STRIVE (Support to Reunite, Involve and Value Each Other) is a 5-session family-based intervention intended to reduce sexual risk behaviors, substance use and delinquency among youth who have recently run away from home. The intervention requires participation from both the adolescent and at least one parent. It is delivered to individual families in a community-based setting or in the home by a trained specialist.
| Category | Program Features |
|---|---|
| Setting | Community based or in home |
|
Program Length |
7.5–10 hours/year | 1 year 5 sessions total |
| Age Group | Ages 12–17 newly homeless youth |
| Look Inside |
Table of Contents |
Overview | Description | Population | Author | Who's Using
STRIVE is a 5-session family-based intervention intended to reduce sexual risk behaviors, substance use, and delinquency among youth who have recently run away from home. The intervention requires participation from both the adolescent and at least one parent. It is delivered to individual families in a community-based setting or in the family home by a trained specialist.
STRIVE seeks to improve the stability and quality of residential life, reduce the number of runaway episodes, and minimize HIV-related sexual and substance use risk behaviors among recently homeless adolescents. The intervention is designed to improve family functioning, reduce family conflict, and build problem solving, negotiation and coping skills.
STRIVE is grounded in cognitive-behavioral and family-systems theories and stresses the importance of establishing a positive family climate to reduce the risk of chronic homelessness and associated adolescent risk behaviors. The program is delivered to each family individually through a series of interactive, semi-structured tasks.
The program is designed for newly homeless youth ages 12 to 17.
Norweeta G. Milburn, PhD, is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute Center for Community Health and Director of Research and Evaluation at the Nathanson Family Resilience Center. She received her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). Prior to coming to UCLA, she was an Associate Professor of Psychology at Hofstra University in New York and Assistant Director of the Psy.D. program in School/Community Psychology. Her research interests include homelessness, substance abuse, mental health and family-based behavioral interventions.
Dr. Milburn has been a principal investigator for National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research on homeless adults and youth, and African American youth. She has examined paths into and out of homelessness, as well as the risk for HIV among homeless youth in the U.S. and Australia. She has designed and implemented a behavioral intervention for homeless adolescents at risk for HIV and their families, and she also has designed and tested recruitment strategies for behavioral substance abuse interventions. She has also served as a co-principal investigator on U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and NIMH investigations of coping and adaptation, and anxiety and depression in older African Americans, and as co-investigator on a number of NIMH grants including the training of the next generation of HIV investigators. She has numerous publications and presentations in the areas of homelessness, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and mental health. She has been both a standing and ad hoc member of peer review committees at NIMH.
Dr. Milburn is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association (APA). She has been a member of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, and recently chaired the APA 2009 Presidential Task Force on Psychology’s Contribution to End Homelessness. Her honors include being an inaugural member of the Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology and the Community, Culture and Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research.
The 5 STRIVE sessions are delivered weekly and last between 1.5 to 2 hours. Facilitators can work with up to two youth and their families per day if the intervention is delivered in the home, and more than two per day if families come to the facilitator's location.
The STRIVE Basic Set includes the implementation manual, evaluation assessments, monitoring tools and recruitment and retention materials.
Facilitators should have experience working with at-risk adolescents. A degree such as a BA, BS or MFT is recommended, but not required.
The study was conducted in community settings in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, California. Newly homeless adolescents were recruited for a randomized controlled trial on a rolling basis over a three-year period through community-based organizations and study flyers and advertisements. About half were randomly selected to receive the STRIVE intervention and half were selected for a control group that received only referral services.
The participant group consisted of 151 newly homeless adolescents ages 12 to 17 years and their families. The mean age of the adolescents was 15 years; 66% were female and 34% were male; 62% were Hispanic and 21% were African American.
Surveys were administered before the intervention (baseline) and at follow-ups conducted 3, 6 and 12 months after the intervention.
Twelve months after the intervention:
General Adaptation Guidance | Policy
ETR is a leader in developing adaptation guidelines to enable professionals to adapt evidence-based intervention programs for implementation in underserved communities, while maintaining fidelity to the intervention's core components. To produce the best adaptation tools, ETR works directly with the developer of each intervention to ensure that these tools are of the highest quality and meet the different needs of the field and end users, e.g., teachers, trainers, program mangers/staff, research teams, and funders.
STRIVE can be adapted for other at-risk populations and is currently being adapted for adolescents who are re-entering the community from the juvenile justice system.
See ETR’s General Adaptation Guidance
For answers to Frequently Asked Questions about program adaptations, please visit our Program Support Help Desk.
Read ETR's Adaptations Policy.
For over 30 years, ETR has been building the capacity of community-based organizations, schools, school districts, and state, county and local agencies in all 50 states and 7 U.S. territories to implement and replicate evidenced-based programs (EBPs) to prevent teen pregnancy, STD/STI and HIV. Our nationally recognized training and research teams work in partnership with clients to customize training and technical assistance (TA) to address the needs of their agencies and funding requirements.
A minimum of three full days of training is required. Training is provided by trainers with advanced degrees (MSW, PhD or PsyD) who helped develop the intervention. Training can be provided at UCLA or onsite at the implementer's location.
ETR provides in-person and web- or phone-based TA before, during and/or after program implementation. TA is tailored to the needs of the site and is designed to support quality assurance, trouble-shoot adaptation issues, and boost implementation.
To support a holistic approach to teen pregnancy and HIV prevention programs, ETR offers a number of additional training and technical assistance opportunities, including content-specific workshops, skill-based trainings, organizational development consultation and much more. To learn more about these opportunities, visit our Training & TA pages >>
Adaptation support materials, training and/or TA are available to assist educators/staff in meeting the needs of individual communities by implementing EBPs effectively and consistently with core components. All adaptation support is based on ETR's groundbreaking, widely disseminated adaptation guidelines and kits for effective adaptations.
ETR also provides evaluation support for EBP implementation. ETR uses well-established tools for measuring fidelity and outcomes. ETR's evaluation support blends participatory approaches with cutting-edge evaluation science. Services address process and outcome evaluation and include assistance with evaluation planning, instrument design and development, implementation fidelity, data management and analysis, performance measurement, continuous quality improvement (CQI) protocols, and effective tools and strategies for reporting results.
