Workshops/How To Work With Families

• Child Focus
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• Foster Parent Training - Options For Youth
• Inclusion in Schools: Real and Perceived Views of Full Inclusion - Dark Ages? Bright Futures
• Infants and Toddlers in Your Care: How to Nurture 0-3 Year-Olds in Group Care and at Home
• Learning and Teaching Styles
• Preparing Personnel to Work With Parents and Families
• Reducing Stress in the Lives of Young Chlldren
• Sample Forms for Teachers
• Ask Dr. Susan

“How to Start A Foster Care Program”

Job and Family Services - Foster Family Training

The ABC’s of Positive Parenting for Foster Parents

Planning a program to teach desirable behavior and replace inappropriate behavior is a process that involves putting together steps. To plan a program, we first need to analyze the problem behavior we are seeking to change.  The first step of program planning, than, is to analyze or assess the problem behavior to: (1) pinpoint the problem and gather baseline information on how often it occurs, (2) identify potential antecedents that may help trigger the problem behavior and, (3) identify consequences which may be serving to reinforce and maintain the problem behavior or which may serve to discourage more appropriate alternative behavior.

Once we have assessed the problem, we have information we can use to plan a teaching/change strategy. The planning process is a simple extension of the assessment process. First, of course, our plan would seek to eliminate or minimize antecedents that trigger the problem and consequence which reinforce it. Then, using an ABC Program Planning Sheet, we focus on the positive behavior we want to teach to replace the problem behavior. We begin this teaching process by setting a teaching goal in pinpointed behavioral terms and describing the first realistic step toward that goal which we will target in our program. Next, we consider all potential antecedent cues that we can create/set up to help cause the behavior we are trying to teach to happen. For example, if we are trying to teach a child to make his bed in the morning before coming to breakfast, we may post a reminder sign at eye level near his bedroom door which he can see as he leaves his room.

The third step in program planning is to consider all consequences reinforcing to the child which he may earn by demonstrating the goal behavior. These, of course, should flow as logically and naturally as possible from the behavior itself and are likely to involve both social reinforcers like Pure Descriptive Praise and non-social reinforcers. Using the above example, we could arrange for the child to earn a poster he particularly likes once he has demonstrated a genuine concern for how his room looks by making his bed without reminder for seven days (counting each day until he has accumulated a total of seven – whether it takes only seven consecutive days or more than that). If the poster is sufficiently reinforcing to him, he will work much harder to remember to make his bed. We also could tie in a portion of his allowance with bed-making so that failing to make the bed without a reminder automatically and logically “costs” him something he wants.

In carrying out programs, we need to have reliable information on how well they are working. To get this information, teaching parents must observe the child’s behavior and keep daily records of progress. .

The steps of planning a program are simple and straight-forward. Planning itself is one of the main jobs of the program manager. Teaching parents are not expected to plan programs alone, but to do sow with the help of heir program managers. While program planning is not magic (it requires a lot of work and time by parents), a good plan properly carried out can be a very powerful tool for teaching desirable behavior and helping children live and learn in their famil