Medical Delta Living Lab 'Life skills'

An increasing number of children and young people are experiencing psychosocial problems that affect their mental health. This leads to health complaints, inequality of opportunity, poorer school performance, and dropout rates. The importance of improving the mental health of children and young people is significant and requires a preventive approach.

For mental well-being, life skills are necessary, such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Life skills promote positive behavior and enable children and young people to adapt to their circumstances. Life skills reduce problem behavior, such as bullying and negative thoughts. 

Educational program for different ages and courses

The Medical Delta Living Lab 'Life Skills' aims to teach children and young people life skills that enhance positive behavior and reduce problem behavior. To achieve this, the current Life Skills curriculum is being further developed, and new educational programs are being created for different ages and educational levels.

Enhancing life skills can promote equality of opportunity, especially when parents are involved. A good alignment between parents and schools positively influences the development of children and young people. Notably, the lab also focuses on professional collaboration with parents and caregivers, allowing the life skills programs to extend beyond the school walls. 

The Medical Delta Living Lab 'Life Skills' employs design-based research. Interventions for various problems are designed from within the living lab. These interventions are tested and evaluated, and based on the results, they are revised and retested. This process of redesigning, testing, evaluating, adjusting, and retesting occurs in short cycles. The goal is to develop interventions that are effective in enhancing life skills and professional collaboration with parents. 

Further development of existing preventive program

The preventive life skills program for secondary education is already an recognized curriculum for social and emotional learning and is included in the NJi database for Effective Youth Interventions. The curriculum targets all students within regular secondary education. There is a need for further development and expansion of the program so that it can also reach younger children, young people in special secondary education, and those in higher education. 

In co-creation with the target groups, programs are developed from the living lab that are relevant to the times and take into account the differences among students. 

Goals

The goals are:

• To further develop the curriculum together with the target groups so that there is a program for primary education, secondary (special) education, and higher education (mbo/hbo/university);
• To pay attention to an inclusive representation in content, text, and design, allowing all youth to identify with it;
• To develop knowledge on how the life skills program can contribute to equality of opportunity in education for different age groups, and which student and teacher characteristics play a role in this;
• To create offerings for (future) education professionals for the implementation of life skills and to strengthen professional collaboration with parents;
• To translate outcomes/interventions into and implement them in education for students (mbo/hbo/university) so that they are aware of the importance of developing life skills.

Contact

For more information or if you're interested in participating, please contact one of our innovation managers.