KITS: School Readiness in Foster Care Efficacy Trial
Condition: School Readiness
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The KITS project is a 5-year randomized trial to evaluate a program designed to enhance
      academic and social-emotional aspects of school readiness for foster preschoolers.
    

Detailed description: 
      The overarching goal of this research project is to conduct a randomized efficacy trial of a
      preventive intervention-the Kids in Transition to School (KITS) program-to enhance
      socioemotional and academic school readiness among preschool-aged foster children. Foster
      children are at great risk for poor social and academic school outcomes. Because of their
      experiences of early adversity, these children may have particular vulnerabilities that
      decrease the likelihood of a successful transition to school. Extensive prior research has
      shown that chronic early adversity is associated with alterations in the functioning of key
      neural systems (specifically, prefrontal cortex function and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal
      axis activity) related to self-regulation and stress reactivity. Alterations in these systems
      may interfere with children's abilities to relate to peers, to maintain focused attention, to
      follow directions, and to learn academic skills. Additionally, because these children are
      likely to have experienced multiple living transitions, they may be at a disadvantage in
      terms of caregiver involvement in school, a critical aspect of early school success. Foster
      children are recruited in the spring before they enter kindergarten and randomly assigned to
      the intervention and comparison conditions. The KITS intervention includes three components:
      (a) child therapeutic play groups to facilitate the development of self-regulatory, social,
      and emergent literacy skills; (b) a psychoeducational support group to promote caregiver
      involvement in the child's emergent literacy and schooling and the use of effective parenting
      techniques; (c) home- and school-based behavioral consultation. The intervention coincides
      with the transition into kindergarten. Multi-method, multi-agent assessments of the
      children's socioemotional readiness and literacy skills are conducted at baseline,
      kindergarten entry, and postkindergarten. We will examine the direct effects of the
      intervention on school readiness and kindergarten outcomes. We will also assess whether
      intervention effects are mediated through mechanisms of stress reactivity and regulation and
      caregiver variables. Finally, we will test for moderator effects of child and contextual
      characteristics including early adversity (prenatal/neonatal health, maltreatment history and
      placement history), child cognitive functioning, and placement transitions during the course
      of the study. An additional exploratory aim of the study is to examine intervention effects
      on first and second grade outcomes for subsamples of children. Group comparisons and
      longitudinal growth modeling will allow for evaluation of hypotheses.
    

Intervention name(s): KITS Program
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): This is a 4-month psychosocial intervention for foster children entering kindergarten and their caregivers beginning the summer before kindergarten. The KITS intervention consists of: (a) child therapeutic play groups to facilitate the development of self-regulatory, social, and emergent literacy skills (2 times per week in summer, 1 times per week in the fall); (b) a bi-monthly psychoeducational support group to promote caregiver involvement in the child's emergent literacy and schooling and the use of effective parenting techniques; (c) home- and school-based behavioral consultation on an as needed basis.
Other intervention name(s): Kids in Transition to School (KITS) Program
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Diagnostic
Keywords: school readiness; foster care; maltreatment; literacy; social emotional skills; self regulation; caregiver involvement