Evaluating the Efficacy of a Group Social Skills Intervention

NCT02677142 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 95

Last updated 2016-05-09

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Tumours affecting the brain are a very heterogeneous group of diseases. Accordingly, treatment strategies vary widely depending on child's age, tumour location, its resectability and histology. As a group, however, the survival rate of childhood brain tumors has improved in recent years, resulting in an increased number of survivors returning to school and reintegrating into their communities. Survival for many of them, however, has also come with severe costs such as neurocognitive and academic difficulties. Cognitive rehabilitation strategies to address these deficits have been a major focus of recent research. Evidence is now also mounting for social competence deficits among this population which may persist into late adolescence and adulthood, thereby negatively affecting long-term survivorship. Thus, there is an urgency to identify psychosocial interventions, such as social skills programs, that can reduce the social competence deficits in childhood brain tumor survivors and, therefore, modify the course of these outcomes to ensure that survivors thrive and become productive members of society. To date, no rigorous social skills intervention trials have been undertaken to address the social difficulties of these survivors. The current proposal is the first study that aims to address this gap by evaluating the efficacy of an innovative, manualized, social skills intervention program developed for this population using a multi-centre Randomized Control Trial (RCT).

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Structured social skills training program, SSIP

Detailed, session by session, in the manual written for this purpose. It addresses six major social skills, one per session, starting with easier skills (Social Initiation and Friendship Making, Cooperation) and moving towards more complex skills (Managing Teasing and Bullying, Conflict Resolution, Empathy, and Assertion).

BEHAVIORAL

CG - social skills activities

Sessions will not be designed around a specific social skill and activities and games will not have a specific focus. CG sessions will be conducted by facilitators who will receive the standard training for volunteers and will work under the supervision of one of the investigators at each site.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • The Hospital for Sick Children

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Maru Barrera, MD · The Hospital for Sick Children

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
QUADRUPLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
8 Years
Max Age
16 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2012-04-30
Primary Completion
2015-12-31
Completion
2015-12-31

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

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Entities

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02677142 on ClinicalTrials.gov