The Child Wise Programme: A Course to Enhance the Self-Confidence and Behaviour Management Skills of Foster Carers with Challenging Children

Looked after children with a history of maltreatment and abandonment are prone to develop high rates of mental health difficulties. They tend to suffer from multiple impairments, sometimes involving cognitive deficits and extremes of antisocial behaviour. Foster carers' management skills and emotional resources are tested to the limit. A further concern is the contribution of challenging behaviour to the unplanned termination of foster placements. Carers, if they are not to feel deskilled by the increasing numbers of children with special needs placed with them, require a more focused preparatory and follow-up training than they usually receive.

A study by Martin Herbert and Jenny Wookey questioned whether a broadly based cognitive behavioural programme could, by increasing carers' behaviour management skills and self-assurance, reduce the challenging behaviour of looked after children and the resultant instability of placements. The answers were sought from a randomised controlled study of foster carers attending the parent training Child Wise Programme (CWP) designed by the authors. The programme combines course leaders' professional experience of working with challenging children and parent groups, and foster carers' personal expertise based on living with and caring for challenging children.

The intervention, with an experimental group of 67 foster carers and a comparable waiting-list control group of 50 carers, succeeded in meeting just over half of its key aims. An increase in the confidence of the carers was a significant gain. Also positive was the majority of personal reports indicating improvements in looked after children's behaviour, changes generally attributed to the acquisition of new behaviour management skills. Although some of the statistical comparisons were disappointing in their failure to reach significance levels (eg in a reduction in placement breakdowns), they provided useful information about ways of improving the training. Qualitative methods were used to explore the subjective responses of participants to the Webster-Stratton and Herbert (1994) collaborative style of training employed. These produced valuable insights into the personal and professional dilemmas of a foster carer's role, as well as data which contributed to the evaluation of the training programme.