A pilot study that Nebraska Children’s Home Society (NCHS) is testing in collaboration with Frontiers of Innovation (FOI), the R&D platform of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University is currently underway at the Nebraska Children's Home Society.
CEO of NCHS, Lana Temple-Plotz, spent some time explaining the program to Mike Hogan "Live & Local" on KIOS-FM. In the two-part interview below, Lana explains that the goal of FOI is to accelerate the development and adoption of science-based innovations that achieve breakthrough impact at scale for young children and families facing adversity. Ultimately, the goal is to boost children’s and their caregivers’ executive functioning and self-regulation skills for greater success in school and life.
The TFP curriculum focuses on language to build executive functioning in both parents/caregivers and children. The curriculum first establishes “Internal State Words” for thoughts, feelings, sensory perceptions, physical sensations and moral concepts. As children learn, they can use these words to identify and express themselves and develop personal narratives about their experiences. As parents’ skills related to executive function and self-regulation increase, they are able to model use of these language skills with their children. The parents also increase their ability to recognize and respond to their children and provide supportive relationships.
More information about Nebraska Children's Home Society can be found at https://nchs.org/
