Review: Behaviour management for foster carers

Amber Elliott

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

ISBN 978-1-84905-339-6

£12.99

248 pages

Why can't my child behave is a question commonly voiced by foster carers and adopters who are struggling to manage the demands of parenting a child who has experienced developmental trauma.

In her book, Dr Amber Elliott, a chartered clinical psychologist, speaks eloquently about the roles of carers in enabling traumatised children to benefit from a positive parental relationship. She challenges the usual behavioural approach to parenting strategies that uses reward and punishment techniques. Instead, using the most recent neuroscientific research available, she has taken the typical types of behaviour often experienced by carers and has pulled together a simple series of tools, actions and statements that can help a carer start to respond more effectively to the child. The challenging behaviours identified include attention seeking, rage outbursts, lying, sexualised behaviour and difficult sibling relationships. All of which will resonate with many carers.

This book is well set out, simply written and focuses on the carer as the primary agent of change.

Having worked with foster carers and adopters for many years, I recognise the young people's stories as well as the carers' experiences and frustrations as they try to form an attachment with the child.

Dr Elliott argues successfully throughout the book that the usual parenting approaches only reinforce the child's learned behaviour. "I've tried everything, why isn't it working?" She identifies that a key need for developmentally traumatised children is to have support of another person who has a real understanding of their emotional state; feels empathy rather than feels sorry for them.

Interestingly, the book suggests that carers and professionals alike should take time to understand their own emotional response to the child's behaviour. Often this is expressed as "he knows just what button to press". Identifying this button enables carers to be calmly confident, warm, assertive and able to understand and implement what is best for the child.

The chapters are all set out in a similar way for ease of reference; with examples of the behaviour, what lies behind it, carers' typical reactions and strategies, consequences of using reward and punishment, and then a detailed empathic behaviour management technique which includes, very helpfully, a set of questions that the carer should ask themselves so that they can make sense of the logic of the behaviour as well as the emotional response.

By focusing on some of the most common problems that carers face, Dr Elliott has created an accessible resource that supports adoptive and foster parents to develop empathic parenting strategies that work for their child and for their whole family.

- Sally Melbourne, executive director, Core Assets, the children's services group

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