Learning System

Tiered Behavioral Support
Universal Promotion
Targeted Prevention
Individualized Intervention

Contexts for Use

Adaptation with fidelity

Ripple Effects for Kids
System Requirements
Screen shots
Topics
Pricing

Ripple Effects for Teens
System Requirements
Screen shots
Topics
Pricing
Demo

Ripple Effects for Staff
System Requirements
Topics
Pricing

Ripple Effects evidence-based technology makes it easier
Educators are increasingly being asked to provide targeted prevention education in dozens of non-academic areas that affect today’s students. The problem areas can broadly be divided into:

• health related issues, like substance abuse, PTSD and depression
• personal safety issue, like bullying, gang violence, physical & sexual abuse
• school achievement issues, from truancy, to test phobia, to teacher conflict

School failure, behavioral problems and substance abuse and other health issues have been shown to be inter-dependent variables that can be linked to each other, as well as to common external risk factors, such as family discipline patterns, mental health problems, poverty, and community violence.

In some cases, substance abuse leads to problem behaviors, and problem behavior leads to school failure. In others, school failure leads to substance abuse, and substance abuse leads to problem behavior. In still others, anti-social behavior leads to school failure, which in turn leads to substance abuse. Individual mental health problems, especially PTSD and depression, may trigger any, or all, of the three responses. Regardless of which is the first presenting problem, they commonly are enmeshed and almost always are related to deeper personal, family and community issues, which also need to be somehow addressed.

Proven effective prevention strategies

A range of school-based programs have been developed to separately affect anti-social behavior (Michelson, 1987), school failure (Eggert, 1994; Slavin, 1994), and substance abuse (Tobler, 1992) among adolescents. Strategies involving components of these programs have demonstrated effectiveness in changing adolescent behavior and/or attitudes. (Gottfredson, Gottfredson & Skroban, 1996).

A meta analysis of hundreds of evidence based practices, show that effective strategies to prevent anti-social behavior include Cognitive, Behavioral, Interpersonal, Social skill and Attention training as well as personal Counseling. (Lipsey 2007)

But few teachers have been trained in the huge body of relevant evidence-based practices EVP) for prevention. Fewer still have the skills to individualize the application of EVP to the particular needs of each child. And an expanding list of requirements for academic instruction and testing leaves little time to fit in the long list of prevention subjects.

Teachers need a comprehensive set of already prepared, prevention programs, with full multi-media capacity, that are reading independent, allow tracking of student progress, and can be adapted to real world time constraints, without compromising fidelity to EVP.  Ripple Effects provides that for

Health
Suicide, Depression
Substance Abuse
Pregnancy/HIV-AIDS
PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)
Obesity and Eating disorders

Safety
Abuse Physical & Sexual
Dating Violence
Bias Offenses
Bullying
Online Exploitation
Violence
Sexual Harassment

Academic Failure

For more information contact us.

Prevention efforts are often divided into three levels
Primary prevention at the individual student level involves universal promotion of abilities that have been shown to be protective factors for health, safety and academic achievement. Such programs go by various names, such as character education, asset building, positive youth development and social emotional competence. Instructions for using Ripple Effects software for primary prevention with both students and teachers) are included in a separate manual, entitle “Universal Promotion Guide.”

Secondary prevention targets people who have internal or external factors that put them at risk for less than optimal health, safety or school outcomes. These factors exist in every domain: individual (lack of empathy, emotional regulation, self-efficacy or impulse control), peers (friends who cut school, use drugs, disdain authority, mock school success), family, (parental mental health, substance abuse, discipline and communication patterns) school, (school climate, consistency of discipline), community (poverty, violence), and social structures, such as racism and institutionalized gender or class bias.  This is the level of prevention covered by this guide.