The Fast Track Friendship Group program

Children who experience serious and chronic difficulties establishing and maintaining positive peer relationships in elementary school are at high risk for lifelong maladjustment in areas of social, emotional, and behavioral health. A majority of these children exhibit social skill deficits and problematic social behaviors that alienate peers, making it difficult for them to make friends and avoid peer rejection. Over time, their problems often escalate as negative reputations develop, leading to social exclusion and peer victimization. This chapter describes the Fast Track Friendship Group program (Bierman et al., 2017), a small-group social-emotional skills training program that was developed to address the social-emotional skill deficits and negative peer interactions experienced by peer-rejected children. Targeted skill domains include prosocial interaction, communication, emotion regulation, behavioral self-control, coping with social stress, and social problem-solving skills. Programming includes the use of peer partners and therapeutic strategies that foster positive peer group dynamics and enhance self-regulation skills. Program content and implementation are described, along with a review of the research base that informed the design of the program and the set of studies that have validated its efficacy.