Final Report School Year 2011-12

9729 Parkway East, Suite 103 Birmingham, AL 35215 205.873.9346 www.bhamm.org https://www.facebook.com/PlantProject

Prepared by: Lisa George, BS, BA, MA Educational Coordinator The PLANT PROJECT Program Part of the Birmingham Mentoring Assistance Network lisa.george@bhmman.org 205.873.9672

Comprehensive Description of the Program

The PLANT PROJECT Program started in April 2010 as the Horticultural Therapy Program under the fiscal sponsorship of Cawaco Resource, Conservation and Development Council, Inc. For two years, Cawaco fostered and enabled the program to grow and expand; from two schools in April 2010, to five schools in 2011, with one school successfully rolling off the program and taking ownership of their own FOCUS component. The success of the program will be outlined in this report. In April of 2012, the decision was reached that the program had grown and succeed, and that it was time for the Horticultural Therapy Program to make a move to a nonprofit organization whose mission most closely aligns with the mission of the program. At that time, Cawacos Horticultural Therapy Program became the PLANT PROJECT Program, and transitioned to the Birmingham Mentoring Assistance Network. Established as a nonprofit in 2010, the Birmingham Mentoring Assistance Network is the result of a collaborative effort on the part of professional men and women, centered on the idea that to secure the needs of the future, we must instill needed skills and values in those who will bring the future into fruition: our children. Partnering with middle and high schools in the Birmingham metro area, the Birmingham Mentoring Assistance Network has as its main focus a mentorship between youth and professional adults in all walks of life, in a variety of professionals to which these youth can aspire. Over the months since the transition, the PLANT PROJECT program has become a strong and supportive arm of the Network and continues to provide the same level of dedication and programming as before the transition. In Jefferson and Shelby counties alone, there are 8,630 school children with various special needs. Of those children, approximately 85% are diagnosed somewhere on the Autism spectrum. In fact, every 20 minutes, a new case of Autism is diagnosed (Autism Speaks). Alabama has seen a 50% increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism since 2002 (The Birmingham News). For children in Alabama, the sad fact is that diagnosis often comes very late, at 4 years of age, and most parents or caregivers are not made aware of the diagnosis until the child is age 6 (The Alabama Autism Task Force). Sensory stimulation, social interaction, cognitive and motor skills are crucial to these children. Yet most children with disabilities, particularly those with some form of Autism, are all too often without needed programs that can help them empower themselves and reach their fullest potential. Alabama still lags behinds its neighbors and other parts of the country in providing services and innovative programs to ALL children with disabilities, but the hardest hit remains children with autism. Programs like ours are estimated to save the US government and social services more than $200,000 per child by the time the child reaches adulthood. Now in its fifth year, the PLANT PROJECT Program is based upon the premise that people have a basic psychological and evolutionary need to connect with plants and engage in plant-related activities that brings an individual into a more intimate and personal relationship with nature. The intergenerational, mentoring approach, combined with the concept of imbuing well-being and self-independence, breaks the narrow view of therapeutic horticulture as a mere treatment modality and will redefine and rewrite how professionals, and society at large, view these two underserved segments of our population. Often the general public believes that children with disabilities cannot learn the importance of nature or appreciate the value of stewardship. We know that to be patently untrue. But in addition to reconnecting these children with nature, we are also providing educational support to help them meet academic, vocational and life skill goals. The ultimate goal is to create a multi-component program aimed at providing: nature based sensory and physical stimulation, vocational and life skills re-enforcement, improvement in academic performance and attendance retention, behavioral modification for special needs persons; a volunteer opportunity for elders that reconnects them to society and boosts personal wellbeing, physical and emotional health and provides self-improvement. To this end, the program considers the desired end result, what it is hoped that a child with disabilities would reap as benefits Page | 1

from participation in the program. Our objectives for the student who enroll in our program are the following: 1. Improved motor skills, eye-hand coordination, mobility, range-of-motion and physical endurance 2. Reverse nature deficiency; improve communication skills and social interaction 3. Use horticultural activities and environmental education to help with the acquisition of vocational and life skills and meet academic milestones 4. To provide a one-on-one mentorship with a generation that they may otherwise not have access to, in order to provide both generations with opportunities to support and learn from each other. But the program is not designed to benefit just the children enrolled in it. It also has benefits for the older adults who serve as mentors. For the older adults over the age of 65 serving as mentors, our objectives are: Living and self-care independence Physical health maintenance Sharpening fine motor skills Physical health improvement through exercise Cognitive functional-level maintenance Age-appropriate leisure-skill development Lessening of depressive symptoms and isolation

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Components of the program The program was developed with the needs of the children in mind, and the question is constantly asked: What does a child living with disabilities need when they exit the school system? How do we, as a society at large, and as a program in the particular, help them empower their abilities and obtain a quality of life that both imbues them with a sense of their own power and makes them worthy stewards of the environment? Contrary to societal assumptions, it has been the experience of the staff of this program that ALL children can be taught a reverence for nature, can be inspired with a desire to preserve and protect our natural resources, and can be shown lifelong ways to be an environmental steward. The program is broken into components, designed to fit easily into the structure of the American School system and also to address developmental, conceptual and social needs of the children within that particular age/grade range. At the high school level is our FOCUS component (Finding Our Conservation Use and Sustainability), which works intensely on vocational and life skills. TWIGS (Touching, Wondering, Investigating, Growing, Sensing) is aimed at the middle school level and works on sensory stimulation, communication skills, social interaction, motor skills and eyehand coordination.

How the PLANT PROJECT Program was developed:

How the program works During the summer, the staff works to assess the programs performance during the previous school year. Data is collected, entered into a database, and assessed to obtain information of the efficacy of the program. Curricula are reviewed, as are all journals from teachers and staff. Training is offered to new teachers, volunteers and staff on an as-needed basis, and volunteers are encouraged to sign up to be 4-H leaders. Horticultural therapy programming is designed for the coming school year, and those schools with outdoor garden/classroom areas are routinely checked on during the summer months. Staff meets with teachers of classrooms who are continuing with the program to plan out the incoming school year. Mentors are recruited and enrolled in the program. Supplies are inventoried and yearlong school plans are mapped out. During the school year, beginning in September, there are weekly sessions with each class in the program throughout the school year. For classes that have already been in the program for at least a year and that are determined to be ready for a mentorship, mentors who have been recruited, screened, and accepted into the program are matched, one-to-one, with a child, for monthly horticultural session, either at the school or at the senior living facility from which the mentors were recruited. The teachers and aides are always on hand for every session, weekly or monthly. Page | 2

These monthly sessions begin in October and continue until school lets out in May. Each - 1 hour session is an alternate way of reinforcement of instruction with plant activities. The result is improved attention span, lesson retention and sensory stimulation. Once a month, the children are paired with their mentors for a joint session.
A graphic depiction of the various components of both FOCUS and TWIGS components of the PLANT PROJECT Program

Weekly sessions
hr 2 hrs throughout school year

Monthly sessions
1-2hr with one-to-one matching with an elderly mentor

Environmental Education
reinforces academic subjects, addresses life/vocational skills

Horticultural Activities
Participants are reconnected with nature and planting

Community Service
Both Junior Master Gardeners and 4-H chapters are started with each school group

In the pilot phase of the project, out of the original 13 disabled students enrolled in the program, 6 exited the school system with 4 having jobs waiting for them. Both their teachers and their parents attribute this success to participation in the program. At the high school level, we have had one school, our pilot school, where the program was first conceived and implemented 4 years prior, take ownership of the program in their school last April. Currently the program is still active and thriving at that school and our staff serves as advisors and consultants.

Metrics used to determine program performance and efficacy:

The best and more effective way to measure success for the students enrolled in both the FOCUS and TWIGS components of the PLANT PROJECT program is to ask the teacher or paraprofessional who spends at least quarters of each school day throughout the entire school year to complete an assessment on each student, both at the beginning of the school year and at the end. Evaluations like the one used for measuring the success of this program have been a part of the instrumentations used in school settings to assessing, identifying and measuring the effectiveness with which a person is able to manage the natural and social demands of the environment (the 5th AAMR Definition of Mental Retardation). As stated in the technical manual of the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale (Revised Second Edition), as a measurement of adaptive skills, such instruments assist in both providing an educationally relevant definition of adaptive skills and a measurement of the efficacy of interventions and in school programming in helping children with special needs make measurable gains in the three domains conceptual, social, and practicalsuch that each individual child will receive the greatest benefit. Instrumentation The Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale (Revised Second Edition), published by Hawthorne Educational Services, Inc. in 2006, was made for youth ages 13-18 and has 103 questions. The questions fall into ten subcategories: communication (12 items), self-care (10 items), social (24 items), leisure (10 items), self-direction (12 items), functional academics (16 items), home living (13 items), community use (8 items), health and safety (11 items), and work (10 items). Communication and self-care make up the conceptual domain; social, leisure, and self-direction make up the social domain; and functional academics, home living, community use, health and safety, and work make up the practical domain. The reliability of the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale (Revised Second Edition) was Page | 3

tested 3 ways. When we speak of reliability of such an assessment, we are addressing the consistency of the instrument to measure the same concept from one time to another. The test-retest reliability showed that subscale coefficients ranged from .60 for Community Use to .78 for Social, indicating a sustained reliability across time. The inter-rater reliability of a scale determines the ability of the instrument to provide consistent results, when the instrument is used by more than one rater. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients ranged from .60 to .73 for all age levels (a reliability of p<.05). The internal consistency reliability was drawn from an item analysis by estimating reliability from a single rating with the assessment instrument and application directly to the homogeneity of the subscales measuring the same trait. Cronbach alpha determined that the reliability of all the subscales were above .80, with six above .90. In addition to the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale for youth ages 13-18 (Rev. 2nd Edition, 2006), the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale for children ages 4-12 was used to assess the students enrolled in the TWIGS component of the program who are under the age of 13. The scale was made for children ages 4-12 and contains 63 questions. The classroom teacher completed a scale on each student. The questions, again, fall into ten subcategories: communication (9 items), functional academics (6 items), social (23 items), leisure (14 items), self-direction (6 items), self-care (6), home living (11 items), community use (5 items), health and safety (8 items) and work (12 items). This scale departs from the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale for youth ages 13-18 in that the subcategories that comprise the domains are arranged differently. The conceptual domain is comprised of the communication and the functional academics subcategories. Social, leisure, and self-direction make up the social domain, and self-care, home living, community use, health and safety, and work the practical domain. The reliability of the 4-12 version of the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale was tested in three ways. The test-retest reliability ranged from .87 for functional academics to .97 for both social and self-care, indicating a robust and substantial reliability across time. The interrater reliability, as determined by Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, ranged from .76 to .87 for all age levels (a reliability of p<.05). The coefficient alpha (Cronbach) values used to determine internal consistency ranged from .72 to .90 for Social, Leisure, and Work. Demographic information on schools enrolled in FOCUS Component
Asian 1%

Racial Breakdown
Hispanic 2%

Black 42% White 55%

Figure 1- CCHS, Jefferson County

Six Students participated in the Focus component of the program at Clay-Chalkville High, a suburban high school located in Pinson, and part of the Jefferson County School system. All six students were part of a self-contained classroom. The racial breakdown is represented in the pie chart. Two of the participants were female and four male. Students were predominantly upper middle class with 34% of the school population on free/reduced lunch program.

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Asian 1%

Racial Breakdown

Hispanic 6% Black 18% White 75%

Figure 2 THS, Shelby County

Twenty-one students participated in the Focus component at Thompson High School, a rural, suburban high school in Alabaster, part of the Shelby County School system. The participants were part of four self-contained classrooms. Eight of the participants were female and thirteen male. The students were from predominantly upper middle class homes, with 31% of the school population being enrolled in the free/reduced lunch program. Assessment results for the schools enrolled in FOCUS Component

Clay-Chalkville High School

Thompson High School

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Demographic information on schools enrolled in TWIGS Component

Hispanic 3%

White 3%

Black 94%

Racial Breakdown
Figure 3 PMS, Birmingham, Alabama, Jefferson County

Ten students from a self-contained classroom at W.E. Putnam Middle School, a urban inner city middle school located in Birmingham, Alabama were enrolled in the TWIGS component of the PLANT POJECT Program. Five were males and five females. The students were predominantly from socioeconomically disadvantaged households, with 92% of the school participating in the free/reduced lunch program. Contained within this classroom were students with moderate limitations and profound limitations, encompassing mental, emotional and physical capacities. For reference, in general, moderate and profound limitations are defined in the following manner: Moderate limitations: o IQ range from 50-75 o Ability to acquire work and self-care skills o Ability to follow directions o Ability to function successfully under supervision Profound limitations: o IQ range below 50 o Severe physical and neurological deficits o Require high level of supervision and support

Five of the students were age 12, so the Adaptive Behavior Evaluation Scale for children ages 4-12 was used to assess these students.

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Asian 1% Hispanic 10% Black 18%

White 71%

Racial Breakdown
Figure 4 TMS, Shelby County

Ten students in a self-contained classroom at Thompson Middle School, a rural, suburban middle school in Shelby County, Alabama were enrolled in the TWIGS component of the PLANT POJECT Program. Two of the participants were female and eight male. There were no participants under the age of 13 in this classroom. Students were predominantly from upper middle class households, with 31% of the school population enrolled in the free/reduced lunch program. Assessment results for the schools enrolled in TWIGS Component W.E. Putnam Middle School, Age 13 + Thompson Middle School

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W.E. Putnam Middle School, Age 12 Instrumentation The Mentors During the 2011-12 school years, mentors were recruited for both Clay-Chalkville High School and for W.E. Putnam Middle School. The students enrolled in the TWIGS component of the PLANT PROJECT program were matched, last year, one-to-one with residents of the Assisted Living facility at St Martins in the Pines. Therefore, recruitment at that facility was necessary due to natural attrition that is consistent with such a program; withdrawn from the program due to health concerns, transfer to another living facility, death, etc. Each prospective participant was identified with the assistant of the facilitys director, and a battery of assessments was administered. The following, well recognized and popular instruments were administered , along with a standard demographic questionnaire, both at the time of recruitment and at the start and at the end of the school year for those already enrolled as mentors. Addendum to SF 36 a descriptive instrument used for markers of health status and health lifestyle. Contains 21 questions that rate overall health and risk behaviors. CES-Depression a 20 item scale developed in the 1970s to assess for markers of depressive symptomology. The instrument uses a 4 point Liker-type scale, self-report, with scores ranging from 0-60. A score of 16 or higher usually indicates evidence of depression with a raw score over 21 reporting tendency toward clinical depression. Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale a 20 item scale with a 4 point Likert-type scale that was developed in 1980. Scores can range from 20-80, with lower scores indicative of greater sense of loneliness in the individual. Also can pinpoint any mental or physical concerns. Proactive Hardiness Scale- 14 item instrument, with a 4 point Likert-type scale. This instrument has been used especially with individuals over the age of 65 to determine a quality that researchers call hardiness, defined as the ability to successfully weather a crisis and adapt such that the coping mechanism used to overcome the obstacle(s) becomes part of the persons life-long coping mechanism in times of conflict or adversity. Higher scores on this instrument indicates a higher level of hardiness Lubben Social Network designed especially to measure the level of social support an elderly person receives in the course of daily living. It was developed as an instrument to be used in nursing homes and senior living facility settings. The 10 item version of this scale was administered. Scores can range from 0-50, with higher scores indicating a greater level of social engagement and support. A Score less than 20 is an indication of social isolation and possible intervention is warranted. Page | 8

Demographic information on Mentors, Focus Component ElmCroft Nine adults residing in ElmCroft, a senior living facility located in Pinson, Alabama, were identified, recruited, screened and enrolled into the program as mentors for the students at Clay-Chalkville High school. The facility is approximately 15 minutes away from the school. Transportation to and from the facility to the school was provided by ElmCroft. The mean age of the mentors at time of initial recruitment was 71. All nine mentors were white, with an upper middle class economic background. Their average annual income in retirement was $17,778. There were 6 females and 3 males enrolled. Of the three females recruited, one had an untraditional occupation, given the historical cohorts of this population. She was a federal civil service employee throughout her entire work career. Four of the nine mentors had either received some college instruction or had obtained a college degree, with one female receiving a doctoral in nursing. Demographic information on Mentors, TWIGS Component St Martins in the Pines Last school year, five adults residing in St Martins in the Pines, a senior living facility next door to W.E. Putnam Middle School were identified, recruited, screened and enrolled into the program as mentors for the students at the middle school. At the end of the 2010-11 school year, one mentor had to withdraw from the program, due to failing health and the onset of Alzheimers. Three new mentors were recruited during the summer. The mean age of the mentors from this facility is 78. All seven mentors are white, with an upper middle class economic background. Their average annual income in retirement was approximately $32,857. There were 6 females and 1 male serving as mentors from this facility. Of the six females serving as mentors, two had untraditional occupations during their work career, given the historical cohorts for this generation: one was an AT&T engineer and another a law librarian. Of the seven mentors, four have either attended college or received a degree, with two females obtaining a Bachelors. The only male mentor had obtained a Masters. Assessment results for the Mentors Mentors from ElmCroft

CES-D
Fall
28.40

UCLA-R
Fall
36.40

Proactive
Fall
43.10

Lubben
Fall
26.60

Spring
25.90

Spring
27.10

Spring
44.40

Spring
33.00

2.50
9.65%

9.30
34.32%

1.30
3.02%

6.40
24.06%

Interpretation: Looking at the composite group before and after scores, and starting with the CES-D, a measure of depressive symptoms, the lower score, the lesser the prevalence of depressive symptomology. Thus we see that the scores fell by 2.50, which means that there was a 9.65% improvement in overall scores. Likewise, for the UCLA Loneliness scale, here denoted as the UCLA-R, we seen that the scores fell by 9.30 overall, which indicates that feeling of isolation and loneliness were reported less at the time of the assessment after the end of the school year. The Proactive Scale, which measures overall hardiness, and for which a higher score is a greater indication of the ability to weather successfully obstacles, rose by 1.30 and translated to an increase of 3%, for this already very hardy group. Finally, the Lubben Social Network, for which higher scores indicate a greater social connnectiveness for the individual, the scores rose by 6.40, which translates to a 24% increase in scores.

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Mentors from St Martins in the Pines

CES-D
Fall
30.90

UCLA-R
Fall
30.70

Proactive
Fall
45.40

Lubben
Fall
29.10

Spring
30.40

Spring
29.70

Spring
49.60

Spring
29.40

0.50
1.64%

1.00
3.37%

4.20
9.25%

0.30
1.03%

Interpretation: Looking at the composite group before and after scores, and starting with the CES-D, a measure of depressive symptoms, the lower score, the lesser the prevalence of depressive symptomology. Thus we see that the scores fell by 50, which means that there was a 1.64% improvement in overall scores. Likewise, for the UCLA Loneliness scale, here denoted as the UCLA-R, we seen that the scores fell by 1.00 overall, which indicates that feeling of isolation and loneliness were reported less at the time of the assessment after the end of the school year. This is a 3.37% improvement. The Proactive Scale, which measures overall hardiness, and for which a higher score is a greater indication of the ability to weather successfully obstacles, rose by 4.20 and translated to an increase of 9.25%, for this already very hardy group. Finally, the Lubben Social Network, for which higher scores indicate a greater social connnectiveness for the individual, the scores rose by .30, which translates to a 1.03% increase in scores.

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