Project Director

Cooley, Morgan

Department Examiner

Scott, Cathy; Wilson, April

Department

Dept. of Social Work

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Foster parents are tasked with creating a safe and stable environment for the youth while also trying to parent and address challenging behaviors (Elgar, Mills, McGrath, Waschbusch, & Brownridge, 2007). Although these behaviors can also be found in youth in the general population, they are more common among foster youth (Van Holen & Vanschoonlandt, 2017). This mixed-methods study involved using an Internet questionnaire to measure influential factors of parenting (i.e. stress, satisfaction, involvement) and the qualitative questions explored foster parents’ experiences with behaviors and which parenting strategies have been helpful and non-helpful. The quantitative results of this study concluded that involvement, use of positive parenting, and consistent use of monitoring strategies were all associated with lower levels of stress. Additionally, stress was negatively associated with foster parents’ intent to continue fostering. Results of this study indicated that aggression, tantrums, violence, self-harm, and defiance were the most commonly reported challenging behaviors. Helpful discipline strategies included time-in, earning or removing privileges, and implementing clear communication; and non-helpful discipline included corporal punishment, time-out, and yelling. While the findings were expected, the recommended improvements for foster care to compensate for these challenges include adequate training, more agency support, and group/familial/individual therapy.

Acknowledgments

Morgan Cooley

IRB Number

17-192

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Date

5-2018

Subject

Foster home care; Discipline of children; Family social work

Keyword

Foster parent; Foster youth behavior; Parental stress; Intent to continue

Discipline

Social Work

Document Type

Theses

Extent

41 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Date Available

4-20-2018

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