Behavioral Parent Training in Child Welfare: Evaluations of Skills Acquisition

Abstract

Objective: Behavioral parent training has been proven effective through years of research with a variety of groups. However, little research has been conducted to systematically evaluate the extent to which behavioral parent training may improve parenting skills of foster and other caregivers of dependent children. The Behavior Analysis Services Program (BASP) has been charged with providing behavioral parent training to foster parents and other caregivers of dependent children throughout the state of Florida through a variety of services focusing primarily on a group-class-based training curriculum. This article examines the extent to which behavioral parent training was effective in increasing skills of caregivers who were trained in 2001 and 2002. Methods: Study 1 evaluated skills acquisition via a large-scale analysis of precourse and postcourse assessments, as well as observations of in-home parent-child interactions. Study 2 assessed skills acquisition via controlled analyses using repeated measures and multiple baseline designs. Results: Results showed increases in parenting skills in both studies as a function of curriculum training. Discussion: Implications of the results, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Behavioral Parent Training in Child Welfare: Maintenance and Booster Training

“…Overall, these results suggest that a more individualized approach to parent training may be necessary to provide necessary and sufficient training in the most cost-effective manner. Additional analyses of the large-scale skill acquisition data reported by Van Camp et al (2008) may reveal similar differences in skill acquisition with regard to the nine specific skills. Such analyses may prove useful in guiding component analyses of the training curriculum.…”

Evaluation of Behavioral Skills Training for Teaching Functional Assessment and Treatment Selection Skills to Parents

“…Many studies have evaluated behavioral procedures for teaching parents the skills to manage their child's problem behavior (McIntyre, ; Sanders & James, ; Sanders, Mazzucchelli, & Studman, ; Sharry, Guerin, Griffin, & Drumm, ). These strategies, generally called behavioral parent training (Serketich & Dumas, ; Van Camp et al, ), typically involve describing behavioral procedures, modeling of the procedures, involving parents in role plays, and providing corrective feedback. The majority of research on parent training focuses on consequential manipulations such as various forms of differential reinforcement, redirection, extinction, and time out (Hawkins, Peterson, Schweid, & Bijou, ; Peed, Roberts, & Forehand, ; Van Camp et al, ; Webster‐Stratton, ).…”

“…These strategies, generally called behavioral parent training (Serketich & Dumas, ; Van Camp et al, ), typically involve describing behavioral procedures, modeling of the procedures, involving parents in role plays, and providing corrective feedback. The majority of research on parent training focuses on consequential manipulations such as various forms of differential reinforcement, redirection, extinction, and time out (Hawkins, Peterson, Schweid, & Bijou, ; Peed, Roberts, & Forehand, ; Van Camp et al, ; Webster‐Stratton, ). These studies often report an increase in parenting skills by the parents and a decrease in inappropriate behavior exhibited by their children following training.…”

“…Behavioral skills training (BST) was used to teach the parents to conduct ABC recording, generate a summary/hypothesis statement about the function of the behavior, and choose appropriate treatment strategies. Van Camp et al (), highlighted the importance of training foster parents in behavior analysis techniques; doing so is beneficial to the foster parents and the children in their care, as problem behaviors may prevent the child from thriving in their foster home environment. Thus, this study used foster parents as participants.…”

Three variations of translational research: Comments on Critchfield (2011)

“…Several runaways had gone missing, become involved in crime, or even died while on the run, so this was a serious issue. We were invited because we were managing a foster-parent training program focused on reducing problematic behavior and increasing alternative behavior along with improving parent-child interactions (see Van Camp et al, 2008). What should we do about running away?…”