MBF Child Safety Matters® is a comprehensive curriculum for elementary school students in grades K-5. The program educates and empowers children and all relevant adults with information and strategies to prevent, recognize, and respond appropriately to bullying, cyberbullying, all types of abuse, and digital abuse dangers.
This program is approved for WV Expanded School Mental Health.
Last reviewed: 2023
Intended Outcomes:
The goals of MBF Child Safety Matters® are:- Students will have increased knowledge about various types of abuse and victimization.
- Students will recognize and respond appropriately to Red Flags and unsafe situations.
- Students will demonstrate an increase in skilled response to unsafe situations using 5 Safety Rules.
- Students will identify Safe Adults and demonstrate good communication skills with Safe Adults.
- Students will demonstrate increased communication with parents/guardians regarding their safety.
- Personnel at the school students attend will have increased capacity to educate and protect children and provide for their safety.
- Parents of the students will have increased capacity to educate and protect children and provide for their safety.
Continuum of Care:
Universal Prevention
Topic Areas:
Behavioral Health/Mental Health, Physical Health, Substance Use, Trauma
Ages:
Childhood (4-12)
Geographic Locations:
Rural, Urban
Delivery Settings:
Community-Based, School-Based
Cultural Considerations:
A balanced amount of the research involved diverse populations
Audience:
This program is intended for students grades Pre-K-5
Credentials:
Facilitators typically have a 4-year degree in a human service or education field and at least one year of experience working with children, or a combination of education and experience. The most important requirement is that a facilitator be comfortable discussing with students the sensitive topics contained in the program.
Manuals:
Yes
Is Training Required?
No
Who can provide the required training?
Although training is not technically required, the expectation is that prior to implementing the classroom lessons, anyone who will be facilitating lesssons will complete the Facilitator Training. You will receive access to a 2.5-hour online training after completing your order.
Program Costs (materials, training, etc.):
Yes, refer to program website
Program/Practice Website:
https://www.mbfpreventioneducation.org
Relevant Published, Peer-Reviewed Research:
Bright, M., Sayedul Huq, M., Patel, S., Miller, M. D., & Finkelhor, D. (2022). Child Safety Matters: Randomized control trial of a school-based child victimization prevention curriculum. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (37, 1-2), 538-556.
Kenny, M. C., Long, H., Billings, D., & Malik, F. (2021). School-based abuse prevention programming: Implementation of child safety matters with minority youth. Association of Child Protection Professionals.
Weeks, E., Whitaker, D. J., Pendarvis, S., Finkelhor, D., Neal-Rossi, C., & Rivers, D. (2021). Evaluation of the Child Safety Matters curriculum for improving knowledge about victimization among elementary school children: A randomized trial. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, (30, 8), 977-993.
Additional Sources:
WV Rating:
Promising
»WV Ratings Info
Rationale for Rating:
Identified literature suggested that Child Safety Matters has been shown effective with relatively large effective sizes in thousands of students via RCT and pre-post designs (e.g., Bright et al., 2022; Kenny et al., 2021; Weeks et al., 2021). Literature has also shown efficacy for different sexes (i.e., boys, girls, others), races (i.e., white, African American, Asian, two or more), SES (i.e., free or reduced lunch classification), location (i.e., rural, urban), and ethnicities (i.e., Hispanic) within both public and private/charter schools.
Issues of the identified literature included:
- Limited well-designed studies available with additional identified studies lacking methodological rigor
- Among larger, well-designed studies (e.g., RCT), limited external validity due to studies using state-wide data (e.g., Georgia; Weeks et al., 2021)
- Limited evaluation of student and teacher factors including pathology and other interventions (e.g., therapy, medications, etc.)
- Requires greater emphasis on the use of standardized measures to allow more direct comparison between studies
- Lack of diversity of student body in term of disability (e.g., Bright et al., 2022 excluded special education classrooms)
- Requires long-term follow-up to evaluate longitudinally-sustained gains
- Many studies involved same authors (e.g., Finkelhor, Whitaker)
Contraindications or Concerns:
None identified
Other Registries/Ratings
The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare:
Promising Research Evidence
Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development:
Not On Registry
Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness:
Not On Registry
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Model Programs Guide:
Not On Registry
Washington State Institute for Public Policy:
Not On Registry