New Approach to Providing Support to Careres of Children with Conduct Problems in Serbia

Children with conduct problems are particularly vulnerable (according their specific experiences/ needs) with whom the foster parents, adopters and biological parents are difficult to bear.Lack of knowledge and skills are the basic obstacles for their adequate upbringing .

Association for alternative family care-Familia since 1998 has provided support to children of vulnerable groups, adolescents, parents/careres and professionals through direct forms of support and the designing and implementation of new programs.

Familia in partnership with proffesionals from 3 regional centers for fostering and adoption piloted the Program for support of children with conduct problems-improvement of competences (11 groups of foster parents, 160 in total).

The program consists of interactive workshops that include relevant topics: the specifics of child development, inadequate patterns of attachment as the consequence of the traumatization/ abuse/neglect, the basics of the reparation process, implementation of the principles of positive discipline, diverse resources for supporting socialization and social inclusion.

Comprehensive evaluation of the outcomes has shown the usefulness of the program in general and particularly in preparing foster parents for accepting children with conduct problems from residential care. The program would be applicable to all groups of careres of children with conduct problems: biological, foster and adoptive parents.