Fostering Healthy Futures for Teens: An RCT

Summary

This study will implement and evaluate a mentoring program designed to promote positive youth development and reduce adverse outcomes among maltreated adolescents with open child welfare cases. Teenagers who have been maltreated are at heightened risk for involvement in delinquency, substance use, and educational failure as a result of disrupted attachments with caregivers and exposure to violence within their homes and communities. Although youth mentoring is a widely used prevention approach nationally, it has not been rigorously studied for its effects in preventing these adverse outcomes among maltreated youth involved in the child welfare system. This randomized controlled trial will permit us to implement and evaluate the Fostering Healthy Futures for Teens (FHF-T) program, which will use mentoring and skills training within an innovative positive youth development (PYD) framework to promote adaptive functioning and prevent adverse outcomes. Graduate student mentors will deliver 9 months of prevention programming in teenagers' homes and communities. Mentors will focus on helping youth set and reach goals that will improve their functioning in five targeted "REACH" domains: Relationships, Education, Activities, Career, and Health. In reaching those goals, mentors will help youth build social-emotional skills associated with preventing adverse outcomes (e.g., emotion regulation, communication, problem solving). The randomized controlled trial will enroll 234 racially and ethnically diverse 8th and 9th grade youth (117 intervention, 117 control), who will provide data at baseline prior to randomization, immediately post-program and 15 months post program follow-up. The aims of the study include testing the efficacy of FHF-T for high-risk 8th and 9th graders in preventing adverse outcomes and examining whether better functioning in positive youth development domains mediates intervention effects. It is hypothesized that youth randomly assigned to the FHF-T prevention condition, relative to youth assigned to the control condition, will evidence better functioning on indices of positive youth development in the REACH domains leading to better long-term outcomes, including adaptive functioning, high school graduation, career attainment/employment, healthy relationships, and quality of life.

Conditions

• Child Abuse
• Child Neglect
• Risk Behavior
• Delinquency
• Mental Health Impairment
• Substance Use
• Educational Problems
• Adolescent Development
• Adolescent Behavior
• Sexual Behavior
• Child Maltreatment

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

FHF-T

FHF-T employs mentoring, consisting of relationship development, advocating for and empowering youth, and skill-building activities to promote positive youth development. Mentors meet individually for 2-3 hours per week for 30 weeks with each teen they mentor, in order to engage teens in positive youth development activities and provide skills training in areas including emotion recognition, perspective-taking, problem solving, effective communication, managing anger, healthy coping and resisting peer pressure for deviant activities. Youth also attend group workshops over the course of the program, in which they engage with other participants and mentors in skill-building activities.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Denver

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Heather Taussig, PhD · University of Denver

• Kimberly Bender, PhD · University of Denver

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

13 Years

Max Age

16 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2015-06-30

Primary Completion

2021-12-31

Completion

2044-09-01

Countries

• United States

Study Locations