Assessing Satisfaction of Children in out-of-Home Care: Development of Korean out-of-Home Care Satisfaction Scale

Sang Jung Lee,Eun Mi An,Ick-Joong Chung

doi:10.1007/s12187-019-09688-6

Abstract

In order to offer client-centered services, it is important to measure children’s service satisfaction and reflect their needs to out-of-home care practices and policies. However, a reliable measure that assesses children’s satisfaction about out-of-home care is not found in Korea. This study aimed to develop a Korean out-of-home care satisfaction scale. The study sample consisted of 484 children from institutional care, group homes, and foster homes in Korea. Half of the sample was chosen randomly for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) based on 16 items from the Korean Foster Care Improvements Project. The other half of the sample was used for confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). EFA yielded two-factor structures that consist of eight items for each factor. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the two-factor structures with reasonable fit, and all items loaded significantly on the factors. The Korean out-of-home care satisfaction scale could be used as a tool to assess children’s satisfaction with out-of-home care services, which could allow social workers to reflect children’s needs immediately into practice and help policymakers make more informed decisions about out-of-home care services and programs.

Highlights

In order to offer client-centered services, it is important to measure children’s service satisfaction and reflect their needs to out-of-home care practices and policies
Satisfaction scale In Korea, out-of-home care services are provided for children who are separated from their families of origin due to poverty, parents’ divorce, domestic violence, runaway, and other reasons
From the perspectives of service providers, impacts of programs served in out-of-home care have been investigated (Kim 2005; Park and Kim 2010; Park and Lee 2016), child welfare workers were mostly targeted as respondents for studies that attempted to support out-of-home care service improvement (Ha and Lim 2006; Kim and Seo 2002; Lee 1999; Yang 2003)

Summary

Introduction

In order to offer client-centered services, it is important to measure children’s service satisfaction and reflect their needs to out-of-home care practices and policies. The study sample consisted of 484 children from institutional care, group homes, and foster homes in Korea. In Korea, out-of-home care services are provided for children who are separated from their families of origin due to poverty, parents’ divorce, domestic violence, runaway, and other reasons. They are placed and served mostly in one of the three out-of-home care services: institutional care, group homes, and foster care. Children have complained about insufficient private rooms, lack of extracurricular activities, and lack of tutoring support (Kim 1995) This is partly because children’s voices have not been reflected during the service-providing process. This study aims to develop a Korean out-of-home care satisfaction scale based on questions from the Foster Care Improvements Project (Nho et al 2007)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion