Comfort Box: a Tool for Fostering Emotional Self-Regulation for Children from Families at Risk

Project duration:

October 2016 – September 2017

Donor:

Governmental Fund for the Promotion of Public Health (Valstybinis visuomenės sveiatos stiprinimo fondas)

Project goals:

This project focus on the children growing up in a families at risk and experiencing more even more social and psychological problems. The status of family at risk refers to families in which at least one of the parents have alcohol, drug problems or have been reported as neglecting his or her children’s physical or emotional needs. The project is aimed to increase resilience and prevent serious mental health problems in the group of 7-12 year old children from those families by improving their self-help and emotional self-regulation skills. The methodology called “Comfort box” will be applied to children visiting day-care centres in 16 municipalities. During the project the specialists working with the children in the day care centres will be trained and will conduct the activities with children under the professional supervision. The methodology will introduce the children with the variety of emotional reactions and their purpose by the means of games, reading a fairy-tale, discussions and preparation of a comfort box itself meant to contain strong and unpleasant emotions.

Expected results:

•    A manual of “Comfort box” methodology will be prepared tailored for the work with a specific group of children.

•    44 specialists working in day-care centres with children from risk families will gain knowledge about mental health and emotions as well as to use the “Comfort box” methodology

•    350 children will participate in “Comfort box” activities and will get the cardboard boxes.

•    The quality of the methodology will be evaluated.

•    Information about children’s emotional self-regulation and the “Comfort box” methodology will reach at least 3000 people via the internet.

Project budget: 20 000 EUR