Social Intervention Tools for Children and Adolescents

3-C Institute for Social Development’s (3-C ISD) social intervention tools for children and adolescents reflect years of research on children’s peer relationships, as well as clinical experience working with children to improve these relationships and prevent mental health problems. 3-C ISD is devoted to the development of research-based tools that have been shown to be useful and effective. To this end, we develop and test intervention tools for children and adolescents experiencing peer relationship problems, such as bullying, peer rejection, and social isolation.

Peer Relationship Interventions for Small Groups

Several small group interventions addressing peer relationship problems have been developed by 3-C ISD for use by mental health providers in the community or in schools. These include:

Social and Emotional Interventions for Classrooms

In addition to social intervention tools for children and adolescents directly targeted for individual needs, 3-C ISD has developed classroom-based interventions that can be used by teachers to explore, enhance, and reinforce student understanding of character traits, emotional literacy, and prosocial skills. These interventions have been developed to match traditional language arts requirements in order to increase ease of adoption by schools. These interventions include:

  • LifeStories for Kids™ K-2
  • LifeStories for Kids™ 3-5
  • Emotional Literacy in the Classroom (currently being tested)

Culturally Relevant Interventions

Several of 3-C ISD’s social intervention tools for children and adolescents are designed to address culturally relevant social and behavioral issues. These interventions include small group interventions targeting the needs of individual children of color, as well as classroom-based interventions focusing on increasing student appreciation of cultural heritage. These interventions include:

  • Celebrating the Strengths of Black Youth (in Phase II of development)
  • Cuentos de la Vida: Exploring Cultural Heritage through Storytelling (in Phase I of development)

Social Skills Training Using Interactive Technology

Our newest intervention tool bridges the worlds of social skills training and interactive technology through a computer-based interactive social training system. This dynamic video game includes interactive social problem-solving exercises that parallel our small group in-person interventions.

  • Interactive Social Training System (in Phase I of development)

Web-based Dissemination Tools

A new area of intervention development for 3-C ISD is web-based dissemination tools that support carrying out research-based mental health interventions in schools. These tools can be applied on a broad scale, decreasing costs (time, financial, personnel) to both schools and intervention developers, enhancing the integrity with which research-based interventions are carried out in the school setting, and increasing the use of research-based interventions in “real world” everyday practice.

  • Web-based Dissemination Tool (in Phase I development)