Social Work with Failure-to-Thrive Children and their Families: Part I: Psychosocial Factors

Summary The problem failure-to-thrive is described and a brief reviewof the main causal theories is provided. Part I of this studydetails an investigation of psychosocial factors associatedwith non-organic failure-to-thrive in 17 children (comparingthem with two contrast groups). There were significant differences between the groups (interalia) in the adverse temperamental attributes of the index children,problems in the mother's feeding of their children and otheraspects of their interactions and relationships. The mothersshowed no specific psychopathology but were socially disadvantagedin various ways. The implications of these findings—preventiveand therapeutic—are discussed.     

Social Work with Failure-to-Thrive Children and their Families: Part II: Behavioural Social Work Intervention

Reprint requests: Student Unit, 73 Aylestone Road, Leicester, LE2 7LL. Summary Part II of this study is concerned with a multicomponent behaviouralsocial work intervention with 17 failure-to-thrive childrenand their families. An investigation, described in Part I, showedthat the route to this worrying problem differed from familyto family. Patterns of contributory causes did emerge—thusdetermining the main thrust of the interventions. Many of thechild victims were difficult (not least in biological and psychologicaladaptability) from birth. Parents were disadvantaged in variousways. Feeding difficulties and parent-child relationships provedto be the major focus of the interventions. Behavioural Socialwork interventions directed toward the feeding performance andrelationships resulted in a high success rate; these improvementswere maintained over considerable periods of time (one yearor more). The results and temporal generalization in the caseof more general parent-child interactions, and child behaviourproblems, were more modest, but encouraging. The programme isdescribed fully and the results are given in detail.