Seattle Children's Research Institute (K Ahrens, K Albertson, A Coatney, and SJ Lowry), Seattle, Wash; Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine (K Ahrens and SA Golub), Seattle, Wash; Division of Adolescent Medicine, Seattle Children's Hospital (K Ahrens and SA Golub), Seattle, Wash.
University of Washington, Bothell Campus (W Udell), Bothell, Wash.
Acad Pediatr. 2023 May-Jun;23(4):731-736. doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2022.09.019. Epub 2022 Oct 5.
Foster youth are at increased risk for negative sexual health outcomes and rarely receive the information or social/familial support needed to reduce risks. Foster and kinship caregivers report lacking the information and skills needed to effectively talk to youth in their care about sexual health. In a sample of caregivers from 2 large urban jurisdictions, our goals were to: 1) describe caregiver sexual health variables including communication and monitoring characteristics; and 2) assess associations between self-reported emotion regulation and caregiver-youth conflict and these variables.
We administered surveys to foster and kinship caregivers in New York, New York and Los Angeles, California. Surveys assessed caregiver emotion regulation, caregiver-youth conflict, sexual/reproductive health knowledge, communication expectations and behaviors, and caregiver monitoring/youth disclosure. We generated descriptive statistics for all variables (aim 1) then performed multivariate regression analyses for aim 2.
Our sample included 127 foster and kinship caregivers who were primarily female (92%) and African American (55%). Most reported having >4 years of caregiving experience with foster youth (66%). On average, caregivers answered sexual health knowledge questions correctly 68% of the time. Caregiver-youth conflict was the only variable significantly associated with assessed sexual health variables; it was inversely associated with percent correct on the knowledge scale, outcomes expectations, number of topics discussed, and monitoring/disclosure.
Our study suggests that caregiver-youth conflict behaviors are related to sexual health knowledge, communication, and monitoring variables. Further prospective and longitudinal investigation is warranted to better characterize the complex relationship between these variables.
寄养青年面临更高的负面性健康结果风险，且很少获得减少风险所需的信息或社会/家庭支持。寄养和亲属照顾者报告称，缺乏有效与受其照顾的青年谈论性健康所需的信息和技能。在来自 2 个大城市司法管辖区的照顾者样本中，我们的目标是：1）描述照顾者的性健康变量，包括沟通和监测特征；2）评估自我报告的情绪调节与照顾者-青年冲突以及这些变量之间的关联。
我们对纽约市和加利福尼亚州洛杉矶市的寄养和亲属照顾者进行了调查。调查评估了照顾者的情绪调节、照顾者-青年冲突、性/生殖健康知识、沟通期望和行为以及照顾者监测/青年披露。我们生成了所有变量的描述性统计数据（目标 1），然后对目标 2 进行多元回归分析。
我们的样本包括 127 名寄养和亲属照顾者，他们主要是女性（92%）和非裔美国人（55%）。大多数人报告说有超过 4 年的寄养青年照顾经验（66%）。平均而言，照顾者正确回答性健康知识问题的比例为 68%。照顾者-青年冲突是唯一与评估的性健康变量显著相关的变量；它与知识量表上的正确百分比、结果期望、讨论的主题数量以及监测/披露呈负相关。
我们的研究表明，照顾者-青年冲突行为与性健康知识、沟通和监测变量有关。需要进一步进行前瞻性和纵向研究，以更好地描述这些变量之间的复杂关系。
