Intervention to Enhance Coping and Help-seeking Among Youth in Foster Care

Summary

This study will deploy a scalable secondary prevention program that leverages existing foster youth transition services to improve mental health functioning and service use before and after exiting foster care. Our short-term objective is to remotely test a group intervention called Stronger Youth Networks and Coping (SYNC) that targets cognitive schemas influencing stress responses, including mental health help-seeking and service engagement, among foster youth with behavioral health risk. SYNC aims to increase youth capacity to appraise stress and regulate emotional responses, to flexibly select adaptive coping strategies, and to promote informal and formal help-seeking as an effective coping strategy. The proposed aims will establish whether the 10-module program engages the targeted proximal mechanisms with a signal of efficacy on clinically-relevant outcomes, and whether a fully-powered randomized control trial (RCT) of SYNC is feasible in the intended service context. Our first aim is to refine our SYNC curriculum and training materials, prior to testing SYNC in a remote single-arm trial with two cohorts of 8-10 Oregon foster youth aged 16-20 (N=26). Our second aim is to conduct a remote two-arm individually-randomized group treatment trial with Oregon foster youth aged 16-20 with indicated behavioral health risk (N=80) to examine: (a) intervention group change on proximal mechanisms of coping self-efficacy and help-seeking attitudes, compared to services-as-usual at post-intervention and 6-month follow-up: and (b) association between the mechanisms and targeted outcomes, including emotional regulation, coping behaviors, mental health service use, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Our third aim is to refine and standardize the intervention and research protocol for an effectiveness trial, including confirming transferability with national stakeholders.

Conditions

• Adolescent Behavior
• Psychosocial Functioning
• Coping Behavior
• Help-Seeking Behavior
• Utilization, Health Care
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
• Emotion Regulation
• Child Welfare

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Stronger Youth Networks and Coping (SYNC)

SYNC is a 8-module online curriculum adapted from evidence-based cognitive change methods, including Coping Effectiveness Training (CET), co-facilitated by service providers in Independent Living Programs (ILPs; federally-funded transition skill-building services accessed by most foster youth in the US) and near-peers (have lived experience in foster care). SYNC aims to increase youth capacity to appraise stress and regulate emotional responses, to flexibly select adaptive coping strategies, and to specifically promote informal and formal help-seeking as an effective coping strategy.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  collaborator NIH

• Portland State University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jennifer Blakeslee, PhD,MSW,BS · Portland State University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

16 Years

Max Age

20 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-04-22

Primary Completion

2026-03-31

Completion

2026-08-01

Countries

• United States

Study Locations