Youth socioemotional wellbeing: Evidence review

Socioemotional wellbeing is essential for our overall health and wellbeing. Fostering socioemotional wellbeing in young people helps young people to realise their abilities, cope with normal stresses of day-to-day life, work productively and contribute to their community.

The Research Centre for Children and Families, the University of Sydney, conducted an evidence review on programs that foster socioemotional wellbeing in young people aged 10-24.

The evidence review adopted a core components approach to identify what these effective programs have in common. The evidence review identified five core components that foster socioemotional wellbeing:

• Self-concept, self-efficacy and confidence
• Mindfulness and self-regulation
• Prosocial skills and relationship-building
• Building motivation and monitoring behavioural change
• Building knowledge and awareness for socioemotional wellbeing.

These core components are recommended as the standard program components for child and family services delivering socioemotional wellbeing programs, with young people aged 10-24, addressing the outcomes of social skills and communication, self-efficacy and confidence, emotional regulation and self-regulation, and decision-making and problem-solving.

The evidence review identified 32 evidence-informed programs.

Key outcomes for these programs include: social skills and communication, self-efficacy and confidence, emotional regulation and self-regulation, and decision-making and problem-solving.

See the Evidence to Action Note, (PDF, 731.1 KB)for more information about the evidence review.

For more details about how the evidence review was conducted (e.g. search strings, databases searched) see the Youth Socioemotional Wellbeing Evidence Review Protocol (PDF, 643.3 KB).