Investing in Our Children's Future: Generational Change for the Better

When children lack self-regulation skills, they struggle to manage their emotions and behaviour in appropriate ways. They may have difficulty controlling their impulses, which can lead to involuntary and sometimes destructive actions. Children who lack self-regulation skills may also have trouble focusing their attention, sitting still, and completing tasks.

Without these crucial skills, many children go on to experience negative outcomes in their academic and social lives. They may struggle to form positive relationships with peers and adults and have difficulty in school due to an inability to regulate their behaviour and emotions. Additionally, a lack of self-regulation skills across the domains of cognition, behaviour and emotion has been linked to a higher risk of mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression.

Developing self-regulation skills early on is crucial for success both in and out of the classroom. At MMS’s Youth Transition Houses, for example, residents often struggle with self-regulation, leading to negative outcomes like homelessness and the need for support services. While our staff walk alongside these teens to develop the skills they may have missed during their primary years, an ENGAGE program could have made a significant difference in preparing them for their teenage years. ENGAGE focuses on developing self-regulation skills through intentional play, language, and activities, leaving children better equipped to succeed in real-life settings.

Jimmy McLauchlan the Mission’s Chief Development Officer “Eight years ago, I went down a research rabbit hole to find evidence that we could use to support tamariki on a really large scale. I thought it would lead me to experts dotted all around the world, instead it led me to a couple of experts who were a six-minute drive from my office, and eventually to a huge team of people around New Zealand who have grown this Kaupapa together.”

In 2016 Methodist Mission Southern entered into a partnership with Associate Professor Dione Healey (ENGAGE creator) to deliver ENGAGE to ECEs and primary schools. Working alongside funders and policy-makers in the early childhood education sector to encourage long-term investment in developing these essential skills for future generations.

Over the course of seven years, MMS undertook eight different research and pilot projects, with support from The Tindall Family Foundation. These projects included piloting the ENGAGE program in ECEs and primary schools, culminating in a successful 'scale-up' pilot in 2021/22, which demonstrated the program's suitability for a large-scale rollout. Since July 2021, ENGAGE has been delivered to 300 ECEs across Auckland, Bay of Plenty, and Otago/Southland, resulting in the development of the ENGAGE programme that will be delivered to at least 1,830 ECEs around Aotearoa from July 2023, following Jo Luxton’s (Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Education), announcement of a $19.7 million government investment for a nationwide rollout of the ENGAGE program to early childhood education services.

ENGAGE develops children’s self-regulation skills through intentional play – with skills and games grouped into three domains: emotional (feeling), cognitive (thinking) and behavioural (doing). ENGAGE games are played for approximately 30 minutes a day, with an intentional focus on supporting children to develop specific skills that they need to thrive at school and lead healthy, fulfilling lives.

ENGAGE has been demonstrated to support significant gains in tamariki’s self-regulation skills, including improvements in their emotional regulation, attention, memory, aggression, hyperactivity and social skills of empathy and co-operation.

“I wished that we had this program when I was still teaching in my Centre because of the way that children learn and they learn through play and the skills that they gain in and develop when going through programs like this, it moves with them throughout their schooling” Jo Luxton (Education Under-Secretary)

ENGAGE is also part of a gold-standard randomised controlled trial involving 140 ECE’s around New Zealand called Kia Tīmata Pai (KTP). The study is a partnership between Methodist Mission Southern, BestStart, University of Otago, Emotional Regulation Aotearoa New Zealand and the Wright Family Foundation. KTP will run until 2025 and looks at the benefits of supporting self-regulation and oral language skills in pre-school tamariki – ensuring that the best research on child development continues to find its way into the real world, to enrich the lives and outcomes of our tamariki across Aotearoa.

You can follow ENGAGE progress on their Facebook page www.facebook.com/EngageInfo

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