Developing social and emotional wellbeing in young children: an evaluation of the Fun FRIENDS Program

Abstract

Social and emotional well-being plays an important role in young children's development and impacts upon their success in school and in life. Population health and positive psychology perspectives assert that all children can benefit from school based, universal interventions aimed at promoting mental health and enhancing the social and emotional well-being of young children. A non-clinical sample of preschool age children (N = 42) participated in a classroom based, universal social and emotional well-being program titled Fun FRIENDS. Teachers and parents reported on children's social and emotional wellbeing using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Data was collected at three time points, allowing changes in social and emotional well-being to be tracked over a period of time. Teacher reported data indicated that several areas of social and emotional difficulty, specifically the emotional symptoms of all children, hyperactivity of boys, and the emotional symptoms, hyperactivity and overall social and emotional difficulties of girls, decreased during the time that the Fun FRIENDS program was implemented. Effect sizes for these observed changes were in the medium to large range. In the absence of a control group, the effects of natural maturation cannot be dismissed as influencing these changes in social and emotional well-being and so results must be interpreted with caution. Parent data identified no significant changes in children's social and emotional well-being over the duration of the study. Further research is needed to explore the discrepancy between teacher and parent data and to evaluate the program more thoroughly with a control group for comparison.