Safety, Connection and Reflection: Designing with Therapists for Children with Serious Emotional Behaviour Issues

Title of the Paper

Safety, Connection and Reflection: Designing with Therapists for Children with Serious Emotional Behaviour Issues

Paper Information

• Topic Area: Designing technological interventions to support mental health and social-emotional learning, with a specific focus on children with serious emotional behavior issues.
• Keywords: Social-emotional learning, emotional regulation, reflection, children, therapy, trauma, sense of safety, experience, framework

Research Background and Problem

• What issues or challenges did the authors identify?

  • Over 493,000 Australian children aged 4-10 experience abnormal emotional problems, and 5 million adult Australians have unresolved childhood trauma.
  • Trauma significantly impacts individuals' quality of life, including impairments in education, relationships, work capabilities, and increased health risk behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, obesity, anxiety).
  • While extensive research has explored how technology can improve the accessibility and effectiveness of mental health treatments, there is limited research on digital design tools specifically for treating children with serious emotional behavior issues.
  • There is a lack of technology designs focused on supporting reflection processes and behavior change, which are crucial for helping these children learn emotional self-regulation.

• Why is this problem important?

  • Emotional self-regulation is a critical component of children's emotional development and social-emotional learning (SEL), directly influencing their ability to manage emotions in educational, clinical, and family settings.
  • Interventions for trauma-affected children require extreme sensitivity, particularly when designing technologies to support reflection and emotional learning, where ensuring activities are safe and low-stress is essential.

• Motivation and Related Work

  • The authors were inspired by theories from psychology and neuroscience on social-emotional learning and trauma-informed therapeutic approaches, aiming to address the gap in HCI research regarding technological and design tools for reflection support in trauma-affected children.
  • Related work includes HCI research on designing technologies for learning disabilities, ASD, and multi-sensory therapeutic interventions.

Solution

• What methods or solutions did the authors propose?

  • The authors proposed a framework for supporting social-emotional learning reflection activities, named the "Safety, Connection and Reflection Framework." This framework outlines a phased experience that meets children's needs for safety and social recovery through pre-reflection, reflective activity, and post-reflection processes.
  • They also designed a reflective storytelling activity in collaboration with a clinical psychology team, providing a platform for children with trauma backgrounds to reflect on emotional behaviors.

• What is innovative about this solution?

  • The framework integrates theories from psychology and neuroscience, emphasizing the importance of ensuring children's psychological safety before any learning or reflection activities.
  • The technological design incorporates elements such as space, distance, visual components, and emotional expression, aiming to simulate strategies therapists use during reflection processes.
  • By collaborating with therapists and involving parent-child co-design activities, the research sensitively integrates into existing therapeutic practices, avoiding harm to vulnerable groups.

• What are the implementation steps and key technologies used?

  1. Contextual Investigation: Conducting interviews and guided visits with experienced clinical teams to understand their workflows in clinics.
  2. Collaborative Design: Co-designing a reflective storytelling activity with therapists, including an interactive toolkit to support reflection involving both children and parents.
  3. Pilot Study: Testing the designed activity through role-playing with therapists and iteratively improving the design.
  4. Discussion and Validation: Observing the dynamics of children and parents participating in the activity during actual workshops and documenting the effectiveness of interaction elements.

Research Outcomes

• What specific outcomes were achieved?

  • A comprehensive design framework was proposed, encompassing children's safety, social connection, and reflective experiences, to guide future technology-supported reflection activities.
  • A prototype storytelling toolkit was developed, including visual materials, scenarios, and prompt language to help therapists guide children through emotional expression and behavior reflection.

• How does it compare to existing solutions?

  • It uniquely combines the expertise of clinical therapists with design research methodologies, ensuring both activities and technology designs are embedded within existing practices.
  • It provides design guidance specifically for trauma-affected children, particularly on how experiential design can support emotional regulation, behavior change, and social-emotional skill learning.

• What were the experimental or evaluation results?

  • Workshops revealed that children used visualization tools to express emotions during reflective storytelling activities; the story content provided insights into both reflective memory and future behavior.
  • Parents expressed the need for improvements in the toolkit, including more diverse visual materials to better reflect family dynamics.

• Limitations and Future Directions

  • Limitations: The current work involved only one family in the workshop, with a limited sample size requiring further expansion; the framework has yet to undergo large-scale testing.
  • Future Directions:
    • Further development of digital toolkits to support reflection activities across different contexts, such as homes and schools outside clinical settings.
    • Development of more tools targeted at parents to help them guide children in emotional self-regulation and relationship repair within family environments.
    • Exploration of advanced technologies such as robotics and virtual reality to help children create alternative behavioral paths and enhance emotional expression.
    • Extending the framework's application to other age groups or children with special needs in social-emotional learning.

This study provides interdisciplinary theoretical and practical contributions, particularly in exploring how technology design can sensitively intervene in trauma-affected children's mental health treatments.