Secret Agent Society

About the program

The Secret Agent Society (SAS) is a multi-component program through which professionals upskill and empower children with social and emotional challenges, and the parents and teachers who support them. SAS Facilitators use espionage-themed games and activities, delivered through a digital platform.                  

Program structure

The program is ideally co-facilitated by 2 trained SAS Facilitators with a group of 4 to 6 children (minimum of 3 children). Alternatively, a single SAS Facilitator may deliver the program to 1 to 4 children.                   

The program includes:

• Cadet Club Meetings: Child group meetings are held as either:
  • 11 x 90 minute sessions
  • 22 x 45 minute sessions inclusive of 2 to 4 booster sessions. 
    The first 9 (if 90 min) or 18 (if 45 min) sessions are typically delivered weekly with the remaining booster sessions spread out over a six-month period.
• Parent/Mentor Support Sessions: Parent Group Meetings are an important component of the program's success, providing an opportunity to advise and support parents on the content being learnt in Cadet Club Meetings and how to practice these skills in real life. Scheduling and setup of meetings is flexible and can be tailored by the SAS Facilitator.  Prior to starting with Cadets, the first Parent Group Meeting involves a 2-hour parent information session. This is followed by group meetings that run over the course of the program in:  
  • 11 x 45 minute
  • 22 x 30 minute
  • 4 x 120 minute.
• School Support, Weekly Teacher Tip Sheets: Teachers are updated on the skills and content Cadets are learning each week and provided guidance on how they can support the application of skills in the classroom and playground. This occurs through providing a series of SAS Teacher Tip Sheets, access to the child's Skill Tracker, teacher consultation, school visits, and an optional school staff presentation.                    
  The SAS Small Group Program is mapped to the Australian National Curriculum and is often written into children's individual learning plans to assist teachers to meet the social-emotional goals of their students.
• Missions and Mission Journals: Between each Cadet Club Meeting, children participate in weekly tasks and 'missions', including playing online gamified learning, skills practice activities in day-to-day life and completion of a reflection journal.
• Skill Tracker: This short-term daily motivation tool is used to encourage Cadets to practice their SAS skills at home and school, aligned with their progression through the program.
• Assessment Measures: A combination of questionnaire booklets, an observational assessment tool, computer game performance and Skill Tracker progress provides valuable information to guide areas of focus for each individual child as well as providing easy, comprehensive and multi-source outcome reporting. Automated assessment administration and scoring is available for SAS Facilitators to streamline intake and reporting processes.
• Gadget Pack:  Espionage-themed gadgets and Skill Codes are incrementally introduced throughout the program in line with the program structure. They are designed to help Cadets practice and use their SAS skills in everyday life through providing visual reminders and quick-reference guides to use in real-time at home, school and in the community.

Learn more on the SAS website.

Evaluation and effectiveness

Multiple University and community trials including 4 randomised controlled trials have shown SAS to be effective in improving children’s emotion regulation and range of social skills when delivered in clinic, school and telehealth contexts.

SAS trials and evaluations (Beaumont & Sofronoff, 2008; Tempkin, 2022) conducted in schools, rural and remote areas, and with children who have social-emotional goals with and without autism diagnoses have shown:

• improvements in the emotional regulation
• increased social resilience
• reductions in child anxiety
• reductions in hyperactivity
• improvement in student/child behaviour
• improvement in parent self-efficacy.

Additional research evaluations within child mental health and developmental disability services are currently underway or being prepared for publication by research teams based in Ireland, Canada, USA and Australia.

Research findings are available on the SAS website.

References 

Beaumont, R., & Sofronoff, K. (2008). A multi-component social skills intervention for children with Asperger Syndrome: The Junior Detective Training Program. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 743-753.

Temkin, A. B., Beaumont, R., Wkya, K., Hariton, J. R., Flye, B. L., Sheridan, E., & Bennett, S. M. (2022). Secret Agent Society: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Transdiagnostic Youth Social Skills Group Treatment. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 50(9), 1107-1119.