Coping Power

This is an evidence-based program for dealing with behavioural problems in pre-adolescent children, concentrating on those who are beginning to show signs of severe aggression and social dysfunction at school. Children who begin to exhibit aggression as pre-adolescents are much more likely to have histories of substance abuse, interpersonal violence, and criminal behaviour in their adolescence. By targeting these children before their behaviour has become extremely dangerous or unmanageable, this program has been proven to reduce the occurrence of these problems, and to improve functioning in school.

This new edition of the Facilitator Guide provides an overview of the Coping Power Program with an emphasis on the child component; a companion guide provides an overview of the parent component. Child component group sessions can take place at children's schools (after school, before school, or during non-academic homeroom periods) in preventive interventions or when used by school-based mental health clinicians, or at mental health outpatient clinics. The program has primarily been offered in group session format, although it can be used in individual therapy sessions with relatively minor adaptations, as described in this Guide.

The Coping Power child component program addresses the emotional regulation and social-cognitive deficits, using a Contextual Social-Cognitive Model. Outcome research from a series of randomized control trials indicate that Coping Power can have lasting effects in reducing children's externalizing and internalizing behavior problems through longer-term follow-up periods. This new edition of the Implementation Guide provides details about how the therapeutic alliance and therapist behaviors can affect the strength of the Coping Power program's outcomes, and how therapists can effectively handle children's difficult behaviors that can arise during group sessions.