Nicole Gridley

1. Piloting the Incredible Years (IY) Therapeutic Social and Emotional skills programme alongside the IY classroom curriculum with young high-risk children Nicole Gridley

2. OVERVIEW • THE INCREDIBLE YEARS TCM & CLASSROOM DINOSAUR SCHOOL CURRICULUM • THE INCREDIBLE YEARS THERAPEUTIC DINA PROGRAMME • THE GWYNEDD DEVELOPMENT AND RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY • THE SAMPLE • RESULTS & OUTCOMES • CONCLUSIONS • THE NEXT STEP

3. Teacher Classroom Management (TCM) Promotes teacher-parent collaboration. Presents a variety of strategies to strengthen children’s social & academic confidence. Helps teachers to set up individual programmes to support specific needs of high-risk children. Classroom DINA Comprehensive social skills & problem solving curricula. Teaches positive social & communicative skills. Aims to promote positive self-esteem. Students learn to become feeling detectives & acquire an enhanced feelings vocabulary. TCM & classroom DINA goals

4. THERAPEUTIC DINA PROGRAMME 18-22 weekly, two hour sessions for groups of six clinically referred children 6 separate modules: • Making new friends & learning school rules. • DINA dinosaur teaches how to do your best in school. • Understanding and detecting feelings. • Detective Wally teaches problem-solving steps (including anger-management). • Molly Manners teaches how to be friendly. • Molly explains how to talk to friends.

5. TCM & CLASSROOM DINA IN GWYNEDD • Substantial amount of evidence supporting the IY teacher and child programmes. • 2002 Gwynedd Council decide to trial the TCM & classroom DINA curriculum. • Results from the two local studies led to the roll out of both programmes and by 2009 all of the 102 primary schools within Gwynedd had the programmes. • Estyn School Inspection identified the programmes as contributing to academic excellence, for both individual schools and the county as a whole.

6. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY • Up to 10% of children are at risk of conduct disorder and/or educational underachievement or failure • The classroom Dina curriculum helps to introduce effective social skills and problem solving • High risk children might benefit from additional small group coaching

7. THE PLAN • Teachers to identify high risk children • Teachers trained to deliver the programme • Children familiar with the curriculum from the classroom • Timetable for study January – June allowed for 10 two hour sessions to be delivered between baseline and follow-up measures

8. THE SAMPLE

9. TEACHER REPORT Teacher Rated Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) PROBLEM SOLVING Wally Problem Solving Task (Webster-Stratton, 2001) OBSERVATION The Teacher-pupil Observational Tool (T-POT, Martin, 2006) OUTCOME MEASURES

10. No significant differences were found on any of the measures using the whole sample of Control & Intervention. Of the sample of 24, 7 Intervention & 5 control were rated as being above the clinical cut off of 17 or above on the TSDQ. Analysis was undertaken of complete data sets from this smaller sub-sample. RESULTS

11. RESULTS: WALLY Problem solving test – total responses

12. RESULTS: WALLY problem solving test total positives

13. RESULTS: WALLY problem solving test – pro-social responses

14. RESULTS: WALLY problem solving test – aggressive responses

15. RESULTS: TSDQ

16. RESULTS: T-POT T-POT - Teacher-Pupil Observation Tool No significant differences between baseline and follow up for any T-POT categories for either the whole (N=24) or sub-sample (n=11) Strong correlations between Teacher & Child Positives for both whole sample and sub-sample: N= 22, .781, p<.001 n= 11, .749, p<.01 Control (n=5) Pre Mean = 3.20, Post Mean = 2.40, t=1.089, p>.05 Intervention (n=6) Pre Mean = 6.33, Post Mean = 7.83, t= .510, p>.05

17. RESULTS: T-POT

18. RESULTS: T-POT

19. CONCLUSIONS • The DINA programme successfully decreased behavioural problems & increased problem solving skills in those children who it was designed for. • Reduced TSDQ scores demonstrate DINA curricula can significantly reduce the occurrence of problematic behaviours that affect the classroom environment. • Changes for the Wally problem-solving task demonstrate the programmes ability to increase students understanding and utilize problem-solving strategies, leading to an overall increase in effective solutions. • Evidence of a strong relationship between child and teacher positive behaviour suggests programme effectively improves the pupil-teacher relationship.

20. THE NEXT STEP • Due to the positive findings from this pilot study Gwynedd Education Service have committed to the roll out of this programme to a further 20 schools across Gwynedd. • Funding has been obtained from the BIG Lottery research fund to undertake a large-randomised controlled trial of this roll out starting in 2010. • Utilizing a larger sample means a more rigorous study of the effectiveness of the therapeutic DINA programme can be conducted in schools where teachers have already undertaken the Teacher Classroom Management Training and all children already receive the the classroom DINA.

21. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING ANY QUESTIONS?

22. CONTACT: Nicole Gridley psp80b@bangor.ac.uk or Professor Judy Hutchings j.hutchings@bangor.ac.uk Tel: (01248) 382651 Website: www.incredibleyearswales.co.uk http://incredible-years-wales-research.bangor.ac.uk