Testing the Efficacy of the Ability School Engagement Partnership Program (ASEP)

The University of Queensland

Status: Unknown

Conditions: School Attendance; Antisocial Behavior; Welfare Dependence

Treatments: Behavioral: Ability School Engagement Program Conference

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04281966

2019002851

Details and patient eligibility

About

This project is an up-scaled test of the Ability School Engagement Partnership (ASEP) Project. The ASEP is a partnership program that aims to increase school attendance and is grounded in the theory of Third-Party-Policing (TPP). In ASEP, school-based police officers partner with schools (i.e., the third-party) who have legal powers to control and prevent school absenteeism. The ASEP intervention includes an ASEP conference in which the legal requirements to attend school are explicitly communicated in a procedurally just way to young people missing school and their parents/guardians. Restorative Outcomes Australia (ROA) is a provide provider partner who will oversee the facilitation of the ASEP conferences. While the program is designed to re-engage these young people in school and/or facilitate transitions to work and reduce antisocial behavior (e.g., delinquency), this trial will also test the capacity of the program to improve collaboration between the schools and police and also monitor young participants' future life outcomes, such as future welfare dependence.

Full description

The ASEP is grounded in the theory of Third Party Policing (TPP). TPP interventions focus on controlling negative behavioral outcomes through partnerships that use a third party's legal powers. In ASEP, the police partner with the schools to work together to engage with young people, reduce their anti-social behavior and increase their school attendance. At the core of the partnership is communication of the legal lever: in ASEP, it is the Queensland Education (General Provisions) Act (2006) - requiring young people attend school up to age 16 and holding parents legally responsible. The laws are communicated to parents and young people who are not regularly attending school in a procedurally fair way within the context of an ASEP conference. The ASEP conference is especially designed to incorporate fair communication of the laws and consequences and involves a purpose-built script that seeks to increase willingness of both parents and young people to comply with the law. The ASEP conference participants include a trained facilitator (from Restorative Outcomes Australia; ROA), the young person missing a lot of school, their parent or guardian, a uniformed school-based police officer, and a school representative (e.g., teacher). An individually tailored Action Plan is developed during the conference which stipulate the "actions" that all conference participants are to take over the subsequent two months in order to ensure that the young person increases their school attendance and re-engages with school and/or transitions into paid work.

Enrollment: 753 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 12 to 16 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• High school aged young people only, aged 12 to 16;
• Have 15% or more unexplained absences over each other previous two school terms;
• Have no known legitimate explanation for absences (e.g., ongoing medical issue); and
• Have at least one responsibly adult in their lives (e.g., parent, guardian, or carer) who provides social and/or financial support.

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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753 participants in 2 patient groups

Experiment

Experimental group

Description:

For young people from schools randomly assigned to the experimental ASEP condition will participate in the ASEP intervention. The ASEP intervention is a Third-Party Policing partnership that involves a partnership between police and school, an ASEP conference and follow up which is organized and led by a conference facilitator with the young person, their parent (or guardian), a school representative (e.g., teacher), and a uniformed school-based police officer. The police and school representatives will be trained by the facilitator to utilize procedurally just dialogue during the entirety of the conference. The ASEP conference script will utilize a procedurally just dialogue to increase both the young person and their parents' perceptions and knowledge of the legitimacy of the truancy laws, police, and schools in order to gain willing compliance to follow the rules.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Ability School Engagement Program Conference

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants allocated to the control condition will be given the "business-as-usual' approach to handling school non-attendance. The control participants will be sanctioned in the usual manner for engaging in truancy through the requirements denoted in the Queensland Education (General Provisions) Act (2006).