Minneapolis. She has worked in a variety of social service agencies including with children, teens, and adults with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities. She has a special interest in the promotion of integrated behavioral health in children and families.

References

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