Entwicklung und Evaluation eines psychosozialen Kompetenztrainings für lernbehinderte Jugendliche in der beruflichen Rehabilitation

Background: Emotional, behavioural problems and a lack of social competence are supposed to be common phenomena in adolescents with learning disability. Nevertheless in Germany there is a lack of evaluated group therapy programmes for this population. Method: The dissertation study aimed to ascertain short- and long-term impact of an intervention, concepted especially for the needs of those adolescents and evaluated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 77 adolescents in vocational schools. Changes in their social competence and emotional well-being were standardized and assessed multimethodally (e.g. by self-reports, care-giver-reports, observations of roleplays) on the different stages (cognitive, emotional, behavioural) of social competence. Results: Overall the adolescents of the intervention group showed clear and time stable improvements in different fields, especially they improved in their social problem solving, their reaching of behavioural goals and their social competent behaviour in every daylife. Conclusions: This study confirms that the special group training is an effective treatment for learning disabled adolescents - independent of their cognitive level of function. The improvement of social competence and emotional stability supports not only their advancing in apprenticeship but also the latter occupational integration