Program Profile: KEEP SAFE

This was a multicomponent intervention to prevent delinquency and substance misuse for girls in foster care transitioning from elementary school to middle school. The program is rated Promising. Treatment group girls reported statistically significantly reduced tobacco use, marijuana use, and delinquent behavior, compared with control group girls. However, there was no statistically significant impact on alcohol use or association with delinquent peers.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals/Target Population

KEEP SAFE (formerly known as Middle School Success) is a multicomponent intervention aimed at building prosocial skills and promoting placement stability among youths in foster care. The goals of the program are to prevent delinquency and substance abuse. The intervention targets girls in foster care transitioning from elementary school to middle school.

Program Components/Program Theory

The intervention contains two components (one that concentrates on the caregivers and one on the girls). The first component consists of six sessions of group-based caregiver training. The sessions for the caregivers concentrates on developing a behavioral reinforcement system—which encourages adaptive behaviors in the home, school, and community—and on improving parenting skills as a means of increasing child placement stability. In addition to the summer group sessions, follow-up intervention services (i.e., ongoing training and support) are provided to the caregivers once a week for 2 hours at a time in the form of group foster parent meetings during the first year of middle school.

The second component consists of six group-based skill training sessions for the girls. During the summer, the girls complete a curriculum that is designed to increase their social skills for positive peer relationships, increase their self-confidence, and decrease their susceptibility to negative peer influence. All of the sessions are highly structured and include specific content and directions for each activity. The sessions include an introduction to the session topic, role plays, and a game or activity through which the girls practiced the new ability. The girls then receive weekly individual coaching sessions during their first year of middle school. The coaching sessions serve to provide ongoing social support and training.

The design and content of the program is informed by developmental theories that point to prosocial skills and placement stability for youths in foster care which influence their susceptibility to emotional and behavioral difficulties during early adolescence and, in turn, more serious forms of problem behavior in late adolescence. Previous research also identified early adolescence as an important period for developing prosocial skills because of the physical and social changes that children experience during the middle-school years (Carlo et al. 1999).

Key Personnel

All training and curriculum sessions are led by program staff. One facilitator and one co-facilitator lead caregiver sessions. One facilitator and three assistants lead the girls’ curriculum sessions. The coaches are recent female college graduates.

Study 1

Kim and Leve (2011) evaluated KEEP SAFE (formerly known as Middle School Success), a delinquency prevention intervention for girls in foster care. The evaluation randomly assigned participants from a pool of 145 girls to a treatment group that received the intervention or to a control group that received the usual services provided by the child welfare system. The pool of eligible participants consisted of 10- to 12-year-old girls in major metropolitan areas of the Pacific Northwest who were in foster care and who were in their final year of elementary school. Eligible girls were referred to the study by child welfare staff members.

The final sample consisted of 100 girls (treatment group = 48 girls, control group = 52 girls) with a mean age of 11.54 years. The composition of the sample was 63 percent European Americans, 14 percent multiracial, 9 percent African Americans, 10 percent Latinos, and 4 percent Native Americans. There were no differences between the treatment and control groups on demographic characteristics, severity levels for physical and sexual abuse, and foster care characteristics (number of placement changes and type of care). Girls in the treatment condition did have higher levels of severity in neglect than those in the control condition. This difference was not related to any of the outcome measures and therefore the mean severity in neglect was not included in analyses of program effects.

Outcome measures were girls’ self-reported levels of tobacco use, alcohol use, marijuana use, composite substance use (tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana), delinquent behavior, association with delinquent peers, and composite delinquency (delinquent behavior and association with delinquent peers). Follow-up assessments took place at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after the baseline assessment. No subgroup analyses were conducted.

Interventionists are supervised on a weekly basis. In supervision, videotaped sessions are reviewed and feedback is provided to ensure fidelity to the program as designed by Chamberlain and colleagues (2006).

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: