Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: [53]-56)

Clearly very little is known about the dynamics within foster families and the effects of fostering on children. The intention of this study was to understand what happens in the lives of children during their period of placement in foster homes and it affected them and to explore and describe the experiences of the foster parent. It was learned that there is often a breakdown in the relationship between foster parents and the children they foster, particularly with regards to the gaining of trust, the socio economic status of the foster parents also played a part in the success of the placement. This research has found that substance abuse on the part of the children was prevalent leading to great tension within the households.

Current literature establishes a relationship between maternal depression and offspring depression. Goodman and Gotlib’s “Developmental Model for Understanding Mechanisms of Transmission” suggests possible mechanisms including attachment. Prior research also demonstrates a link between fathers’ depression and pediatric psychopathology risk, but further research is needed to elucidate the effect of other non-parental caregivers. Children raised by both types of non-parental caregivers are vulnerable to attachment disruptions due to separation from their parental caregivers and the prevalence of children residing with these caregivers is on the rise in recent years. Using the Goodman and Gotlib framework, this study examined the relation between caregiver depressive symptoms and child depressive symptoms via attachment. Findings suggest that attachment indeed mediates the relation and further, that there were group differences in child’s attachment level between foster children and grandchildren.

Sibling relationships are an important, yet under investigated aspect of foster care research. Despite the fact that between 65-85% of children in care have brothers and sisters, only recently have child welfare researchers begun to explore the complex and dynamic nature of sibling relationships in substitute care settings. Although cross-sectional and longitudinal studies suggest differences in placement stability and permanency outcomes for siblings placed together versus those placed separately, the conditions under which sibling relationships influence placement stability, permanency, and well-being in foster care settings remain unknown. This dissertation investigated how family dynamics and home setting characteristics influenced the likelihood of a foster care placement change for a sample of children who participated in a sibling relationship enhancement intervention (SIBS-FC) study. A conceptual model was proposed to help explain the circumstances which lead to foster care placement change, and the moderating effects of family living composition on the odds of placement change over an 18-month period were examined. Two multivariate statistical approaches were used in this investigation. The first approach involved examining the effects of a child's report of positive home integration, sibling relationship quality, caregiver's reported impact of child behavior, sibling living situation, kinship caregiver status, number of placements prior to study entry, and receipt of the SIBS-FC intervention on the odds of placement change. Results suggest that children in kinship care were 58% less likely to experience placement change than those who lived in non-relative care, and youth who lived apart from their siblings were 70% more likely to experience placement change than those who lived together. In the second statistical approach, living composition categories were constructed to understand the moderating effects of different living situations on the odds of placement change. Living composition categories included youth who lived in kinship care with their siblings, youth who lived in kinship care without their siblings, and youth who lived in non-relative care with their siblings, with youth in non-relative care who lived apart from their siblings serving as the referent category. Findings support a moderation effect for different categories of living composition, as well as a trend level effect for sibling relationship quality and odds of placement change. Living with one's sibling in kinship care decreased the odds of placement change by 75%, as compared to living apart from one's sibling in a non-relative foster home. A post-hoc analysis determined that all living composition categories were statistically different from one another in relative odds of a placement change. This dissertation provides additional evidence concerning the protective nature of kinship care and sibling co-placement on reducing the odds of experiencing a foster care placement change, and provides support for practices and policies prioritizing kinship care and the co-placement of siblings when making substitute care placement decisions. Future studies of siblings in foster care should explore the experiences of youth across the different forms of foster care living composition, examine the relationship between placement stability and permanency outcomes, and examine the relationship between placement stability, permanency, and child well-being.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Erskine Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-103).

This research study focused on resilient, former foster youth. Given the vulnerabilities of children in foster care, what factors lead to participant resilience? Data was obtained from ten participants who were receiving independent living services in San Bernardino County.

No description available.

Nearly 23,000 youth age out of the foster care system between the ages of 18 and 21 each year in a transition fraught with challenges and barriers. These young people often lack developmentally appropriate experiences and exposure to necessary knowledge, role modeling, skill building, and long-term social support to promote positive transitions to adulthood while in foster care. As a result, young people who exit care face an array of poor adult outcomes. Nearly 60% of transition-aged foster youth experience a disability, and as such, face compounded challenges exiting foster care. While the examination of young adult outcomes for youth with disabilities has been largely missing from the literature, available research documents that young adults with disabilities who had exited foster care were significantly behind their peers without disabilities in several key areas. Literature examining the experiences of transition-aged youth with disabilities in the general population also highlights gaps in young adult outcomes for young people with disabilities compared to their peers. Compounding the issue for youth in foster care, those who experience disabilities often reside in restrictive placement settings such as developmental disability (DD) certified homes, group homes, or residential treatment centers. Though limited, there is some evidence to suggest that these types of placements negatively impact young adult outcomes for those aging out of foster care. The rules and regulations in place to promote safety in these types of placements could further restrict youth from engaging in meaningful transition preparation engagement while in foster care. Therefore, youth with disabilities, whose needs necessitate a higher level of support towards transition preparation engagement, may actually receive fewer opportunities than their peers in non-relative foster care and kinship care as they prepare to exit care into adulthood. The work in this dissertation provides knowledge to address gaps in the literature around transition preparation engagement during foster care for youth with disabilities, youth residing in restrictive foster care placements, and youth who report high levels of perceived restrictiveness as they prepare to enter into adulthood. This dissertation is a secondary analysis of transition preparation engagement data collected at baseline for 294 transition-aged youth in foster care who participated in an evaluation of an intervention to promote self-determination and enhance young adult outcomes, called My Life. Transition preparation engagement in this study was represented by eight domains: youth perceptions of preparedness for adult life, post-secondary education preparation engagement, career preparation engagement, employment, daily life preparation engagement, Independent Living Program (ILP) participation, transition planning engagement, and self-determination. Transition preparation engagement domains were examined using hierarchical multiple regression analysis to explore differences by disability status, placement setting, and youth self-report of perceptions of restrictiveness. In alignment with the literature, 58.8% of youth in this sample experienced a disability. Additional key demographics, including age, gender, and race, and foster care experiences, including length of time in care and placement instability, were entered into the regression models as covariates. Results indicated significantly less transition preparation engagement for 1) youth with disabilities compared to youth without disabilities, 2) youth residing in restrictive placements compared to youth in non-relative foster care and kinship care, and 3) youth who reported higher levels of perceived restrictiveness compared to youth who reported lower levels of perceived restrictiveness. Program, policy, and research recommendations are discussed that highlight the need to promote transition preparation engagement for this particularly vulnerable group of young people in foster care who experience disabilities, are residing in restrictive placement settings and who report high levels of perceived restrictiveness.

M.A. / South Africa is facing a high rate of children in need of care due to high escalation of the HIV/AIDS related illness. The children are being left without biological parents, and they are eventually placed in the foster care custody of their extended families. Sometimes there are challenges that are experienced by the foster parents and the adolescents’ foster children, as a result the adolescents’ foster children end up leaving school. Foster care learners who stay away from school or who have been entered on the register then absent themselves for substantial parts of the day, are more likely to grow up unhappy and unfulfilled, leaving school much less qualified than they might otherwise be and worst of all sometimes get drawn into a life of crime(Collins, 1998). The overall aim of this study is to explore the factors that contribute to adolescent foster children not completing their high school education and developing strategies to retain adolescents’ foster children in school. Placing the adolescents’ foster children into institutions like industrial schools and children’s homes hoping that the children’s behavior will change should be considered as the last resort that the professionals should do. The objectives of the study are: § To survey literature on foster care education, § To analyse the scope of the concept” foster care” in terms of current practice, § To investigate problems that are encountered by the foster parents and how do they deal with the teenagers’ problems, § To investigate the problems encountered by the teenagers or adolescents foster children , and also identify their unmet needs, § To investigate the problems encountered by the foster children while still at school, § To identify challenges of educators towards foster care learners. iii Qualitative research methodology was applied with the researcher selecting participatory action research to engage adolescents’ foster children, foster parents and educators in the study. The study was exploratory and qualitative in nature. Focus groups were utilized as the method of information gathering. The focus group was conducted with adolescent foster children, foster parents and educators. The focus group sessions with the children comprised of ten adolescent foster children that did not complete their high school education. The focus group session with the foster parents comprised of ten parents caring for adolescent foster children who left school. The focus group with the educators comprised of six educators who taught foster children, three educators were from each of the two high schools in Naledi, Soweto. The foster children and foster parents were recruited from the researcher’s case load in Soweto.

Thesis advisor: Arthur Lewbel / Thesis advisor: S Anukriti / In this dissertation, I attempt to better understand the inner workings of the household: Do parents favor certain types of children? When do parents decide to have their children work? How can we identify inequality within the household? These issues are fundamental to economic development and closely related to individual welfare. However, studying these questions is difficult since the household is in many ways a blackbox to economists; consumption data is typically collected at the household level, and concepts like bargaining power are not observable. My research examines these questions in a variety of different contexts in the developing world. In Chapter 1, I test for consumption inequality between foster and non-foster children in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Chapter 2, I examine the relationship between child labor and fertility in Nigerian households. Lastly, I study the identification of intrahousehold inequality in collective households in Chapter 3. Chapter 1: In “Consumption Inequality Among Children: Evidence from Child Fostering in Malawi", I study how resources are allocated among foster and non- foster children in Malawi. Child fostering is widespread in parts of Africa and the wellbeing of these children, who may be particularly vulnerable to impoverishment, is not well known. However, identifying individual-level consumption is difficult, since goods are shared and consumption is measured at the household level. Recent work on intrahousehold resource allocation has inferred child consumption from household- level spending on child-specific goods (e.g., child clothing). This literature is often dependent on the existence of goods in the data that are consumed exclusively by a particular type of person in the household. These studies are therefore limited by the level of assignability of goods within the consumption survey. Stated differently, to identify inequality between foster and non-foster children using existing techniques, I would need to observe expenditure on a good that is consumed separately by foster and non-foster children. Because I do not, I develop a new methodology using the collective framework to measure consumption inequality between foster and non-foster children. I find little evidence of inequality between foster and non-foster children. I then divide foster children by whether the child is orphaned, and I find that orphan-foster child consumption is 23 percent less than non-orphan foster child consumption. The results of this paper suggest that policymakers should design programs to improve the relative standing of orphan-foster children in the household. The methodological contribution of this paper is applicable to other contexts as intrahousehold inequality among children is widespread. Chapter 2: In “Child Labor Laws and Household Fertility Decision: Evidence from Nigeria" I study the Child Rights Act of Nigeria (CRA). In 2003, the Nigerian National Assembly implemented this law, which codified existing child labor standards and dramatically increased the penalties for employing children. I exploit the Child Rights Act to both understand the employment consequences of a child labor legislation, and to analyze the effect of lowering the economic value of children on fertility rates. Identification comes from variation in the timing of when each Nigerian state adopted the law, and from variation in the law’s age restrictions. Consistent with recent theoretical and empirical evidence, I find the Child Rights Act increased child employment at both the intensive and extensive margins. I then model household fertility decisions to demonstrate that the demand for children is increasing in child wages and therefore influenced by changes in the child labor market. I empirically test the model implications by examining the effect of the Child Rights Act on fertility rates, but find little to no effect. Chapter 3: In “Identification of Resource Shares with Multiple Assignable Goods" (with Caitlin Brown and Rossella Calvi), we study intrahousehold inequality. We develop a new methodology using the collective framework to identify resource shares, defined as the fraction of household resources consumed by each household member. We build upon recent work by Dunbar, Lewbel, and Pendakur (2013) (DLP) who identify resource shares by observing how expenditure on a single private assignable good varies with household income and size. They achieve identification by making semi-parametric restrictions on preferences across either household members or household sizes. Because our data contain multiple private assignable goods, we are able to employ this additional data to weaken the DLP preference restrictions using a different approach, which we call “Differenced-Similar Across People" (D-SAP). Under D-SAP, preferences for the assignable goods are allowed to differ entirely across both household members. However, we introduce a weaker restriction that requires that preferences differ across people in a similar way across goods. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.