ABSTRACT
Many adolescents with conduct problems, engage in destructive school-based behaviour and have co-morbid learning difficulties. School interventions should address both conduct and academic problems. School-based conduct problems may be managed by arranging a series of meetings involving a representative of the school, the parents and the adolescent. The goal of these meetings should be to identify target conduct problems to be altered by implementing a programme of rewards and sanctions run jointly by the parents and the school, in which acceptable target behaviour at school is rewarded and unacceptable target behaviour at school leads to loss of privileges at home. Figure 10.9 presents an example of a daily report card for use in home-school liaison programmes. A critical aspect of home-school liaison meetings is facilitating the building of a working relationship between the parents and the school representative, since often with multi-problem families containing a child with conduct problems, family-school relationships are antagonistic (Dowling & Osborne, 1994). The psychologist should continually provide both parents and teachers with opportunities to voice their shared wish to help the child develop good academic skills and control over their conduct problems. Where youngsters also have academic underachievement problems, it is important for the psychologist and teachers to take the steps necessary to arrange remedial tuition and study skills training as described in Chapter 8.
