Collaborative Life Skills Teams Project (CLS-T)

Aims

(1)   Enhance the Collaborative Life Skills Program (CLS), an established school-based intervention for children with ADHD in grades 2-5, with evidence-based team development strategies to promote teamwork among school mental health providers, administrators, teachers, and parents.

(2)   Evaluate the effectiveness of the team-enhanced CLS adaptation (CLS-T), relative to standard CLS, on key team-based and student outcomes in a Hybrid Type III cluster randomized trial in 24 schools in the San Diego and San Francisco Unified School Districts. 

(3)   Determine whether key team-based mechanisms account for the effects are engaged by CLS-T and account for its effects, relative to standard CLS.  

Purpose

School-based interventions for children with ADHD are typically implemented by teams that include mental health providers, teachers, parents, and other professionals. Although collaboration among team members is necessary to the success of these interventions, existing school-based programs have not explicitly targeted teamwork in their implementation. Industrial/Organizational Psychology researchers have identified evidence-based team development interventions through team effectiveness research that are designed to enhance teamwork in a variety of settings, such as space exploration, aviation, and medical care. The purpose of this project is to integrate team development interventions to enhance an established school-based intervention for children with ADHD. This project is part of the Center for Team Effectiveness to Accelerate Evidence-Based Practice Implementation in Children’s Mental Health Services (PIs: Dr. Greg Aarons and Dr. Lauren Brookman-Frazee), supported by funding from the National Institute of Mental Health. (5P50MH126231)

See Video Here 

The Collaborative Life Skills Program (CLS) is an empirically-supported, school-based intervention for children who struggle with regulating their attention and behavior at school and home. CLS was designed by Dr. Linda Pfiffner and her team of researchers at UCSF in collaboration with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). CLS was designed for implementation by school mental health professionals who coordinate three components with teachers, parents and students: 1) behavioral classroom interventions, 2) behavioral parent interventions, and 3) student skills groups. The effectiveness of CLS on student success has supported by several clinical trials in SFUSD, as well as schools in Sinaloa, Mexico. For more information about CLS, please visit https://psych.ucsf.edu/HALP/research/CLS. 

Team Charters are a written document developed collaboratively by the team at the outset of their work together outlining expectations, goals, roles and responsibilities, and relevant policies and procedures for team collaborative operations. Research shows that Team Charters strengthen trust, cohesion, and team processes, such as goal specification, communication, and coordination among team members to optimize team effectiveness. 

Handoff protocols are widely used interventions for ensuring continuity in patient care and minimizing errors in medical settings. They have also been found to improve trust, cohesion, communication, and coordination among team members. 

Team Performance Monitoring provides feedback to teams that can motivate performance, provide opportunities for adaptation in the event of challenges, and prompt communication among team members. 

Sites:  The study will be carried out at two sites: San Diego State University (PI: Dr. Miguel Villodas) and the University of California San Francisco (PI: Dr. Linda Pfiffner). 

School Partners: The project will be conducted in partnership with 24 elementary schools in the San Francisco Unified and National School Districts.