Harden Brenda Jones
Institute for Child Study, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
Future Child. 2004 Winter;14(1):30-47.
Children in foster care face a challenging journey through childhood. In addition to the troubling family circumstances that bring them into state care, they face additional difficulties within the child welfare system that may further compromise their healthy development. This article discusses the importance of safety and stability to healthy child development and reviews the research on the risks associated with maltreatment and the foster care experience. It finds: Family stability is best viewed as a process of caregiving practices that, when present, can greatly facilitate healthy child development. Children in foster care, as a result of exposure to risk factors such as poverty, maltreatment, and the foster care experience, face multiple threats to their healthy development, including poor physical health, attachment disorders, compromised brain functioning, inadequate social skills, and mental health difficulties. Providing stable and nurturing families can bolster the resilience of children in care and ameliorate negative impacts on their developmental outcomes. The author concludes that developmentally-sensitive child welfare policies and practices designed to promote the well-being of the whole child, such as ongoing screening and assessment and coordinated systems of care, are needed to facilitate the healthy development of children in foster care.
寄养儿童在童年时期面临着充满挑战的成长历程。除了导致他们进入国家照料体系的令人不安的家庭环境外，他们在儿童福利系统中还面临其他困难，这些困难可能会进一步损害他们的健康发展。本文讨论了安全与稳定对儿童健康发展的重要性，并回顾了与虐待及寄养经历相关风险的研究。研究发现：家庭稳定最好被视为一种照料行为过程，这种过程一旦存在，就能极大地促进儿童的健康发展。由于受到贫困、虐待和寄养经历等风险因素的影响，寄养儿童的健康发展面临多重威胁，包括身体健康不佳、依恋障碍、大脑功能受损、社交技能不足以及心理健康问题。提供稳定且充满关爱的家庭环境可以增强受照料儿童的复原力，并减轻对其发展结果的负面影响。作者得出结论，需要制定旨在促进儿童全面福祉的、对发展敏感的儿童福利政策和做法，如持续的筛查和评估以及协调的照料体系，以促进寄养儿童的健康发展。
