Cognitive-behavioural training interventions for assisting foster carers in the management of difficult behaviour.

The provision of training for foster carers is now seen as an important factor contributing to the successful outcome of foster care placements. It is believed to be associated with enhancing caring attitudes and skills, reducing behaviour problems in foster children, improving relationships between foster carers and child welfare agencies, and decreasing foster carer attrition. Since the late 1960s, foster carer training programs have proliferated, and few of the many published and unpublished training curricula have been systematically assessed and evaluated. The advent of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and the research evidence demonstrating its effectiveness as a psychotherapeutic treatment of choice, has prompted many working in the social care field to devise CBT-based training programmes. CBT approaches to foster care training derive from a 'skill-based' training format that also seeks to identify and correct problematic thinking patterns that are associated with dysfunctional behaviour by changing and/or challenging maladaptive thoughts and beliefs.