Invest in Kids Provides Support in Colorado

Invest in Kids partners with local communities to provide training and support for the implementation of Incredible Years® parent, child, and teacher programs. Their ongoing support promotes the sustainability of IY programs in Colorado, and ensures high-quality delivery of the programs designed to produce significant positive outcomes for parents, children, and teachers.

Invest in Kids has shared their report of 2020-2021 implementation of Incredible Years® programs. Despite COVID, Invest in Kids continued to offer coaching and support to group leaders through online peer coaching sessions.  Through this support, parent group leaders and teachers were able to pivot to offering the Incredible Years® parenting program and Classroom Dina child program curriculum online. Both parents and teachers reported improvement in children’s social and emotional skills. Parents participating in IY increased their use of positive parenting strategies and decreased harsh, inconsistent, and negative discipline strategies. Check out their blog below!  

Invest in Kids is excited to share that the 2020-2021 Report of The Incredible Years® (IY) in Colorado is now available! 

– by Erin Albrecht, Ph.D., Data and Evaluation Manager, Invest in Kids

This report features the number of students, teachers, and parents that were served by IY programming in Colorado last year, as well as the outcomes for Dinosaur School students and Parent Program participants. This report also includes an Innovations section (see page 10), which documents the numerous ways in which the IIK-IY team flexibly and capably pivoted and modified their coaching supports for The Incredible Years® in response to the ongoing pandemic. 

In addition, the report provides some demographic information about the students, parents, teachers, and Parent Program Facilitators to describe who was served by the program during the 2020-21 program year. 

Key outcomes for the 2020-2021 program year include statistically significant gains in the following: 

• Dinosaur School students’ Social-Emotional Competence, including Academic Skills, Emotion Regulation, and Prosocial Communication
• Dinosaur School students’ Social-Emotional Skills 
• Parents use of Appropriate Discipline, Clear Expectations, and Positive Parenting practices
• Parents use of Harsh Discipline and Inconsistent Discipline 

IIK-IY staff at Invest in Kids partnered with Colorado communities across 20 counties to support the delivery of IY for parents, teachers, and young children. Dinosaur School, Parent Program, and a TCM Book Study were delivered in school and community-based settings to 4,027 children, 399 teachers and educational staff, 67 Parent Program Facilitators, and 375 Parent Program participants with coaching and technical support from Invest in Kids. 

Follow the link here to dig into the 2020-21 report and learn more about IY, the IIK-IY evaluation, and Invest in Kids support for high-quality delivery of IY across the state of Colorado.