Relative effectiveness of behavioral and reflective group training with foster mothers.

Abstract

This article describes group parent training procedures for a sample of 42 foster mothers. Half of the foster mothers were trained in behavioral child-rearing skills, and the other half received reflective group counseling for 8 weeks. Comparison of the two modes of training showed that reflectively counseled mothers improved primarily in parent attitudes, whereas behaviorally trained mothers improved primarily in actual use of appropriate behavioral skills, reporting reductions in problematic child behavior and improvements in overall family functioning. The future use of a combination approach is addressed, as are suggestions regarding how to motivate foster parents and improve their attendance rates. Throughout the 1970s the use of parent counseling and training has grown as a means of employing parents as therapists for their children's problem behaviors. Tavormina (1974) discussed two major topics of parent counseling: (a) reflective counseling, which emphasizes parental awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the child's feelings, and (b) behavioral counseling, which emphasizes actual observable behavior and the environmental variables that maintain certain behavior patterns. In a comparison of the relative effectiveness of the two procedures (Tavormina, 1975), both had beneficial effects relative to the notreatment control condition, but the behavioral method resulted in a significantly greater magnitude of improvement across attitude and behavior change dimensions. Tavormina's (1975) study trained biological mothers of retarded children, and the present study represents an extension of that study to foster mothers, who differ from other parents along several dimensions. First, these parents are charged with the duty of managing children who are wards of the state, yet they have consistently been implicated as being neither economically nor therapeutically prepared to manage the children entrusted to their care (Levitt, 1973). Second, foster children as a

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