The prognosis of children showing antisocial behaviour is not favourable. Longitudinal research shows a high level of stability of antisocial behaviour. The present study aims to evaluate an early intervention project to reduce antisocial behavioural problems in at-risk children (4 -7 years). Parent Management Training (PMT) was chosen because it was evaluated as a promising intervention in previous research. The training is based on social learning principles and teaches parents to manage their child's behaviour through behaviour modification. Parents were randomly assigned to two conditions: an intervention condition (PMT; n ¼ 34) and a waiting list condition (WL; n ¼ 30). The PMT consists of 11 sessions spread over a 6-month period. Parents were trained in groups of 8 -10 parents. A multimethod multi-informant methodology was designed to evaluate the programme. Measures were assessed before and after treatment and at 1-year follow-up. Both short-and long-term results revealed positive effects of the intervention with respect to the child's behaviour. In addition, parental stress reduced, whereas parental skills and mother -child interactions improved. However, no time by group interaction effects were found. Implementations and limitations of early intervention and prevention of antisocial behaviour are discussed.

This article focuses on STOP4-7, an ecological early intervention programme for children with serious behavioural problems in Belgium, which includes social skills training for children, management training for parents and classroom management training for teachers. We argue how this type of social work benefits from empirical research on its effects on children and parents. Yet social work research that addresses these questions needs to extend its focus to overt and covert inclusion and exclusion mechanisms that operate through social work. Finally, we argue that, in the case of STOP4-7, social work is embedded in the process of social and political framing of the problems it is supposed to solve. By extending the focus of social work research to the very construction of social problems, we show how social workers may perform their agency as reflective practitioners, rather than being objects of interventions

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract