| Collective research suggests that treatment efforts aimed at parents of youth with disruptive behavioural difficulties need to be collaborative and encourage parents to take the lead in formulating their own solutions in improving familial interactions and the management of their adolescent's behaviour. Foster parents of foster youth exhibiting a variety of disruptive behavioural difficulties and challenges were assigned to an experimental ( n = 9) or no-treatment comparison (n = 7) group. The respective foster youth of the foster parents in each group were also assigned to a treatment (n = 18) and no-treatment ( n = 12) conditions. A pre-and post-test design using the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders (DSMD), Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), Family Adaptability And Cohesion Scales II (FACES II), Parent Adolescent Communication Scales (PAC), Clinical Rating Scales (CRS) and measures of Total Problem Behaviours and Psychotropic Drug Use were used to assess change. Only the foster parents in the experimental group received a six-session Solution-Focused Parenting Group (SFPG) intervention. Pre-and post-training semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to assess the SFPG training program's effect on the participants' perceptions and experiences of their foster-parenting challenges, their own personal factors, their relationships with their foster youth, and the functioning of their foster familial system.; Statistical results indicate that SFPG foster parent participants demonstrated adherence to the training program, showed minimal resistance, and actively participated. Foster parent participation in a SFPG did not result in any indirect effect on the foster youth's emotional, behavioural, and social skills difficulties. Foster youth's display of problem behaviours and use of psychotropic medication also remained unchanged. The foster parents made qualitative gains in their ability to manage their foster youth's problem behaviours, resolve dysfunctional foster parent-foster youth interactions, and maintain effective parental roles. These gains appear to have reduced the foster parents' experience of stress-related factors in parenting foster youth with disruptive behavioural difficulties, increased their sense of parental competence, and also enabled them to maintain moderate levels of familial functioning in terms of cohesion, adaptability, and effective communication. |
