Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92183, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2011 Jun;35(6):425-36. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.02.002. Epub 2011 Jun 8.
Identify individual and environmental variables associated with caregiver stability and instability for children in diverse permanent placement types (i.e., reunification, adoption, and long-term foster care/guardianship with relatives or non-relatives), following 5 or more months in out-of-home care prior to age 4 due to substantiated maltreatment.
Participants were 285 children from the Southwestern site of Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). Caregiver instability was defined as a change in primary caregiver between ages 6 and 8 years. Classification and regression tree (CART) analysis was used to identify the strongest predictors of instability from multiple variables assessed at age 6 with caregiver and child reports within the domains of neighborhood/community characteristics, caregiving environment, caregiver characteristics, and child characteristics.
One out of 7, or 14% of the 285 children experienced caregiver instability in their permanent placement between ages 6 and 8. The strongest predictor of stability was whether the child had been placed in adoptive care. However, for children who were not adopted, a number of contextual factors (e.g., father involvement, expressiveness within the family) and child characteristics (e.g., intellectual functioning, externalizing problem behaviors) predicted stability and instability of permanent placements.
Current findings suggest that a number of factors should be considered, in addition to placement type, if we are to understand what predicts caregiver stability and find stable permanent placements for children who have entered foster care. These factors include involvement of a father figure, family functioning, and child functioning.
Adoption was supported as a desired permanent placement in terms of stability, but results suggest that other placement types can also lead to stability. In fact, with attention to providing biological parents, relative, and non-relative caregivers with support and resources (e.g., emotional, financial, and optimizing father involvement or providing a stable adult figure) the likelihood that a child will have a stable caregiver may be increased.
确定与儿童不同永久安置类型（即 reunification、adoption 和长期寄养/监护与亲属或非亲属）的照顾者稳定性和不稳定性相关的个体和环境变量，这些儿童在 4 岁之前因受虐待而在家庭外护理中接受了 5 个月或更长时间的护理。
参与者是来自虐待和忽视纵向研究（LONGSCAN）西南站点的 285 名儿童。照顾者不稳定被定义为在 6 至 8 岁之间主要照顾者的变化。使用分类和回归树（CART）分析，从在 6 岁时评估的多个变量中识别出最强的不稳定预测因子，这些变量来自邻里/社区特征、照顾环境、照顾者特征和儿童特征等领域的照顾者和儿童报告。
在 285 名儿童中，有 1 名或 14%在 6 至 8 岁期间在其永久安置中经历了照顾者不稳定。稳定性最强的预测因素是孩子是否被安置在领养家庭中。然而，对于没有被领养的儿童，许多环境因素（例如，父亲的参与度、家庭内的表达能力）和儿童特征（例如，智力功能、外化问题行为）预测了永久安置的稳定性和不稳定性。
目前的研究结果表明，如果我们要了解哪些因素可以预测照顾者的稳定性并为进入寄养的儿童找到稳定的永久安置，除了安置类型之外，还应考虑许多因素。这些因素包括父亲角色的参与、家庭功能和儿童功能。
从稳定性的角度来看，领养被认为是一种理想的永久安置，但结果表明，其他安置类型也可以导致稳定性。事实上，通过关注为生物父母、亲属和非亲属照顾者提供支持和资源（例如，情感、财务和优化父亲参与度或提供稳定的成年角色），增加孩子获得稳定照顾者的可能性。
