About the ACT Raising Safe Kids Program

The ACT program was developed by the American Psychological Association and is coordinated by APA’s Leadership Development Institute. It teaches parents and caregivers of young children positive parenting skills and practices that help create stable, safe, healthy, nurturing environments and relationships that protect children from adverse experiences such as abuse and neglect and their lifelong consequences.

In operation since 2001, the program underwent a major redesign and review of its materials in 2025.

ACT is based on research showing that:

• The early years are a critical time in development when children are learning basic skills that have long-term effects on their lives.
• Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as maltreatment, can have serious and long-standing impacts on brain development, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development, and on health.
• Parents and caregivers are teachers, protectors, and advocates for their children.

Who can benefit?

The ACT program is an early prevention intervention that serves:

• Parents and caregivers of children ages 0-8
• Expectant parents preparing for parenthood
• Grandparents and extended family members
• Foster parents and kinship caregivers
• Early childhood professionals seeking parent engagement tools
• Organizations

Benefits for organizations

Organizations and agencies that adopt ACT benefit from an intervention that:

• Helps fulfill their mission to promote healthy parenting.
• Has a strong evidence base demonstrating its effectiveness in improving positive parenting skills; preventing/reducing psychological and physical aggression and physical punishment of children; improving parental social support; improving parental media literacy; and reducing/preventing children’s aggression, conduct problems, and bullying behaviors.
• Is affordable, cost-effective, manualized, and easy to implement.
• Is culturally sensitive and has a research-based curriculum and materials adapted for diverse cultures and translated into several languages.
• Translates science-based content into simple, friendly language and formats to help ALL parents/caregivers learn positive parenting skills and practices.
• Can be integrated into their existing programs for parents and children.
• Can be part of a community’s overall efforts to prevent violence.

Benefits for professionals

They can benefit from:

• Access to an evidence-based, promising, affordable program that is effective in helping culturally and ethnically diverse families learn positive parenting skills and protect their children from violence, abuse, and related consequences.
• A program that has a manualized research-based curriculum and educational materials.
• Involvement with an intervention recommended by the World Health Organization-Europe, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Head Start Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Division of Violence Prevention, and U.S. Department of Justice/Crime Solutions.
• Opportunities for professional development.
• Connection with a national and international network of thousands of professionals.
• Access to science-based information, resources, and tools on parenting skills, child development, violence prevention, bullying, impact of violence, etc.
• Access to online trainings on topics relevant to their fields and related to the ACT program curriculum.

Available worldwide: ACT has been successfully adapted in over 10 countries and is available in multiple languages, with culturally relevant examples and activities. Learn more about international ACT programs.

Strengths of the ACT Program

• Has a universal approach and can be administered to groups of parents and caregivers from all backgrounds, regardless of their level of risk as abusers.
• Has the flexibility to be hosted by a variety of institutions in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
• Is affordable and easy to implement.
• Can be integrated into an organization’s existing interventions and services for parents.
• Can complement interventions focusing on bullying prevention and intimate partner violence, and can be integrated into wider community-based efforts to prevent violence.  
• Has a strong evidence base demonstrating the program's effectiveness. Major outcomes include improving positive parenting skills, reducing coercive, harsh, negative parenting practices, increasing positive, nurturing parenting, increasing parental control and regulation of their emotions, and reducing children’s conduct problems and bullying.

ACT Program Delivery

The program achieves its goal through:

• Partnerships with a variety of organizations in the United States and overseas, such as social service and mental health providers, hospitals, childcare centers, schools, universities, and churches.
• Engagement of trained and certified professionals (social workers, nurses, early educators, psychologists, teachers, counselors), coordinators/master trainers, and Facilitators to deliver the program curriculum to groups of parents and caregivers in a variety of settings.

ACT coordinators/master trainers are professionals with an advanced degree (MS, MSW, MFT, LPC, RN, MA, MD, PhD, PsyD) in fields such as mental health and counseling, social work, education, school administration, nursing, health, or primary care and/or have longstanding experience in conducting training for professionals and program management. 

ACT facilitators are professionals with a minimum of an associate degree, but a bachelor’s degree from fields such as psychology, social work, counseling, health care, nursing and education, and early education, among others, is preferred. Previous experience conducting classes for groups of adults and class-management skills is expected. They are responsible for organizing and conducting the ACT program, nine sessions/classes for groups of parents and caregivers of young children. 

Contact ACT

Mailing Address:
American Psychological Association
Leadership Development Institute
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002-4242 

ACT Advisory Council

The ACT Advisory Council was created to provide expert input and to collaborate in decisions related to the implementation model and strategies, development and dissemination of promotional and instructional materials, training of professionals, funding, sustainability, and evaluation. The council comprises professionals with solid experience in the management of organizations, coordination of programs, higher education, research, and leadership experience as regional and local coordinators of the ACT program. Contact us to learn more about the program, for resources available, and to discuss plans for implementation in your community.