The Influence of Caregiver Depression on Children in Non-relative Foster Care Versus Kinship Care Placements
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The Influence of Caregiver Depression on Children in Non-relative Foster Care Versus Kinship Care Placements Antonio Garcia • Amanda O’Reilly • Meredith Matone • Minseop Kim • Jin Long David M. Rubin
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Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract Little is known about how the challenges faced by caregivers influence the variation in social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) outcomes of youth placed in kinship versus non-relative foster care. This study examined SEB symptoms among youth in kinship and non-relative foster care settings, hypothesizing that changes in caregiver depression would modify children’s change in behavior over time. Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) assessments of 199 children placed with kinship and non-relative foster care providers in a Mid-Atlantic city were conducted at time of placement and 6–12 months post-placement. Linear regression estimated CBCL change scores for youth across placement type and caregiver depression trajectories. Kinship caregivers were more likely to become depressed or remained depressed than non-relative foster caregivers. Youth in kinship care always exhibited better change in SEB outcomes than youth in non-relative foster care, but these positive outcomes were principally observed among families where caregivers demonstrated a reduction
A. Garcia (&) M. Kim School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania, 3701 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6214, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. O’Reilly Division of Children and Families, State of New Jersey, Trenton, NJ, USA M. Matone J. Long D. M. Rubin PolicyLab, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA D. M. Rubin Department of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
in depression over time or were never depressed. Adjusted change scores for non-relative foster care youth were always negative, with the most negative scores among youth whose caregivers became depressed over time. Caregiver well-being may modify the influence of placement setting on SEB outcomes for youth placed into outof-home care. Findings lend to policy relevance for child welfare systems that seek kinship settings as a panacea to the challenges faced by youth, without allocating resources to address caregiver needs. Keywords Maltreatment School age children Maternal depression Social-emotional problems Prospective study
Introduction Over 400,000 children in the U.S. were placed in nonrelative foster care or kinship care in 2011 due to maltreatment [1]. Twenty-seven percent of these children were placed in kinship care. Kinship care as an alternative to non-relative foster care placements have grown considerably over the last two decades; by 2010, 2.7 million children in this country were living in kinship arrangement, a 70 % increase from just 20 years prior [2]. As the numbers of children in kinship care have grown, prior studies have demonstrated a mixed picture of social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) outcomes among
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