New Beginnings: evaluation of a short social–emotional intervention for primary‐aged children

Abstract

We report on an effectiveness trial of ‘New Beginnings’, a short social–emotional intervention for primary‐aged children. The sample comprised 253 children (aged 6–11) attending 37 primary schools across England. Data on social and emotional competence and mental health difficulties were collected using child self‐report, and parent‐ and teacher‐informant report questionnaires in a pre‐test–post‐test control group design. One hundred and fifty‐nine children took part in the intervention, and 94 children acted as a comparison group. Children in the intervention group attended weekly 45‐minute small group sessions for seven weeks. Child self‐report data indicated that the intervention was successful in promoting social and emotional competence, and that improvements were sustained at seven‐week follow‐up. However, this finding was not replicated in either the teacher or parental data. We conclude that future iterations of the intervention may need to be more intensive and lengthy in order to produce changes in behaviour that are salient to teachers and parents.

Keywords:

• social–emotional
• intervention
• evaluation

Notes

1. The child self‐report version has only been validated to provide an overall social and emotional competence score.

2. Since the statistics in Table 10 are derived only from participants for whom data were returned at all three time‐points (N = 64), there are slight differences between the figures presented in this table and corresponding data in Table 5.