Multimedia Divorce Adjustment for Young Children

This application proposes development of DivorceCARE for Young Children, an interactive, multimedia program intended to help young school-age children six-to-eight years old, effectively adjust to their parents' divorce or separation. The program is conceptualized as an extension to the larger Divorce Child Adjustment Resource & Education (DivorceCARE) program, a NIDA-funded suite of divorce- related multimedia prevention programs currently under development at Innovative Training Systems (ITS). The program will contain a set of multimedia child-modules for independent use on the part of young school-age children, as well as a group manual for professionals interested in conducting corresponding supplemental support groups. The program will rely on interactive displacement scenarios, communication telegrams, and other developmentally appropriate psycho-educational strategies to help children in the targeted age group acquire the key skills and resources associated with improved divorce adjustment. Phase I will define the components and content of the program, outline the supplemental group manual, develop prototypes of the computer interface, and produce and test a demo CD-ROM. Phase II involves completion of the proposed program and a field test to demonstrate efficacy and product satisfaction. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: The commercial impact of the project is extraordinarily promising. Nearly 1.5 million children experience the divorce of their parents annually, yet most do not have access to prevention programs to help them make a successful post-divorce adjustment. This product will be distributed through schools, counselors, court-mandated divorce education classes, and book sellers. If found to be helpful by divorcing families, its commercial viability is clearly enormous.