RECAP Multi-Component Intervention Program
Condition: Behavioral Problems; Emotional Problems
MeSH terms: Problem Behavior
Study type: Interventional
Phase: Phase 2

Summary: 
      This study evaluates the efficacy of the RECAP Mental Health + Academic Program for special
      education students in behavioral classrooms. The program includes multiple service
      components: the RECAP classroom mental health curriculum, which develops students' behavioral
      and social skills; reading intervention; individualized skills training; and parent group.
      Schools are randomly assigned to the treatment or control group. This two-year
      multi-component mental health and academic intervention is hypothesized to improve students'
      mental health, social skills, and academic functioning.
    

Detailed description: 
      Background Information

      This research project evaluates the efficacy of the RECAP Mental Health + Academic Program, a
      two-year multi-component intervention for special education students in behavioral
      classrooms. The program has been shown to reduce students' emotional and behavioral problems
      and remediate academic deficits, particularly with regard to reading skills, in order to
      enhance academic and behavioral functioning and to facilitate special education students'
      appropriate transition and reintegration into the mainstream educational setting.

      Using an educational and instructional approach that is familiar to school staff and
      students, RECAP helps teachers and parents to assist children in the development of
      behavioral and emotional skills that facilitate children's ability to learn and to solve
      problems adaptively. Many of the techniques and strategies used in RECAP are familiar to
      teachers, as RECAP represents an integration of basic behavioral principles. Its unique
      strength lies in its consistent and integrated framework, which provides a common language
      for students, teachers, and parents to talk about behavioral expectations and positive skills
      for children to learn and apply in everyday situations. Moreover, the RECAP program focuses
      on helping students resolve the behavioral and emotional problems that interfere with their
      own learning as well as the learning of other students in the classroom (e.g., due to lost
      instructional time via classroom disruption). In addition to this mental health curriculum,
      the intervention includes a reading intervention component that has been shown to
      significantly improve the academic progress of students with emotional and behavioral
      problems. In addition to the obvious fundamental need for direct remediation of this academic
      skills deficit that is common among these students, the reading intervention is designed to
      prepare special education students to participate in the academic instruction of the general
      education classroom at a functionally adaptive level.

      Participating schools are randomly assigned to either receive the RECAP program or serve as a
      comparison school (services as usual). Student outcomes will be evaluated in the fall and
      spring of two school years, using behavioral observation, academic testing, and teacher-,
      parent-, and child-reports of psychopathology and social skills.
    

Intervention name(s): RECAP social skills and reading program
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): weekly individual and group sessions
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: mental health; social skills