Adapting Olweus for an After-School Program

The YWCA of York, Pennsylvania, bolstered their community’s bullying and violence prevention efforts by adding the Olweus Bullying Prevention program to its after-school programming. The YWCA’s after-school program provides an ideal setting to reinforce the Olweus program students already experience in many of York’s schools.

Adapting a School-Based Intervention for a Community-Based Organization

YWCA enlisted the services of Family-Child Resources, a local organization responsible for implementing school-based Olweus programs. With oversight from an Olweus master trainer, Family-Child Resources adapted a number of the program elements. They started by changing the baseline survey language to reflect the difference between school and after-school settings. Since the YWCA is by nature a drop-in program, attendance fluctuates on a daily basis. To accommodate this situation, the program adapters held all discussions and activities multiple times to ensure that all youth could participate in the program. In addition, the YWCA implemented the program with teens in grades 9 to 12, an age group not typically served through the Olweus program.

Core Elements Integral to Implementation

The critical core elements of the Olweus program remain at the heart of the intervention, especially the focus on community awareness and involvement. The Community Committee, similar to the school-based Bullying Prevention Coordinating Committee, is made up of YWCA staff and program coordinators who lead the Y's program activities and interact frequently with the youth targeted by the program. The entire YWCA staff, including front-desk staff, preschool program staff, and group leaders, received the Olweus training in bullying prevention.

Now that the staff has been trained and the baseline survey conducted among the children, the YWCA staff is looking forward to implementing the Olweus activities planned through June. The National Center will follow up with this EBI adaptation in practice in the coming months.

For more information on the Olweus Bullying Prevention program, visit the Clemson University Web site or read the Olweus Fact Sheet.