Coping Power Program
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Program Description

The Coping Power program is a school-based intervention delivered to at-risk children in the late elementary school and early middle school years. Coping Power is based on an empirical model of risk factors for substance use and delinquency and addresses key factors including: social competence, self-regulation, and positive parental involvement. The program lasts for 15 to 18 months and has integrated child and parent components.

Child Component

The Coping Power Child Component consists of 34 structured cognitive-behavioral group sessions and periodic individual sessions designed to positively affect the child’s:

• Ability to set short and long term goals
• Organization and study skills
• Anger management skills
• Social skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Ability to resist to peer pressure
• Entry into positive peer groups

Parent Component

The Coping Power Parent Component consists of 16 group sessions and periodic individual contacts aimed at developing and reinforcing parents’ use of:

• Praise and positive attention
• Clear rules and expectations
• Promotion of child study skills
• Appropriate discipline practices
• Parental stress management
• Family communication and problem-solving
• Reinforcement of problem-solving skills the children the learn in Coping Power

 

Benefits

In children, the Coping Power Program:

• Reduces aggressive behavior
• Improves behavioral functioning at school
• Improves children’s social competence and social information processing
• Improves internal locus of control for successfully attaining goals
• Increases ability to resolve problems

In parents, the Coping Power Program:

• Improves and increases parental involvement
• Improves provision of consistent discipline.

Target Population

The Coping Power Program has been developed for children approaching and involved in the transition to middle school, and is most appropriate for children from 4 th to 6 th grades. The program has been provided to boys and girls, and the outcome research has been primarily conducted with children and families of African-American and Caucasian ethnicity. The Coping Power Program has typically been delivered to children identified by their teachers and parents as being among the most aggressive and disruptive children (e.g. top 20 to 30 percent), and thus addresses a group of children who are at-risk for subsequent substance use and delinquency. The Parent Component is delivered to the parents or primary caretaker of these children.

How It Works

The Coping Power Program’s major services involve structured cognitive-behavioral group sessions for the selected children and behavioral parent training groups delivered to their parents or parenting adult at convenient times in locations near their neighborhoods.

The Coping Power Child Component consists of 34 group sessions and periodic individual sessions, and has been typically delivered in school-based settings. The Coping Power Parent Component consists of 16 group sessions and periodic home visits and individual contacts. The group intervention sessions for children and parents are augmented with regularly scheduled, brief individual contacts with children and parents, and these individual sessions are designed to promote generalization of skills to the children’s natural environment. The Coping Power program has also been delivered in one study along with teacher in-service training, which permitted the examination of the potential enhanced effects of nesting an Indicated intervention (Coping Power) within a Universal intervention program.

Ideally, the program requires 15 to18 months to implement, although a slightly abbreviated version of the Coping Power Program – 24 child group sessions and 10 parent group sessions to be delivered within one academic year, with booster follow-up the following year – is currently being field-tested.

Implementation Essentials

Successful replication of the Coping Power Program requires active support from school administrators and teachers. Each elementary and middle school must have at least one full-time, master’s-level counselor or other staff with related functions on their staff. Child Component group sessions take place during school. Group sessions last 50 minutes and usually include five children.

Areas of Influence