Bullying, school anxiety and absenteeism, aggression and other problems that impede children’s well-being are the focus of new research projects at the Offord Centre.

Tracy Vaillancourt has been awarded $1 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to develop a community-based approach to bullying, a problem that affects almost one in three school-aged children.  Her pilot project will enlist physicians, teachers, youth workers, policy makers and others in a community-wide effort to develop new strategies to deal with this problem.

Psychiatrist Ellen Lipman has received a $50,000 Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation/CIBC World Markets Children’s Miracle Award to pilot a community-based temper taming program in rural communities.  The program, which includes group sessions for both children and their parents, has already proven successful in an urban setting, reducing angry and aggressive behaviour in children and improving parent-child interaction.  Click here to learn more about the temper taming program.

Another study will investigate the causes of school-related anxiety, a problem that keeps as many as five per cent of children out of class on a regular basis.  Kathy Bennett, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, has received a SSHRC grant to conduct this first-ever study designed to improve prevention and early intervention strategies for children who refuse to go to school.

In another first, the Offord Centre has partnered with Voices for Children, an organization dedicated to advancing the well-being of Ontario children and youth, to create Kids Grow Ontario, a province-wide network that will gather and share information about the developmental health of children and youth in Ontario communities.  Funded by a high-impact grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the effort involves several Offord Centre researchers, including Sam Gardner, Magdalena Janus and Cindy Walsh.  Click here to learn more about Kids Grow Ontario.

Congratulations to all!  Their work is instrumental in advancing our understanding of the role of the social environment in children’s mental health, particularly the role played by families and by institutions such as schools.