Randomised controlled trial of the Fostering Changes programme
Report into the fostering changes programme, which looked to provide foster carers with practical advice for managing challenging behaviour.
Documents
Details
The fostering changes programme was established in 1999 by the adoption and fostering national team at the Maudsley Hospital, South London in response to an urgent need to provide foster carers with practical advice and strategies for managing difficult and challenging behaviour problems.
The programme provides carers with practical skills and understanding that can be flexibly applied to children with a wide range of needs, and the confidence to apply this knowledge in different situations.
The rationale for conducting a randomised-controlled trial of the fostering changes programme was to provide confirmation that the revised programme produced the same positive outcomes as the early evaluations, to introduce a comparison (control) group in order to test that changes in outcome were not merely a result of the passage of time, and also to provide the evidence base that would justify the allocation of resources by local authorities to running more courses.