Community College Foundation Case Study

Organization: The Community College Foundation (CCF)

Program Name: Mind Matters

Funding: California Behavioral Health Youth Initiative

What problem is being solved? Addressing and mitigating trauma with high-needs youth, families, and communities.

Curricula Used: Mind Matters: Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience

Curricula Benefits:

• Meets the needs of youth by providing trauma navigation skills.
• Supports trauma recovery
• Youth can teach their friends the exercises
• Effective as community-based program
• Non-clinical intervention

Target Audience:

• Undeserved youth at high risk
• System-involved youth primarily child welfare and corrections
• Highly traumatized youth

Audience Demographics:

• Average participant — 19-year-old Latina
• Age range — 14 and up
• Majority — Female
• Majority — Latino

Class Size: 10-15 youth

Location of Instruction: Zoom (Highly traumatized youth preferred Zoom because it felt safer.)

Length of Instruction (# of Sessions and hours per session): A monthly 3-week series of workshops which run every month except December. Meet on Zoom from 5pm–6:30pm on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Instructors:

CCF staff  — all have at minimum two years of youth experience in direct youth work and a BA in behavioral science, or related major (theater, humanities).

Youth peer facilitators have lived experience with system involvement, are high school graduates (or actively working on it) and alumni of the Mind Matters course.

Instructor Training Protocol: 

• • Dibble’s Mind Matters training

Additional professional development on topics of:

• • Trauma informed engagement
  • Sexually exploited children
  • Sensitivity training
  • Motivational Interviewing
  • Mandated Reporter

Student Journals: Each youth uses Mind Matters PDF fillable journal.

Youth Incentives: A total of 80$ for attending the entire Mind Matters workshop

• $20 on the day they do the pre-work
• $10 per session ($40 total)
• $20 when they successfully complete

Observable Outcomes:

• Youth become more comfortable with the content as trust is developed with staff.
• Youth remark that they use the skills in their own lives.
• Youth demeanors’ seem calmer.
• A small sample of students took the National Outcome Measures (NOMs) measured before and after MM course. 37% reported overall increased mental health.
• Youth share more and direct message their mentors more frequently.
• Reports back from mentors is that the young people’s emotional regulation is better.
• Students share tools with their mentors.

Challenges:

• Language can be too technical, and some concepts need more support. So, instead of using the term “peripheral vision” they call it “focus like a panorama shot” or “soft focus.”
• Culture of wellness and self-care with system-involved youth is not in their experience.
• Following and understanding tapping was difficult. Tapping felt out of reach.

Tips:

• They send earbuds to all participants to use for privacy.
• Youth are encouraged to answer in the chat if they can’t speak out loud.
• Teach in teams of two.
• Demystify some of the practices (i.e. meditation = sitting.)
• Find a way to explain the practices in ways they can understand.
• They added a pat-down for self-soothing — shoulder pats, arms, seal hands, etc.
• They liked learning practices that could be done in public to self soothe.
• Minimize surprises with the youth. Ask all facilitators to attend the initial class meeting, so youth know their faces in case of substitution. Give youth an overview of what they will be doing each class.
• Have facilitators model self-care and appropriate transparency (i.e. admit when they are wrong or made a mistake, disclose, for hypervigilant youth anything that might change their micro expressions, ex: “I have a headache today, so if I’m frowning or seem tired, that is why”.)