Staying Strong With Schools - A School-Based Resilience Support Intervention for Military-Connected Children

Summary

The purpose of this study is to examine whether Staying Strong With Schools, a school-based intervention to support military-connected children, will be helpful for school professionals and military parents in supporting specific needs of this population of children. As part of the partnership between three school districts in Massachusetts and the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program, the investigators will examine the efficacy of a training delivered to these schools. The schools will be randomly divided into two groups (like a toss of a coin). Half of the schools will receive the training in 2014-2015, and the other half will be waitlisted and receive the training the following year (2015-2016). All participants (school teachers, military-connected children, and their parents) will be asked to complete questionnaires the first year. The investigators hypothesize that, compared to the control schools, at the end of the school year, SSWS schools will be associated with: (1) greater sense of competence and quality of relationships with military-connected children (MCC) among school professionals; (2) lower parental distress and increased parental sense of competence and general family functioning; and (3) increased social support, and fewer academic, emotional, and behavioral problems among MCC. The investigators hypothesize that an increase in school professionals' sense of competence in identifying and handling MCC's needs, increased quality of relationships with MCC, lower parental distress, increased parental sense of competence, and increased general family functioning will mediate the efficacy of SSWS on MCC's social support and psychosocial functioning.

Conditions

• Staying Strong With Schools Intervention
• Waitlist Control

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Staying Strong with Schools Intervention

1. On-Site Training to Raise Awareness about the Stress of Parental Deployment and Review Resources Helpful in Promoting military-connected children (MCC)'s Resilience. A 60-minute training will be delivered by our Liaison Trainer on-site to school professionals at the beginning of the school year. 2. Training and supervision of the Resilience Support Liaison (RSL). In each school receiving the Staying Strong with Schools intervention, we will train the guidance counselor to take on the role of a RSL. The RSL will develop for each MCC an individual resilience support plan that will outline the specific intervention components that will be applied for him/her.

OTHER

Waitlist Control

Receipt of an educational pamphlet outlining resources useful to support military-connected children distributed to all educators at the beginning of the school year.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Massachusetts General Hospital

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• T.H. Eric Bui, MD, PhD · Massachusetts General Hospital

• Bonnie Ohye, PhD · Massachusetts General Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

6 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-09-30

Primary Completion

2016-06-30

Completion

2016-06-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations