The Impact of Maltreatment on Internalizing Symptoms for Foster Youth: an Examination of Spirituality and Appraisals as Moderators

Maneuvering through Life with Positivity: Estimating the Effects of Foster Youth's Appraisal on Coping Styles

Youth in foster care tend to experience a disproportional number of adverse life experiences and demonstrate high rates of emotional and behavioral difficulties. According to the transactional model of stress and coping, how youth appraise their experiences influences the type of coping strategies they use in response to adversity, and these relations are key components to understanding later adjustment. However, few studies have examined potential effects of appraisal on coping for youth in foster care. Furthermore, it is not well understood if or how such interaction may vary across age. To address this gap, this study examined potential age moderation of contemporaneous primary, threat-based appraisal effects on coping in a large sample of 490 youth in foster care (48% female, ages 8 to 18) using a series of statistical models which were capable of detecting very general forms of effect moderation. Results indicated that primary appraisal positively predicted direct and prosocial coping, and negatively predicted asocial coping. The linear effects of appraisal on coping did not vary based on age of the youth. The findings suggest that primary appraisals of life events for youth in foster care does have a unique influence on certain coping styles, suggesting perhaps new directions for research on youth exposed to multiple adversities. To promote wider use of the non-parametric time-varying effect model in R, the analysis syntax is also included in the appendix.

Resilience anchors for children in an out-of-home care institution during and after COVID-19

Growing numbers of children of all ages grow up in out-of-home care institutions due to personal and socioecological risk variables that destabilized their families of origin. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic which disrupted lives and development, there is particular interest in how children who grow up in out-of-home care institutions cope and develop. This paper reports the findings of a study that sought to document anchors of resilience in children who resided in a care institution run by a non-governmental, church-based welfare organization in one of the central provinces of South Africa. In line with recent developments in childcare, the organization mainly functions via smaller child and youth group homes across the province (compared to bigger children's homes in the past). In our qualitative, phenomenological study, we used the participatory, child-friendly, and less intrusive draw-and-write technique to generate data. We asked the 20 participating children of one of these group homes to make drawings that mirror their lives, and to write paragraphs in which they described their drawings. All were school-going children in care, aged from 12 to 19. There were 11 girls and 9 boys in the study, and one of these identified as "other." The grades ranged from 7 to 12 and they spoke African languages, namely Afrikaans, Sesotho, Setswana and IsiXhosa. We used inductive content analysis to process the data, and the findings indicate that, notwithstanding personal and socioecological risks during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of the participants was anchored by a number of universal personal strengths as well as socioecological resources.