Placement Of Adolescents Research Articles

Examining the implications of early adolescent attachment on out‐of‐home placement and family courts

AbstractFew scholars have examined early adolescent attachment in child welfare, where placement is a necessary but forced attachment disruption. The purpose of this nonexperimental quantitative study was to examine the responses of 18‐ to 24‐year‐olds (n = 83) who had been in out‐of‐home care, comparing early adolescent versus non‐early adolescent placement, placement setting, and sibling accessibility on attachment. Results showed early adolescents were almost half as likely to be securely attached postplacement than other age ranges and the importance of family‐like placements and maintaining peer relationships.

A modified multinomial baseline logit model with logit functions having different covariates

The multinomial logistic regression is a useful tool in the health and life sciences. In this paper, we propose a modified multinomial baseline logit model for nominal polychotomous data. The modified model is suitable for use in the situation where separate logistic models may be functions of different covariates. An estimation procedure is presented. The modified model is an alternative to the multinomial baseline logit model and the multivariate sparse group lasso. Simulation shows that this modified model outperforms the multinomial baseline logit model and the multinomial sparse group lasso. A real data set about an adolescent placement study is analyzed to demonstrate flexibility and efficiency of the modified model.

Youth Initiated Mentors: Do They Offer an Alternative for Out-of-Home Placement in Youth Care?

The present study evaluates the Youth Initiated Mentoring (YIM) approach in which families and youth care professionals collaborate with an informal mentor, who is someone adolescents (aged twelve to twenty-three) nominate from their own social network. The informal mentor can be a relative, neighbour or friend, who is a confidant and spokesman for the youth and a co-operation partner for parents and professionals. This approach fits with the international tendency in social work to make use of the strengths of families’ social networks and to stimulate client participation. The current study examined through case-file analysis of 200 adolescents (YIM group n = 96, residential comparison group n = 104) whether the YIM approach would be a promising alternative for out-of-home placement of youth with complex needs. A total of 83 per cent of the juveniles in the YIM group were able to nominate a mentor after an average of thirty-three days. Ninety per cent of the adolescents in the YIM group received ambulatory treatment as an alternative for indicated out-of-home-placement, while their problems were largely comparable with those of juveniles in Dutch semi-secure residential care. Results suggest that the involvement of important non-parental adults may help to prevent out-of-home placement of adolescents with complex needs.

Perspectives of Foster Parents and Social Workers on Foster Placement Disruption

The potential human and financial costs of foster placement disruption for the children, families, professionals and agencies involved are widely accepted. This service evaluation identified and described perspectives of foster parents and social workers regarding placement disruptions in order to identify the main issues of concern and to derive lessons to inform practice. Postal questionnaires containing both quantitative and qualitative questions were sent to supervising social workers, field social workers and foster parents involved in the 36 non-kinship foster placement disruptions that occurred from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2011 in one Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland. In total, 107 questionnaires were sent out and the overall response rate was 62%. Multiple factors were involved in the disruptions, with the child's behaviour and contact with birth family being the greatest concerns, followed by attachment issues. Disruptions were more prevalent for adolescent placements, placements of less than one year duration and “new” foster parents. Views on communication between professionals and foster parents were generally encouraging. In the majority of cases the disruption was thought likely to have occurred even if any additional supports that could be envisaged could have been provided. Recommendations for practice include enhanced supervision and support for new foster parents, activity to value foster parents, the recording of disruption data, and development of a behaviour management training plan.

Parenting fostered adolescents: skills and strategies

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the parenting approaches and strategies used by the foster carers of adolescents in long‐term placements. Sixty‐eight foster carers were interviewed at two points in time. The first interview was conducted two months after the start of a new adolescent placement and the second after the placement had been continuing for a year, or at the point of disruption if this occurred earlier. The interview schedules were designed specifically for this study and were based upon well‐established techniques developed in other studies of parenting. They enabled the researchers to make summary ratings for each carer on established dimensions of parenting such as control and discipline, responsiveness and the level of engagement with the child. The researchers assessed how these strategies changed and developed in relation to the young person's behaviour and whether these approaches influenced either the likelihood of placement disruption or the quality of the placement for the child. This paper describes the parenting strategies used by the foster carers, highlighting the areas of parenting that significantly affected the placement outcomes and the corresponding implications for policy and practice.

Comparative Impacts of Alternatives to Adolescent Placement

The impacts of day treatment and family treatment as alternatives to adolescent placement are assessed in a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study. The development of the day treatment and family treatment programs greatly reduced the number of adolescent placements by a public county welfare agency. Substantial cost savings were associated with family treatment. Post-intervention delinquency rates, relative to pre-intervention rates, were lowest for adolescents initially served in out-of-home placement as opposed to alternatives. School performance among youth receiving all three types of service was poor and differences in school performance were small. Telephone follow-up interviewing suggested that parents of family treatment clients found services somewhat less helpful than did parents in the other programs.

Issues in Placement for Dependent and Delinquent Adolescents

I am a program specialist and consultant with the Foster Care Unit of the West Virginia Department of Welfare's Division of Social Services. My activities are focused on three interrelated aspects of foster care placement for adolescents: The development of information about community-based foster care placement resources; The support of foster care providers through consultation and training; and The formulation of placement strategies for hard-to-place youngsters.

Family and community focus as an alternative to residential treatment for children with behavioral-emotional school-based problems

The purpose of this paper is to describe a two year evaluation project designed as an alternative to institutional placement for adolescents who were disruptive and dysfunctional within their families and schools. These young adolescents, aged ten to fifteen, were placed in a special classroom within a regular Canadian school. Class size was kept to a maximum of six students, with fourteen students being involved over the two years of the study. Family interventions and therapy were carried out by two para-professional Child Care Workers. Evaluations of students' progress were primarily descriptive with both test data and observational data being utilized. Of the fourteen students involved in the program, four were institutionalized, three were discharged home with no stable school placement, and seven students were successfel in achieving and maintaining functional involvement with their schools and families. Available evaluative data from this project suggests a shift away from large scale residential treatment complexes for some young adolescents, particularly those whose families are prepared to make a commitment for participation in a total treatment approach.

Alternative group foster homes; a new place for young people to live.

After a brief historical survey of child placement practices in the United States, this paper will address itself to an innovative form of placement for adolescents, "alternative group foster homes." The origins of two of these homes in "runaway houses" and their ideological underpinnings in the social and political critique of the counterculture will be discussed. The two homes will then be described and their functioning contrasted. One of them, Frye House, has managed to remain faithful to the radically democratic principles which animated its founding, and the other, Markham House, has not; the emphasis here will be on this difference and on its consequences for the homes as a whole and for the young people who have lived in them.

Placement of Adolescents in a Foster Care Agency

Placement of Adolescents in a Foster Care Agency