Associations between family environment characteristics and mental health outcomes for youth in foster care: Residential versus traditional foster care placements

Abstract

Foster care is meant to provide a safe, temporary out-of-home placement for children when biological caregivers are unable to care for them, yet little is known about how youth and foster caregivers perceive these new family environments and how characteristics may be impacting youth mental health. The current study evaluated youth and caregiver report of family cohesion, family conflict, family expressiveness, and youth externalizing and internalizing symptoms. The sample included 503 youth in foster care (M = 13.15 years old, SD = 3.08) and their caregivers. It was expected that family cohesion and expressiveness would be negatively associated and family conflict would be positively associated with youth internalizing and externalizing problems and that placement type (i.e., traditional foster home or residential) would moderate the associations. Researchers predicted youth would report significantly different mean scores for family environment variables compared to caregivers. The results indicated that youth and caregiver reports of family conflict were positively associated with externalizing problems. Additionally, caregiver and youth reports of family cohesion were negatively associated with internalizing problems, while youth report of family conflict was positively associated. Placement type did not moderate the association between family environment variables and youth mental health outcomes. Finally, caregivers reported significantly higher scores for family cohesion than youth. Results indicate that characteristics of the foster family environment are uniquely associated with youth mental health outcomes. Therefore, examination of foster family environments provides information of the additive impact on maladaptive outcomes for youth.