Project

Raising Healthy Children: Bedford County, Pennsylvania

Project Description

Raising Healthy Children: Bedford County, PA is based upon the successful strategies of the Seattle Social Development Project and the Raising Healthy Children (RHC) project. Bedford County will receive technical assistance, training, and monitoring from SDRG, and local staff will be hired to implement the program. The program’s overall goal is to make a significant impact on known risk and protective factors for academic success, substance abuse, violence, and aggressive behavior before the critical middle school years when children most typically begin to engage in a range of risk behaviors. Bedford County chose to employ this strategy because multiple program replications have demonstrated that, by increasing protection for children and putting them on a positive trajectory, RHC helps reduce the overall number of youth at-risk entering the middle school/junior high school years and increases academic and social success among all students.

Like the original RHC project, this current program has teacher, child, and parent components. All elementary grade teachers receive in-service training in a package of instructional methods with three major components: proactive classroom management, interactive teaching, and cooperative learning. Beginning in first grade, teachers implement instruction in the use of a cognitive, emotional, and social skills training and interpersonal cognitive problem solving, which teaches children to think through and use alternative solutions to problems with peers. The curriculum develops children’s skills for involvement in cooperative learning groups and other social activities without resorting to aggressive or other problem behaviors. In addition, in middle-level grades, students receive training in skills to recognize and resist social influences to engage in problem behaviors and to generate and suggest positive alternatives to stay out of trouble while still keeping friends. The parents and caretakers receive classes appropriate to the developmental level of their children. Parents of children in Grades 1-3 will be offered training in child behavior management skills and skills to strengthen their ability to support their children’s academic development. Parents of children in Grades 4-6 will be offered training to enhance family bonding and strengthen parents’ skills to reduce their children’s risks for drug use.