Staying Strong with Schools: Testing an Elementary School-Based Intervention for Military-Connected Children

Abstract

To address the unique behavioral health challenges facing military-connected children (MCC) during parental deployment and reintegration, we developed a low-cost, low-burden school-based intervention, Staying Strong With Schools (SSWS). SSWS builds upon best educational practice by formalizing relationships between administrators, guidance staff, teachers, and parents to enhance social connection to support psychosocial functioning of MCC. We previously evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention in an open pilot with 2 elementary schools, finding high feasibility and high acceptability. A randomized controlled trial of 10 civilian elementary schools was conducted to examine the efficacy of SSWS. Ten schools were randomly assigned to SSWS versus an educational pamphlet waitlist control condition. Participants included 56 MCC, assessed on measures of behavioral and emotional functioning, perceived social support, and mental health symptoms at the beginning, middle, and end of school year. Over the course of the school year, parents in intervention schools reported their child exhibited less internalizing behavior than nonintervention school parents; there were no differences in parent report of child externalizing behavior. Children in SSWS schools reported greater perceived social support than children in control schools. Findings from this small-scale randomized controlled trial suggest that SSWS might be efficacious in supporting MCC in civilian elementary schools and support a larger scale implementation to test its efficacy further.