Group Therapy Case Study

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While general group therapy methods have been proven to have a positive effect on behavioral issues that children in the foster system, one method of group therapy has proven to be especially successful, which is called multidimensional therapy for foster care, or MTFC. MTFC is an alternative therapy type that is used instead of an inpatient living facility that target foster children with extreme emotional disturbances. A lot of information based on MTFC is from the Swedish foster system, where they use the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessments (ASEBA) to test the effectiveness of treatment (Gustle, Hansson, Sundell, Lundh, Lofholm, 2007). In this study, the goal of the MTFC was to use the social learning theory to give treatment …show more content…

This integrated method of using both parents, child and psychologists allow for the most effective treatment (Gustle, Hansson, Sundell, Lundh, Lofholm, 2007). The study used a different method than the other studies looked at, one called Point-and-Level System along with a pre-test/post-test using the CBC. The Point-and-Level system is a method of giving the children numerical points for positive behavior such as getting good grades and having a good attitude, when a child has a certain amount of points they can “trade” them in for a reward (Gustle, Hansson, Sundell, Lundh, Lofholm, 2007). This constant positive reinforcement helps build more constructive behavior in the children, and the study showed that if the parents or caregivers gave more points, therefore enforcing more positive behaviors, then the results were better. At the end of the study the results showed that children were be re-offenders (Gustle, Hansson, Sundell, Lundh, Lofholm, 2007). Some studies have shown some limitations with the MTFC method (Jonkman, Schuengel, Lindeboom, Boer, Oosterman, 2013). This study on 80 children between the ages of 3 and 7 years old showed that MTFC is proven successful in the United States, but the research being done is by the developers themselves and that a big limitation is that there is no clear baseline measure for this study (Jonkman, Schuengel, Lindeboom,