Clinical trial NCT01821755: Effectiveness of a Foster Parent Intervention: Results of a Trial
Official title: Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Foster Parent Intervention
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: UNKNOWN
Phase: NA
Conditions: Problematic Behavior in Children
Parent-child Problem
Lead sponsor: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2013-04-01
Enrollment: 63
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 3
Maximum age (years): 12
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: The hypothesis of the study is that the intervention leads to a reduction in foster children's externalizing problems and foster parents' parenting stress and that this in turn leads to a reduction in the number of breakdowns of foster placements.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* foster child has a borderline or clinical score on one of the small-band externalizing scales or the broad-band externalizing scale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)

Exclusion Criteria:

foster child:

* has a mental retardation,
* autism,
* uses psychotropic medication in an inconsistent way,
* behavioral problems are the result of medical problems or medication, foster parents:
* have insufficient knowledge of Dutch,
* have low cognitive abilities,
* are already receiving professional support for the foster child's externalizing problems,
* are divorcing.

Moreover, foster placements were excluded if at least two of the following criteria were present:

* foster parents considered terminating the foster placement during the past two months
* were experiencing psychological distress (measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ; Koeter \& Ormel, 1991) and defined as a score ≥ 2),
* their foster child had a sum score above 3 (for children \< 6 years) or 5 (for children ≥ 6 years) on the critical CBCL-items.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Change in foster child's externalizing problems from baseline to post-intervention (3.5 months later)
timeFrame: Assessed at two time points: at baseline (before the start of the intervention) en post-intervention (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is on average 3.5 months after the baseline measurement)
measure: Change in foster child's externalizing problems from post-intervention to follow-up (3 months later)
timeFrame: Assessed at post-interventio (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is about 3.5 months after the baseline measurement) and at follow-up (which is thee months later than the post-intervention measurement).
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Change in foster parent's parenting stress from baseline to post-intervention (3.5 months later)
timeFrame: Assessed at two time points: at baseline (before the start of the intervention) en post-intervention (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is on average 3.5 months after the baseline measurement)
measure: Change in foster mother's parenting stress from post-intervention to follow-up (3 months later)
timeFrame: Assessed at post-interventio (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is about 3.5 months after the baseline measurement) and at follow-up (which is thee months later than the post-intervention measurement).
measure: Client satisfaction
timeFrame: At post-intervention (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is on average 3.5 months later than the baseline measurment
measure: Change in foster mother's parenting behavior from baseline to post-intervention (3.5 months later)
timeFrame: Assessed at two time points: at baseline (before the start of the intervention) en post-intervention (immediately after the intervention has ended, which is on average 3.5 months after the baseline measurement)
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Brussel
country: Belgium
facility: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
state: Vlaams-Brabant
Study officials:
References: