Abstract
Foster parents face considerable challenges in caring for children in the child welfare system, many of whom have significant behavioral difficulties [1]. Foster parents often lack the training and support needed to manage these externalizing behaviors, which contribute to parenting stress and are highly predictive of placement breakdowns [2, 3]. Although child welfare agencies provide foster parents with pre-service training experiences, they often lack the capacity and financial resources to implement gold standard, evidence-based interventions that address child behavior difficulties. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) has been well-established as an empirically supported treatment for disruptive behavior, yet standard delivery of PCIT to children in the foster care system is often impractical due to time, financial, childcare, and personnel constraints. Adaptations of PCIT for the foster care setting may remove some of these barriers to treatment. These adaptations have typically retained the parent-coaching principles inherent to PCIT but replaced the traditional 12- to 20-week format with a shorter, less intensive treatment regimen in order to maintain feasibility within the child welfare context. Preliminary findings from studies using abbreviated formats of PCIT suggest effectiveness of such adaptations in reducing externalizing behavior in foster children and maintaining behavioral improvements several months after the end of the treatment.
Highlights
The role of foster parents in the child welfare system is multi-faceted; foster parents are responsible for meeting the physical, social-emotional, educational, and medical needs of the children in their care
Results from this study demonstrated that children in foster care exhibited a much higher rate of mental health concerns than those in the general population [11]
Palmer [20] asserted that foster care workers are already making strong efforts to help children modify their behavior, foster children may benefit from caregiver-child focused interventions aimed at reducing disruptive behavior and strengthening the caregiver-child bond
Summary
The role of foster parents in the child welfare system is multi-faceted; foster parents are responsible for meeting the physical, social-emotional, educational, and medical needs of the children in their care. These children often have histories of maltreatment or neglect that put them at risk for developing externalizing symptoms and, in many cases, psychological disorders [1 - 4]. Data from a national survey of 2,813 foster children under the age of 6 indicated conduct problems to be the most common areas of difficulty, more so than cognitive, communication, social, or adaptive difficulties [1]. Many foster parents feel illequipped to handle severe conduct problems, which contribute to parenting stress and caregiver burden [6].
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