skip to main content

Resilience In Our Teens (RIOT)

Parentshop Pty Ltd

The Resilience In Our Teens (RIOT) Project involves whole-school culture change to identify and manage anxiety in teenagers and build resilience.

  • Online

Pricing: Paid

Origin: Developed in Australia for Australian schooling contexts

Affiliations: Approved elsewhere: NSW

Product type: Posters; Fact sheets; Online resources (e.g. videos, games, tools, readings); Whole school approach or initiative; Learning modules; Class lesson plans

Contact details

Parentshop Pty Ltd
ABN: 26 281 659 017

https://www.parentshop.com.au/professionals/resilience-in-our-teens/

service@parentshop.com.au

Focus areas

  • Belonging and inclusion

  • Mental health literacy and life skills

  • Self-regulation and engagement

  • Resilience and optimism

Curriculum alignment

  • Health and PE

Prospective users

Audience: Whole school universal (Tier 1)

Context: School or centre-based

Main beneficiaries: Year 7, Year 8, Year 9, Year 10, Year 11, Year 12

Delivery style: Classroom teacher is trained; Delivered by program staff

Aims & approach

The Resilience In Our Teens project is an evidence-based Australian intervention designed for teachers and parents to assist them to use CBT techniques in their everyday interactions with teens exhibiting anxiety. Developed by psychologists, it takes a whoel school community approach to ensure long lasting wellbeing and learning outcomes.

In its teen form, CBT techniques are mainly used to develop skills in an age-appropriate way, assisting teens to:

  • Apply 'emotional' problem-solving techniques
  • Help 'reframe' their anxious reactions to adverse events
  • Interrupt their anxious thinking
  • Learn how to use arousal-reduction techniques

The program was developed by psychologists, taking a whole-school community approach to ensure long lasting wellbeing and learning outcomes. The program uses a theory of change to support schools over a two-year period to:

  • Reduce anxiety and build resilience in secondary-aged students
  • Improve teen and staff mental health and wellbeing resulting in improved attendance and academic results
  • Provide school leaders, teachers and school staff with the skills and knowledge to respond to individual anxiety issues
  • Engage parents and carer in the task of managing their teen's anxious behaviours

The program follows three key principles:

  1. Significant adults in a teen's life can make a difference.
  2. Locus of control can be shifted from external locus to an internal locus.
  3. Modest changes can make a significant difference.

The principles of the program are designed to be used by teachers, school support staff, and school leaders in their conversations with teens, but the program and its resource materials have also been designed to be offered to parent groups.

The cost is based on the number of school staff trained.

Implementation support

  • Access to professional facilitator, instructor or mentor
  • Implementation training webinars or modules
  • Ongoing helpdesk, email or phone support
  • Regular webinars or access to community of professional practice

Evidence

The Resilience In Our Teens (RIOT) program was designed by a highly experienced teen and family psychologist. It brings together current research on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with a strong pedagogical framework for teaching the program in the context of Australian secondary schools.

A treatment/waitlist-control study completed on one of the Resilience In Our Teens programs in Australia found significant decreases in the accommodation of teen anxiety by parents. The evidence shows that when adults are given training in what reinforces teen anxiety and less often 'accommodate' their teen's anxious behaviour they can ameliorate their teen's anxious responding.