Social work and parent support in reaction to children's antisocial behaviour: constructions and effects

Abstract

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

The (ab)sense of a concept of social support in parenting research: a social work perspective

“…Curran ; De Mey et al . ). Despite the findings that ‘social networking events’ or ‘socializing support’ are highly relevant to the families and often minimal attention is given to these forms of social support by social services, this relational aspect remains underestimated by these studies.…”

“…Parenting groups aiming at social support might benefit from this diversity as De Mey et al . (, p. 304) reported: ‘parents, especially those of ethnic minority origin or from lower socio‐economic groups, found it particularly important that the parent group was explicitly heterogeneous as regards to ethnicity as well as to employment status’. There is no reason to stick to a focus on homogeneity, especially not from a social capital perspective.…”

“…Curran ; De Mey et al . ), introducing a different approach to studying social support. In the remaining 135 studies, more than 20 different social support scales were mentioned several times, suggesting that the majority of research included in this analysis relies on quantitative data gathered from standardized social support scales, mainly consisting of self‐reports.…”

Professionals' understanding of partnership with parents in the context of family support programmes

“…In general, court-ordered interventions comprise residential care for children. Some parent training modules make use of evidencebased programs such as Triple P (see Sanders 2003) or STOP 4-7 (see De Mey et al 2009) and even though other forms of support are not evidence-based at this moment, it is the intention to evolve to an evidence-based practice (Van den Bruel 2002). The involvement of parents in any kind of intervention by the CKG (semi-residential, parent training or homebased services) is made obligatory by the decree of the Flemish parliament of 2002.…”

Prevalence of Antisocial Behaviour Among Children and Adolescents in a Community Sample - A Cross-Sectional Study in South Karnataka, India

“…Finally, the number of accumulated risk factors appears to be more important than what types of risk factors youth face (De-Mey et al 2009). 25 …”