Self-protection in adolescents in foster care

Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Oct-Dec 1999 by Kools, Susan

PROBLEM. Adolescents in long-term foster care experience significant health and mental health problems. Little is known about their perceptions of the impact of foster care.

METHOD. Seventeen adolescents were interviewed in their foster group homes. Dimensional analysis was used to develop theory on the impact of foster care.

FINDINGS. Adolescents in foster care engaged in self-protection strategies secondary to experiences of devaluation and uncertainty in foster care, including guarding foster child status, maintaining a defensive posture, distancing self, and keeping relationships superficial. Selfprotection resulted in a veneer of self-reliance and social detachment.

CONCLUSIONS. Strategies are suggested to address devaluing experiences and promote positive identity development in foster care.

Key words: Adolescent development, foster care

With burgeoning numbers of children and adolescents in foster care (Halfon, English, Allen, & DeWoody, 1994; Rosen, 1997), the foster care system has come under close scrutiny by clinicians, researchers, health and social policy analysts, and child advocates. Anecdotal and empirical data have documented a disturbing picture of the negative consequences of growing up in long-term foster care. Children in foster care often experience significant health, mental health, and academic problems (Frank, 1980; Gil & Bogart, 1982; Hochstadt, Jaudes, Zimo, & Schachter, 1987; Klee & Halfon, 1987; Pardeck, 1983; Runyan & Gould, 1985a, 1985b). Although it is a given that children come into foster care with multiple, complex problems that stem from traumatic experiences such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, parental substance abuse, and mental illness, there is little evidence that foster care ameliorates these problems. Few children receive appropriate health and mental health services to meet their needs (Simms, 1991; Simms & Halfon, 1994), and some children actually deteriorate while in foster care (Byles, 1980; Frank; U.S. Congress, 1990).

What are the features of foster care that contribute to potentially negative impacts on children? In order to fully address this compelling question, it is important to have the perceptions of the children who live in foster care -what it means to be a foster child, how foster children feel they are treated by others, and how they view their experiences affecting their lives. There is a dearth of foster care research to elicit the perspective of the child. As part of a larger study on self-esteem, Gil and Bogart (1982) surveyed children about their satisfaction with their current foster care placements. Questionnaire items focused on perceptions of the best place they'd ever lived, their understanding of the reason for placement, and the quality of the foster care experience. Most of the subjects (n = 100) identified home with the family of origin as the best place to live. When compared as subsamples, 81 % of children in traditional foster family homes reported liking their current placement as opposed to only 47% of children living in foster group homes. Very few were able to articulate the reason for their placement or plans for their future. Other studies examined children's views on their placement stability (Bush & Goldman, 1982; Rowe, Cain, Hundleby, & Keane, 1984). Most children verbalized high levels of insecurity regarding the permanency of their current placements. Even those who had remained in the same home for more than 3 years expressed doubts about the stability of their living situations.

While these studies have begun to illuminate child perceptions of some aspects of foster care, a deeper understanding of the meaning of foster care to children is essential to provide appropriate caregiving and services to improve outcomes for this vulnerable population. The purpose of this study was to explore adolescents' perceptions of their foster care experiences and their ideas about how living in foster care has affected their lives. Adolescents were selected for the focus of this study for their developmental ability to both analyze and articulate their experiences in long-term foster care.

Methods

Dimensional analysis, an approach to the generation of grounded theory (Kools, McCarthy, Durham, & Robrecht, 1996; Robrecht, 1995; Schatzman, 1991), was used to study the subjective experience of adolescents in foster care. As with the traditional grounded theory method, the purpose of dimensional analysis is to describe the characteristics of a phenomenon within its social context and to link them into relationships for the purpose of explanation. As with other qualitative approaches, data are systematically collected and analyzed in a natural setting without the a priori selection of a theoretical framework to guide the inquiry. Dimensional analysis has its philosophical and theoretical underpinnings in symbolic interactionism, which explores the subjective meaning one gives to experiences and the action that is taken in relation to these perceptions (Blumer, 1969).