Children's Resiliency Program
CorStone’s Children's Resiliency Program in schools combines strength-based curriculum and facilitated peer support groups to provide students (ages 7-18) with knowledge and skills that enhance their resilience to psychological disorders, build self-esteem, reduce stress-related health problems, improve social functioning and strengthen their ability to deal with conflict. In 2009 the program was launched in select school districts in Marin County, CA, with highly heterogeneous student populations from a variety of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. CorStone has partnered with UCSF Global Health Sciences to undertake a rigorous evaluation of the program and fully document results.
Emotional Resilience refers to the ability of an individual to function competently under stress, to recover from setback, trauma, or adversity and allow for long-term growth and maturation. Resiliency also refers to the ability to make positive choices that strengthen future decision-making and increase flexibility in stressful situations. Our goal is to empower students’ capacity for conscious, healthful decision-making, positive attitudes and compassionate, non-violent communication when facing everyday challenges or extreme adversity.
CorStone's Children's Resiliency Program employs a comprehensive, family-oriented, culturally sensitive, strength-based systems approach. This includes psycho-education and communication skills training for teachers, parents and caregivers, as well as solution-building curriculum and support groups for students. The groups foster safe disclosure of emotional and situational stressors and facilitate long-term sustainable reinforcement of the trainings. See our Toolkit for a partial list of the tools we employ.
The short-term objectives of our Children's Resiliency Program are to (a) decrease symptoms of anxiety and stress in children, youth and their caregivers, (b) increase levels of optimism (c) build self-esteem, (d) reduce conduct problems and mitigate conflict, and (e) increase social competence. Long-term goals include measurable decreases in truancy, school dropout rate, and antisocial behaviors, and improvement in school achievement.
On a broad level, CorStone seeks to extend its internationally recognized experience in low cost/high impact psychosocial support models that empower the building of healthy families and school communities. We will fully document and measure achievement of program objectives, and we intend to present overall results to foundations and others who invest in the program.
Most importantly, we hope our work will help clarify the extent to which specific risk factors can be overcome through community-based interventions integrated into school curricula and implemented by teachers and trained lay facilitators under the supervision of licensed professionals.
Upon successful launch and evaluation in Marin County, CA, CorStone plans to scale these programs and seek out additional opportunities for implementation in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the U.S.