The relative effectiveness of group care (GC) and multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) was compared in terms of their impact on criminal offending, incarceration rates, and program completion outcomes for 79 male adolescents who had histories of chronic and serious juvenile delinquency. Results show that boys who participated in MTFC had significantly fewer criminal referrals and returned to live with relatives more often. Multiple regression analyses showed that assignment to a treatment condition (i.e., GC or MTFC) predicted official and self-reported criminality in follow-up beyond other well-known predictors of chronic juvenile offending (i.e., age at 1st offense, number of previous offenses, age at referral).

Parent training for foster parents is mandated by federal law and supported by state statues in nearly all states; however, little is known about the efficacy of that training, and recent reviews underscore that the most widely used curricula in the child welfare system (CWS) have virtually no empirical support (Farmer et al., 2007;Grimm, 2003). On the other hand, numerous theoretically-based, developmentally-sensitive parent training interventions have been found to be effective in experimental clinical and prevention intervention trials (e.g., Kazdin & Wassell, 2000;McMahon & Forehand, 2003;Patterson & Forgatch, 1987;Webster-Stratton et al., 2001). One of these, Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC; Chamberlain 2003), has been used with foster parents of youth referred from juvenile justice. The effectiveness of an intervention based on MTFC was tested in a universal randomized trial with 700 foster and kinship parents in the San Diego County CWS. The goal of the intervention was to reduce child problem behaviors through strengthening foster parents' skills. The trial was designed to examine effects on both child behavior and parenting practices, allowing for specific assessment of the extent to which improvements in child behavior were mediated by the parenting practices targeted in the intervention. Child behavior problems were reduced significantly more in the intervention condition than in the control condition, and specific parenting practices were found to mediate these reductions, especially for high-risk children (i.e., those with more than 6 behavior problems per day at baseline). Keywords parent management training; foster parents; effectiveness trialChild welfare services are estimated to cost $20 billion per year (Allphin et al., 2001), yet very little experimental research has been used to guide the interventions used within that system. In a systematic review of research on children in foster care, Wulczyn et al. (2005) found that most existing studies were descriptive in nature. They and other researchers (e.g., Courtney, 2000) have called for experimental research to improve practices in the child welfare system (CWS), particularly for children in out-of-home care. In this study, we tested Correspondence should be directed to Patricia Chamberlain, Oregon Social Learning Center, 10 Shelton McMurphey Boulevard, Eugene, (541) 485-2711; fax, (541) NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript the effectiveness of an intervention designed to strengthen foster parents' parenting skills through the implementation of a theoretically-based intervention that had been shown in previous randomized studies to have positive short-and long-term effects on child outcomes Chamberlain & Reid, 1991;Leve et al., 2005). The intervention was expected to lead to improvements in foster parent child management skills, which were expected to result in fewer child behavior problems. Previous work has shown that behavior problems (particularly externalizing behaviors) are o...

Nonabstinent alcoholics and social drinkers were presented with an ad-lib supply of either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages in a taste-rating task. Subjects were assigned to one of two instructional set conditions in which they were led to expect that the beverage to be rated contained alcohol (vodka and tonic) or consisted only of tonic. The actual beverage administered consisted of either vodka and tonic or tonic only. The results showed that instructional set was a significant determinant of the amount of beverage consumed and posttask estimates of the alcoholic content of the drinks. The actual beverage administered did not significantly affect the drinking rates of cither alcoholics or social drinkers. Loss of control drinking, in the form of increased consumption by alcoholics who were administered alcohol, did not occur during the drinking task. The results are discussed in terms of implications for treatment and for the conception of alcoholism as a disease.

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In this paper, both longitudinal and treatment studies relevant to conduct disorder (CD) are reviewed, and a developmental approach to its prevention is presented. Outcome studies for the treatment of CD and antisocial behavior are first reviewed to demonstrate that, although none have been entirely successful, many interventions have powerful effects on various symptoms that comprise the disorder, highly predictive antecedents, and risk factors. Second, the development of CD and the potency and interrelationship among antecedent and mediating variables is traced through the preschool and early elementary school years. Third, an attempt is made to synthesize the developmental and treatment research findings to suggest possible integrations of interventions that are promising for future preventive trials in the preschool and elementary school periods. It is concluded that, whereas before the entry to school preventive interventions targeted entirely in the family setting may prove successful, after the transition to school multisetting interventions will be essential. Finally, three examples of new and multisetting prevention trials are briefly described.