About Successful Horizons
Why Our Programs Work
At Successful Horizons, all of our prevention and intervention programs have:
- A foundation based in research
- Testable outcomes
- Ongoing evaluation…pre/post intervention
By staying current about the issues that impact children and families, we are able to design prevention programs and initiatives that meet the needs of children and families throughout the world. Our continuous program evaluation efforts help us make modifications that ensure these programs stay up-to-date. And we do it all in a cost-effective way so that they are affordable and easy to implement in schools, communities and homes.
Larger learning establishments can stay current about the issues that impact children and families, which individuals need help, and what areas will need remediation. This information will assist to design and implement prevention programs and initiatives that meet the needs of children and families throughout the community. When continuous program evaluation efforts are utilized then this will help administrators make modifications that ensure these programs stay up-to-date. This can be done in the most cost-effective way since initiatives can be directed where these will be needed to be implemented - which individuals, schools, communities and/or homes. Then these intervention methods can be post tested as to their effectiveness even on a longitudinal basis.
We believe that the advent of internet and personal computers will change the future of our children’s opportunities to learn and network. The computer can be the equalizer of opportunities for the poor, rural and under developed countries to make a giant leap forward by educating our future adults. Likewise the computer will educate the administrators on how to better utilize statistics, identify needs, and map their future goals for their schools and their communities.
Mission Statement
Allow individual child, youth, and young adults to express their own opinions of key strengths in their intrapersonal and interpersonal skills and to identify their support system at school, with peers and at home.
- To disseminate this information back to the individual to help them develop positive horizons aimed towards a successful life.
- To give information back to the school and the community about the strengths and needs of their growing population.
- To develop a longitudinal study to follow the growth and development of an individual as well as a community thus also allowing pre/post statistical evidence of successful intervention techniques.
- To make available back to the public the intervention techniques available and the statistical evidence of their success.
- To make this material available in multiple languages.
- To identify if there are specific healthy behaviors, support systems, and skills that cross cultural barriers and assist individuals and systems to be more successful.
- Since there are many rural and under funded institutions that do not have the resources larger academic systems possess, then to make all the results of this overall group research and the successful intervention programs being used easily available and free of charge through written and online publications and bibliographies.
The Research
Findings being translated into treatment practice in a timely manner… fundamental need to involve the decision makers to have more relevant research…. and made available to key decision makers directed towards a community wide effort to improve the status of the youth’s support in the most relevant manner… homework hot lines… extended community adult support… youth centers… recreation centers… mentoring… job opportunities. Research that allows decision makers to identify what problems the youth face in your specific community… What intervention is successful… What is it that we don’t know that we need to know.? How can we assist schools to make research easy to work with and understand and to improve treatment?
National Institute of Mental Health in partnership with the Community Mental Health Council, Inc. and the Mental Health Association in Illinois, April 25, 2000 asked “What do neighborhoods contribute to the well-being of children and youth? They stated “To understand the entire sequence of factors and events that ‘make’ people, we must study physiology as well as their community, family, peers and individual characteristics over time. It is very important to study how the setting of the individuals: family, school, peers, and internal self talk shape them and then adapt the neighborhood and school resources to meet the needs of their population.
Why does one community have a higher rate of crime, drug abuse, drop out rate with another neighbor hood does not? Why does one person succeed in an unsafe environment when another one does not? Why does one become a delinquent while another in the same environment does not? One researcher, Dr. Felton Earl’s professor of child psychiatry at Harvard Medical school and professor of human behavior and development at the Harvard school of Public Health. … dubbed the term “collective efficacy” of a neighborhood is how neighbors work together to solve problems and thereby create a healthy environment for children’s growth. And as this increases then violence decreases, that is until children get older and are influenced by other neighborhoods i.e. bussing,
National Public Affairs Office
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/edu9811.pdf
It’s often the quiet ones who get ignored and quietly drop of school or become unsuccessful. Successful Horizons will identify those children who lack peer or family support, and those children who are withdrawn, as well as those children who are overly aggressive or high risk for problem behavior by self admission. The president requested “No child left behind” which is also the goal of successful horizons.
One longitudinal study, conducted over a five-year period following 380 students from age 5-years old to 11-years old, found that children who are rejected by their peers have more trouble engaging in school activities than children who are not rejected by their peers. This kind of rejection can increase the likelihood that children are victimized or excluded by peers and impair a child's ability to interact with other children, participate in classroom activities and participate in the social context of the classroom. It can result in long-term maladjustment that may endure throughout a child's school years
Despite the recent emphasis that has been placed on bullying and victimization in school children,” exclusion, although not as visible as verbal or physical forms of abuse, may be particularly detrimental to children's participation in many school activities,” said lead author Eric Buhs, Ph.D., of the University of Nebraska. Relative to other types of peer relationships, peer group rejection appeared to be one of the strongest predictors of a child's likely or unlikely success in academics.