Background

Stability in foster care is paramount, since it enables children with a history of maltreatment to experience secure attachment relationships, and decreases the risk for behavioral and emotional problems when growing up.

Objective

We investigated whether foster care interventions play a role in enhancing foster placement stability, in addition to several characteristics of foster children and foster families. Our hypothesis was that foster children of female gender, relatively young at start of the placement, with less previous foster care placements, staying in kinship care, placed with siblings (if they had any) and in a foster family receiving a training to enhance the foster parents’ knowledge on childhood trauma, an attachment-based video-interaction intervention or Treatment Foster Care, would experience significantly less breakdown in foster care.

Method

A multilevel analysis was conducted on data from 2000 foster care placements in a 4 year period (2015–2018), concerning 1316 foster families (35.9% kin) and 1542 foster children (49.4% boys, M^age = 7.54 years).

Results

The frequency of previous foster care placements (OR = 3.56) increased the risk for breakdown, and receiving the Basic Trust intervention (OR = 0.26) or Treatment Foster Care (OR = 0.11) decreased that risk. Other investigated variables were unrelated to breakdown when checked for the number of foster placements and the applied interventions.

Conclusions

Foster care organizations should systematically monitor important risk factors for breakdown, in order to (timely) intervene if necessary to enhance the chances for continuity of foster care placements. Treatment seems to make a difference.

中文翻译：

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预防寄养中的不稳定性：病例档案审查研究

背景

寄养中的稳定性至关重要，因为它使有虐待史的儿童能够体验牢固的依恋关系，并减少长大后出现行为和情感问题的风险。

目的

除了寄养儿童和寄养家庭的几个特征外，我们调查了寄养护理干预措施是否在提高寄养位置稳定性方面发挥了作用。我们的假设是，寄养开始时年龄相对较小的女性寄养儿童，以前寄养服务的位置较少，保持亲属关系，与兄弟姐妹（如果有的话）一起生活，并且在接受培训的寄养家庭中增强通过基于附件的视频交互干预或“寄养寄养”，可以使寄养父母对儿童期创伤的了解减少。

方法

在4年期间（2015-2018年），对2000个寄养机构的数据进行了多级分析，涉及1316个寄养家庭（占35.9％的亲戚）和1542个寄养儿童（男孩占49.4％，M^年龄 = 7.54岁）。

结果

以前寄养的频率（OR = 3.56）增加了崩溃的风险，而接受Basic Trust干预（OR = 0.26）或治疗寄养（OR = 0.11）降低了该风险。在检查寄养地点的数量和所应用的干预措施时，其他调查变量与细分无关。

结论

寄养机构应系统地监测重要的故障风险因素，以便在必要时（及时）进行干预，以增加寄养机构连续性的机会。治疗似乎有所作为。