Social Work with Failure-to-Thrive Children and their Families<subtitle>Part II: Behavioural Social Work Intervention</subtitle>

Abstract

SUMMARY Part II of this study is concerned with a multicomponent behavioural social work intervention with 17 failure-to-thrive children and their families. An investigation, described in Part I, showed that the route to this worrying problem differed from family to family. Patterns of contributory causes did emerge—thus determining the main thrust of the interventions. Many of the child victims were difficult (not least in biological and psychological adaptability) from birth. Parents were disadvantaged in various ways. Feeding difficulties and parent-child relationships proved to be the major focus of the interventions. Behavioural Social work interventions directed toward the feeding performance and relationships resulted in a high success rate; these improvements were maintained over considerable periods of time (one year or more). The results and temporal generalization in the case of more general parent-child interactions, and child behaviour problems, were more modest, but encouraging. The programme is described fully and the results are given in detail.