The Impact of a School-Based Intervention Program on the Divorce Adjustment of Latency -Aged Children: An Evaluation of the Rainbows Program
Over one million children experience the divorce of their parents each year in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). Concerns about children's well-being led to the development of a multitude of interventions for children coping with divorce. However, only a few of the intervention programs for children of divorce have been described in the professional literature or evaluated in any rigorous manner. The purpose of the current study was to advance our knowledge about how children cope with divorce through an evaluation of the effectiveness of Rainbows, a popular school-based support program for children coping with grief. The Rainbows program was designed to assist children in coping with the immediate and longer term stressors accompanying divorce; with the overarching aim of improving children's well-being and adjustment. For this study, children from Illinois in the fourth, fifth, or sixth grade who experienced parental divorce or separation were invited to participate. A final sample of 66 children from Rainbows groups and 41 children in a control group completed a set of pre-test and post-test questionnaires The results of this study suggest that Rainbows helps children of divorce to maintain their ability to view situations in a positive light. Moreover, children participating in Rainbows reported enhanced well-being and adjustment in comparison to a control group. In addition to contributing to our knowledge about children's response to divorce and the design of evaluation procedures, this study also presents recommendations for best practice for evaluators, program developers, and practitioners of interventions for children coping with parental divorce.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign