Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

Determining the Efficacy of a Community-based Early Intervention Program Adapted for Middle School

Chris Stewart¹, Lisa Rapp^2* and William Rowe³

¹School of Social Work, University of Central Florida, USA

²Graduate Social Work, Saint Leo University, FL, USA

³Department of Social Work, Southern Connecticut State University, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Lisa Rapp
Saint Leo University
School of Education and Social Services
University Campus-MC2067, USA
P.O. Box 6665, Saint Leo
Tel: 33574-6665, 352-588-8545
E-mail: Lisa.rapp-mccall@ saintleo.edu

Received Date: June 19, 2015; Accepted Date: July 20, 2015; Published Date: July 27, 2015

Citation: Stewart C, Rapp L, Rowe W (2015) Determining the Efficacy of a Community-based Early Intervention Program Adapted for Middle School. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:228. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000228

Copyright: © 2015 Stewart C, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Middle schools are often faced with behaviorally disruptive students who concurrently struggle with their own academic problems as well as interfere with other students’ learning and functioning. Often times schools do not have the resources to provide other alternatives than school suspensions, even though suspensions often result in increasing academic difficulties and negative behavior. Previous studies have found early intervention programs delivered in a community setting, which combine self-regulation skills and art classes to be effective with at-risk youth. This study evaluated the adaptation of one such community-based program for delivery within middle schools and found promising results in problem-solving, social skills, and academic self-efficacy. School social workers advocating for the implementation of early interventions, like the PASS program, improve at –risk students’ probabilitiy of academic success.

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