Monitoring system of implementation of the Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS) program

Abstract

Effective school-based mental health programs are a research field with growing interest and great social value. At the stage of development and initial testing of the program, as well as during dissemination, and adaptation in other cultures, it is important that the implementation is carried out in the way that was originally intended. Fidelity or adherence is the most often used concept relating to the extent to which the implemented intervention corresponds to the originally intended program. Therefore, monitoring of the implementation is an essential element necessary to integrate into contemporary evidence-based program. The current paper describes the monitoring system developed for the Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS) project. The monitoring was done on both the structural and procedural aspects of the program’s implementation, involving the evaluation of five core aspects: fidelity, dosage, quality, responsiveness, and adaptation. This methods article aims to describe the development of the monitoring system and to analyze the strengths of the qualitative-quantitative multi-informant approach in the monitoring of the intervention’s implementation. In the future, this would support further research on effectiveness of the PROMEHS program.

A multi-component curriculum to promote teachers’ mental health: Findings from the PROMEHS program

“…This study indicates that the implementation of PROMEHS by trained and supported school teachers leads to an enhancement in their social and emotional learning, resilience and self-efficacy, and consequently their mental health. The program underlines the importance that teachers implementing mental health programs in school, need to be supported in developing and accessing personal and contextual resources at school, through high-quality training courses, adequate resources and mentoring support (Martinsone et al, 2022b).…”

“…The The experimental group received the intervention between the pre-test and the post-test, whereas the waiting list group received it after the post-test. To ensure the quality and fidelity of the implementation of the program across countries, the same methodology and contents of the training were kept (Martinsone et al, 2022b).…”

Supporting Preschoolers’ Mental Health and Academic Learning through the PROMEHS Program: A Training Study

“…The training sessions were interactive and gave the teachers the opportunity to reflect on the training contents both individually and with colleagues. During the last session, teachers rated the usefulness of the training and their readiness to implement the program [ 88 ]. The trainers were psychologists, psychomotor therapists, and education specialists with expertise in teacher training and mental health promotion in school settings.…”

“…The trainers were psychologists, psychomotor therapists, and education specialists with expertise in teacher training and mental health promotion in school settings. They also completed some monitoring measures before, during, and at the end of the teacher training [ 88 ].…”

“…(D) To ensure that the PROMEHS program was implemented as intended, the trainers set up three/four supervision sessions (approximately one per month) with groups of teachers, for a total of 9 h. The purpose of these encounters was to learn what activities the teachers had carried out with children, what activities children had carried out with their parents and then had been discussed in the classroom, what challenges teachers had met, and what changes they observed, and to provide any support the teachers required. Both qualitative and quantitative measures as checklists, self-reflection forms, and questionnaires were adopted during these sessions to monitor teachers’ and trainers’ work [ 88 ].…”