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Building Staff Co-Regulation to Support Healthy Relationships in Youth
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Building Staff Co-Regulation to Support Healthy Relationships in Youth

OPRE Report #2021-10
Published: Mar 02, 2021
Publisher: Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Human Services Family Support Youth Development

Clients

OPRE Logo

Authors

Aly Frei

Mindy Herman-Stahl

Scott Baumgartner

Key Findings

  • Self-regulation is fundamental to healthy relationships and is therefore a key target for youth-focused relationship education.
  • Youth experience critical brain development that is enhanced by adult co-regulation support. Co-regulation is the supportive process between caring adults and youth that fosters self-regulation. Co-regulation includes developing and maintaining warm relationships, collaborating with youth to co-create supportive environments, and coaching and modeling the use of skills that promote self-regulation.
  • Integrating a co-regulation framework and teaching program staff to provide co-regulation support may improve youth and program outcomes.
  • The SARHM project provides examples of how programs can adopt a co-regulation framework. Programs can follow the SARHM approach if they: (1) review OPRE’s Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Series and resources; (2) examine current practices for opportunities to enhance relationships, environments, and skills coaching; and (3) collaborate with frontline staff to test and refine co-regulation strategies for use in workshops and the workplace.

Youth need support to process emotions, cope with stress, and for self-regulation—managing thoughts and feelings to achieve goals and make healthy decisions in the moment and for the future. This guide begins by explaining how self-regulation underlies success in many areas of life and why adolescence is a crucial time for caring adults—like HMRE and other youth-serving practitioners—to offer self-regulation support. We introduce the concept of co-regulation, a process through which adults create safe spaces and nurturing relationships as the context for coaching the use of self-regulation skills that promote youths’ healthy development. The guide explains how integrating co-regulation approaches into youth service delivery may improve program implementation and youth outcomes. At the end of the document, you will find information from the SARHM project on specific strategies and resources you can use to improve co-regulation in your program.

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