Foster Placement Research Articles

The Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties of Looked after Children: Foster Carers' Perspectives and an Indirect Model of Placement Support

Recognition of the emotional and behavioural difficulties experienced by looked after children and the impact of these, on both the children and young people and those caring for them, has been increasing. Child and adolescent mental health services have been trying to find better ways of meeting the needs of these children. Kay Sargent and Kate O'Brien draw on an evaluation of a joint social services and health authority project set up to support carers and professionals responsible for children in foster placements. They also seek to give foster carers' perspectives on their foster children's difficulties and the services offered and discuss the issues and implications arising from an indirect approach to providing this support.

Facing Time Limits and Kinship Placements

The study examines the relationship between temporary welfare time limits and foster care relative placement in Nevada. A logit model was specified with a binary dependent variable capturing placement with relatives as opposed to nonrelative family foster care placement or group care. The findings reveal that, all else constant, children from welfare families with more months counted toward their Nevada's time limits are not more likely to be placed with relatives than their counterparts. The findings also show that children from African American families, from large families, or from families receiving cash during removal are more likely to be placed with relatives. The authors suggest that casework activities need to occur before, during, and after children experience foster care placements with relatives.

Matches and Mismatches: The Contribution of Carers and Children to the Success of Foster Placements

Matches and Mismatches: The Contribution of Carers and Children to the Success of Foster Placements

The First Four Months in a New Foster Placement: Psychosocial Adjustment, Parental Contact and Placement Disruption

The First Four Months in a New Foster Placement: Psychosocial Adjustment, Parental Contact and Placement Disruption

Family Characteristics and Child Welfare Services: Does the Assessment Drive Service Provision?

A process study was performed on a program that was designed to prevent ineffective foster placement, to determine the match between family problems identified during assessment and subsequent services provided to the family. The individualization and “fit” of services to specific family needs is the foundation of assessment practice, but little research has documented the extent to which fit occurs. This study of 115 families and their services found that fit is best when concrete, rather than clinical, services are provided, but that parenting issues continue to drive the provision of all services.

Coping Alone: Examining the Prospects of Adolescent Victims of Child Abuse Placed in Foster Care

The ability of a young person to cope effectively with stressful life events appears to be associated with their previous experiences and relationships. Young people in foster care who have histories of child abuse, therefore, may find they cannot cope effectively with the situation they find themselves in. This paper attempts to highlight the problems they face. A group of 21 young people were interviewed and were asked to complete the Frydenberg and Lewis Adolescent Coping Scales. Their social workers provided information on their past history both in care and prior to coming in to care. It emerged that the young people who had experienced physical and/or sexual abuse were significantly (p < 0.02) more likely to be/have been involved in problem, or Crisis, foster placements. Additionally these young people displayed less adaptive coping strategies than the young people who had not been abused. The most significant differences indicated that the victims of abuse were more likely to try and cope with stressful situations by themselves, while the other foster adolescents were significantly (p < 0.004) more likely to find support from their friends. Case studies, with reference to the teenager's own accounts, help to illustrate how a history of abuse can complicate the already difficult fostering processes, and can also affect the long-term coping abilities of the victims. The consequences of these issues are discussed.

‘Contact Irregular’: a qualitative analysis of the impact of visiting patterns of natural parents on foster placements

ABSTRACTOver the years there has been much debate about the effect of parental visiting on children in foster care. While some contend that it is essential to maintain attachment bonds to the birth family, others argue that contact undermines the new relationship with the foster family. By studying descriptions of visiting patterns of 113 foster placements this study attempts to examine how parental access affects the foster child. A qualitative analysis of the written accounts offered by social workers yielded four distinct visiting patterns: Regular and Frequent, Regular but Infrequent, Infrequent, and No Access. The nature of the analysis also allowed for a redefinition of placement outcome into three categories: Successful placements, Ambiguous placements and Crisis placements. Because the categories that emerged from the qualitative analysis were mutually exclusive it was possible to examine, using chi square, whether there was a quantitative relationship between the variables ‘Placement status’ and ‘Visiting patterns’. Analysis of the categorical data showed a statistically significant relationship between visiting patterns and placement outcome. This relationship, however, was not based on how visiting related to Successful or Crisis placements. Instead it was evident that those placements categorized as Ambiguous were far more likely to report Infrequent visiting patterns. Case examples offer an opportunity to examine possible reasons for this relationship. The paper also describes qualitative accounts of how children reacted to the visits. The unique approach to defining placement status in this study may help explain the conflicting findings on this topic over recent years.

‘A Life More Ordinary’: What Children Want from Foster Placements

Based on findings from their recent study, Ian Sinclair, Kate Wilson and Ian Gibbs discuss the criteria which foster care needs to meet if it is to fulfill the requirements of looked after children. Analysis of 150 postal questionnaires from foster children showed five main preoccupations: the care they received from their foster families; the relationship between their feelings for their foster and their birth families; their contact with and prospects of return to their birth families; the predictability of their care careers and their own say in them; and the ‘ordinariness’ or lack of it of their lives. Despite these common preoccupations, the children varied widely in what they wanted (eg whether they wanted to return home).

Outcomes of permanent family placement for children of minority ethnic origin

The paper explores the outcomes of permanent family placement for children of minority ethnic origin, using a sample of 254 placements drawn, in the main, from a cohort of 1165 British children placed between 1980 and 1985. Statistical techniques are used to explore the relationship between ‘success’ (defined, for the purposes of this paper, as the placement not known to have broken down) and a range of variables, including the characteristics of the child, the birth parents and the adoptive parents, and the type of placement. In most respects, the findings are consistent with those of similar studies. Age at placement is found to have an important effect, with success least likely for children placed in the middle age range. Lack of problem behaviours in the children at the time of placement is also found to be associated with success. Variables which are found to have no effect on the probability of success include ethnic origin of the child, whether it is an adoptive or permanent foster placement, and whether contact with birth parents continued after placement. There was an interesting gender effect in that boys did better in ‘transracial’ than in ‘matched’ placements, but the opposite was the case for girls.

Adapting the Pynoos School Based Group Therapy Model for Use with Foster Children: Theoretical and Process Considerations

Children who enter foster care are removed from their homes, their families, and everything else that is familiar. They are then placed with strangers. Once protective services are initiated, separation from biological parents is likely to further traumatize these children, even if they had previously been neglected and/or abused. As a result, foster children experience trauma on multiple levels. Trauma experiences are often enacted behaviorally in ways that disrupt the children's capacity to learn as well as their peer relationships at school. Accordingly, it seems logical to provide school based services that address specific manifestations of trauma related behavior. Robert Pynoos has developed a model for work with children who have experienced trauma. The model includes individual and group counseling, a mentor for the children and group counseling for the parents. This paper discusses an adaptation of the model's school based group component, specifically designed to address the emotional, social and by implication, the educational needs of children who were currently, or had recently lived in out-of-home foster placements. The group was conducted in an inner city elementary school with a large enrollment of at-risk children.

Tracking the sexual behavior-specific effects of a foster family treatment program for children with serious sexual behavior problems.

Few treatment programs exist for very young children with serious sexual behavior problems. Fewer still have produced data relating to their effectiveness, and the sparse data that have emerged have focused on global social adjustment or improvement rather than on sexual behavior- specific changes. This study tracked both frequency of problem sexual behaviors and care giver estimates of the propensity to re-offend of six initial clients referred to a treatment-intensive foster care program for sexually reactive children and pre-adolescent sexual offenders. A simple pre-post (basepoint-treatment) design was used, and in-treatment data gathered over a two-year interval are presented. Initial results indicate that the problem sexual behaviors of most of these youthful clients were effectively and immediately suppressed in the context of their treatment intensive foster placements, but that the program's impact on the clients' propensity to re-offend given the opportunity—a crude measure of treatment internalization—was much less immediate, less pronounced, and less predictable across clients. Recommendations based on these data are offered concerning the viability of foster care intervention for sexualized and offending children, as well as optimal durations for such treatments. The strengths and weaknesses of the novel progress tracking method are discussed.

Adopting Children with Developmental Disabilities: A Long‐Term Perspective*

Long‐term maternal adjustment to the adoption of children with developmental disabilities was studied in a sample of 123 adoptive families using multiple measures of adjustment including depression, marital satisfaction and others. Conclusions were that adjustment was generally positive over an approximately 11‐year period, regardless of family demographic or child characteristics. Moreover, adjustment to subsequently‐adopted children was comparable to adjustment to earlier adopted children. These results suggest that adoption policy and practice should promote the adoption of children with developmental disabilities, and be flexible with regard to family and child characteristics, including placing multiple children with disabilities in the same home.

Sharing the care: the qualities sought of social workers by foster carers

Given that foster carers are a scarce resource it is essential that every effort is made to retain their services. This paper considers the role played by social workers in this endeavour. The results reported here form part of larger study, involving seven local authorities, concerned with the wider issues of supporting foster placements. The paper describes the qualities sought of social workers by foster carers and discusses the relationship between these qualities and the likelihood that carers will continue fostering. It was found that carers are highly satisfied with the job of fostering, are committed to it and view social workers as a vital source of support. Promoting good relationships between social workers and foster carers is therefore an important element in any strategy that aims to retain good foster carers.

Children in foster care: factors influencing outpatient mental health service use

Objective: To determine factors influencing outpatient mental health service use by children in foster care. Method: Detailed survey and administrative data were collected on 480 children who entered long-term foster care in San Diego County from May 1990 through October 1991. These data were linked with claims data from Medicaid and San Diego County Mental Health Services information systems. A Poisson regression model was used to determine whether the following factors influenced outpatient mental health service use: age, race/ethnicity, gender, maltreatment history, placement pattern, and behavioral problems as measured by the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Results: Except for maltreatment history, all independent variables included in the multivariate regression model were statistically significant. The total number of outpatient mental health visits increased with age, male gender, and non-relative foster placements. Relative to Caucasians, visits were lower for Latinos, and Asian/Others, but comparable for African-Americans. Concerning maltreatment history, differences were only found in one category; children experiencing caretaker absence received fewer visits compared to children who did not experience caretaker absence. Children with CBCL Total Problem Scale T-scores of 60 or greater had significantly more visits than those with a score less than 60. Conclusions: Both clinical and non-clinical factors influence outpatient mental health service use by foster children. Limitations imposed by gender, race/ethnicity, and placement setting need to be addressed by child welfare policies. These finding suggest that guidelines are needed to systematically link children in foster care with behavioral problems to appropriate services.

An Investigation of the Impact on Higher Education of the Family &amp; Medical Leave Act of 1993

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires businesses with 50 or more employees to grant eligible workers, with the exception of their top management, up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for the birth and first-year care of a child; adoption or foster placement of a child in the employee's home; the care of a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition; or the serious health condition of the employee. 1 Higher education administrators collectively groaned when colleges and universities learned that their institutions were indeed covered by the FMLA. Up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave are allowed for eligible employees, those who have worked for the employer for at least 12 months and for at least 1,250 hours during that period. This project surveyed human resource directors at selected two-year and four-year higher education institutions in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana to see what effect the FMLA produced in it first four years. Many instructors and staff members have indicated a lack of awareness regarding the FMLA. Apparently, most college and university employees did not believe that a 12-week leave was available to them. Perhaps the extremely liberal time off already enjoyed by higher education rendered an understanding of the FMLA unnecessary. The results of this study provided a much different portrait according to human resource directors surveyed. By means of this study personnel specialists suggested that information regarding the FMLA had been widely disseminated and that employees throughout the institutions were well acquainted with the Act. This study sought to investigate various issues regarding the FMLA as well as the degree of awareness possessed by the higher education community.

Factors influencing maltreated children's early adjustment in foster care.

Internal representations of self and primary attachment figures may be one mechanism by which maltreatment affects children's interpersonal behavior and relationships with others. Research on the continuity and influence of maltreated children's attachment representations, however, has not included youngsters removed from abusive or neglectful home environments. This paper examines the influence of maltreated children's maternal and self-representations on subsequent relationships with foster mothers and behavioral adjustment in foster care. Participants included 32 children, ages 9-13 years, who entered foster placement for the first time after a sustained relationship with a maltreating biological mother. Upon initially entering foster care, children's maternal and self-representations were significantly related to each other and to severity of maltreatment history but not to other factors believed to influence the quality of parent-child relationship (e.g., maternal mental health, partner stability). In addition, these representations significantly predicted children's subsequent views of their relationships with foster mothers. Finally, children's behavior in their foster homes was associated with maltreatment severity, internal representations assessed at entry into foster care, and to concurrent perceptions of their new foster mothers. These findings advance our understanding of foster placement's role in maltreated children's development and provide preliminary insight into the processes associated with the formation of potentially compensatory relationships.

Children's adjustment over time in foster care: cross-informant agreement, stability and placement disruption

This paper reports on part of a prospective study of all children entering new planned long-term foster placements in Northern Ireland within a seven month period. This part of the study charted the competencies and behaviour of the children (N=19) over time in the home and school environments. This paper aims to specifically examine three questions. First, the extent, if any, of cross-informant agreement in ratings between foster mothers, foster fathers and teachers. Secondly, the stability of rated adjustment over time. Finally, the relationship, if any, between rated adjustment early in placement and placement outcome by the two-year point. Foster mothers and foster fathers completed the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist in relation to the foster children, and teachers completed the companion Teacher's Report Form in relation to both the foster children and their classroom peers. All the adult informants completed the tests at four months and again at one year into placement. Findings from this small intensive study indicate strong agreement between foster mothers and foster fathers but not between foster carers and teachers. Stability of rated adjustment over time was found with all informants. There was some evidence that foster carers' ratings of the children's externalizing behaviour at four months predicted placement outcome at two years. Limitations of the small sample size are considered. Suggestions for further research are made.

Examining issues of child abuse in Irish foster children

The implications of child abuse have been studied for many years. Psychologists have been slower to look at the specific issues regarding children in foster care who have histories of abuse, despite the growing numbers of such children. This paper looks specifically at a sample of Irishfoster children and discusses issues that pertain to the Irish context. The study examined 127 foster placements, involving 71 placements in which the children had a history of child abuse and/or neglect. It was found that children who had such a history were far less likely to experience successful foster placements. While no significant relationship was found between gender and placement outcome, and age and placement outcome, possible reasons for these results are discussed. The problems, from a psychological perspective, of viewing foster care data based on child abuse as a reason for admission to care are highlighted.

Juvenile Offenders with Behavioral Disorders, Learning Disabilities, and No Disabilities: Self-Reports of Personal, Family, and School Characteristics

Juvenile offenders (n= 266) confined to a juvenile detention facility were interviewed using a structured questionnaire about personal, home, and school characteristics and experiences that may have placed them at risk for delinquency. The sample was divided into two groups—those who had special education experience and those who had not. Characteristics and experiences of the entire sample as well as comparisons between the special education and non-special education groups are reported and discussed. Most of the participants experienced multiple risk factors that predispose them to delinquency. A high proportion (37.1%) had been in special education, with most classified as having behavioral disorders (BD), learning disabilities (LD), or both. Males were more likely than females to have special education experience and to be classified as having BD, and African Americans were more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to be so classified. Although the experiences of special education and non-special education groups were similar in most ways, where differences were apparent, the special education group appeared to be at higher risk. Juvenile offenders with special education experience were more likely to need corrective lenses, to have been identified as having attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and to have taken medications for emotional problems. They had more foster placements, had attended more schools, and were more likely to have assaulted school officials. They got into trouble in school, were suspended, and made their first court appearances earlier than juvenile offenders without special education experience. Implications for prevention and intervention are suggested.

An inverted U relation existed between unemployment and foster home placements

An inverted U relation existed between unemployment and foster home placements