Family/Partnership-centered Conjoint Behavioral Consultation: The Reconceptualization of a Model

• The importance of working meaningfully and constructively with families in promoting a child’s learning and adjustment is unequivocal. Home-school partnerships have been shown to relate to many positive outcomes for children, families, teachers, and schools. • Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC; Sheridan, Kratochwill, & Bergan, 1996) is a structured, indirect model of service delivery whereby parents and teachers are joined to collaboratively address needs and concerns of a child with the assistance of a consultant. Goals of CBC encompass those focused on addressing child needs, and developing home-school partnerships. • CBC is procedurally operationalized via conjoint interviews (Problem Identification, Problem Analysis, and Treatment Evaluation) aimed at prioritizing shared concerns across home and school settings, evaluating factors contributing to the identified concern, developing an agreeable plan, and evaluating the child’s progress toward goals. • Traditional approaches to CBC emphasize a problem-solving orientation, aimed largely at addressing problems experienced by individual children

Family-Centered Positive Psychology: Focusing on Strengths to Build Student Success

Family-centered positive psychology (FCPP) is defined as a framework for working with children and families that promotes strengths and capacity building within individuals and systems, rather than one focusing solely on the resolution of problems or remediation of deficiencies. This approach to family-based services is predicated on the belief that child and family outcomes will be enhanced if members participate in identifying needs, establishing social supports and partnerships, and acquiring new skills and competencies, rather than simply receiving services from professionals. In this article, we present a rationale for FCPP, outline its primary principles, highlight one model for working with families that exemplifies FCPP practice, and illustrate its use through an authentic data-based case study

Family/Partnership-centered Conjoint Behavioral Consultation: The Reconceptualization of a Model

• The importance of working meaningfully and constructively with families in promoting a child’s learning and adjustment is unequivocal. Home-school partnerships have been shown to relate to many positive outcomes for children, families, teachers, and schools. • Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC; Sheridan, Kratochwill, & Bergan, 1996) is a structured, indirect model of service delivery whereby parents and teachers are joined to collaboratively address needs and concerns of a child with the assistance of a consultant. Goals of CBC encompass those focused on addressing child needs, and developing home-school partnerships. • CBC is procedurally operationalized via conjoint interviews (Problem Identification, Problem Analysis, and Treatment Evaluation) aimed at prioritizing shared concerns across home and school settings, evaluating factors contributing to the identified concern, developing an agreeable plan, and evaluating the child’s progress toward goals. • Traditional approaches to CBC emphasize a problem-solving orientation, aimed largely at addressing problems experienced by individual children

Perceptions of Helpfulness in Conjoint Behavioral Consultation: Congruence and Agreement between Teachers and Parents

Conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC) can be considered a help-giving model, wherein consultants work with parents and teachers in an effort to develop constructive partnerships aimed at addressing needs of students for whom both parties share responsibility. The development of strong relationships among systems in a child’s life is related to positive outcomes for children, and congruence among systems is one relationship variable that has received previous research attention. This study examined the degree to which parent and teacher perceptions of the helpfulness of the CBC consultant are congruent, and its relationship with various case outcomes. Correlational analyses suggest that parents’ and teachers’ perspectives of the helpfulness of the consultant are not necessarily re lated to each other, and as differences increase, perceptions of outcomes decrease for both parties. Research implications, limitations, and future directions are offered