Effectiveness of a Foster Parent Intervention: Results of a Trial

Vrije Universiteit Brussel63 enrolled

Overview

The hypothesis of the study is that the intervention leads to a reduction in foster children's externalizing problems and foster parents' parenting stress and that this in turn leads to a reduction in the number of breakdowns of foster placements.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

Conditions

Problematic Behavior in Children Parent-child Problem

Interventions

Foster parent interventionBEHAVIORAL

parent management training for foster parents, consisting of 10 individual home visits and 3 group sessions. Duration is four months

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 3 YearsMax age: 12 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * foster child has a borderline or clinical score on one of the small-band externalizing scales or the broad-band externalizing scale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Exclusion Criteria: foster child: * has a mental retardation, * autism, * uses psychotropic medication in an inconsistent way, * behavioral problems are the result of medical problems or medication, foster parents: * have insufficient knowledge of Dutch, * have low cognitive abilities, * are already receiving professional support for the foster child's externalizing problems, * are divorcing. Moreover, foster placements were excluded if at least two of the following criteria were present: * foster parents considered terminating the foster placement during the past two months * were experiencing psychological distress (measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ; Koeter \& Ormel, 1991) and defined as a score ≥ 2), * their foster child had a sum score above 3 (for children \< 6 years) or 5 (for children ≥ 6 years) on the critical CBCL-items.

Locations (1)

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Brussels, Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Change in foster child's externalizing problems from baseline to post-intervention (3.5 months later)

T-score for the externalizing subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)

Time frame: Assessed at two time points: at baseline (before the start of the intervention) en post-intervention (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is on average 3.5 months after the baseline measurement)

Change in foster child's externalizing problems from post-intervention to follow-up (3 months later)

The T-score of the Externalizing scale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)

Time frame: Assessed at post-interventio (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is about 3.5 months after the baseline measurement) and at follow-up (which is thee months later than the post-intervention measurement).

Secondary Outcomes

Change in foster parent's parenting stress from baseline to post-intervention (3.5 months later)

Nijmegen Questionnaire for the Parenting Situation

Change in foster mother's parenting stress from post-intervention to follow-up (3 months later)

The Nijmegen Questionnaire for the parenting situation

Client satisfaction

Dutch Questionaire for client satisfaction and effect

Time frame: At post-intervention (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is on average 3.5 months later than the baseline measurment

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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