Family Relationships and Mental Health Trajectories of Youth in Foster Care The goals of this project are to determine (a) if biological family visitation is associated with swifter exits from foster care; (b) how biological family visitation predicts changes in levels and patterns of mental health symptoms over time; and (c) the unique, additive, and interactive effects of relationships with biological parents, siblings, and foster parents on changes in the levels and patterns of mental health symptom trajectories. This proposed project will use data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, a nationally representative, longitudinal study of youth involved with the child welfare system. Using all 3 waves of the NSCAW II data, we will apply tenets of attachment and ambiguous loss theories to test the potential beneficial effects of biological family visitation on foster care exits, and youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms of youth ages 11-18 over a 3-year period (n = 375, Wave 1). This study will employ innovative multiple-informant multivariate analyses, survival analysis, longitudinal latent growth curve, and person-centered growth mixture modeling to overcome limitations of previous research. By using a nationally representative sample, the proposed study will yield important findings regarding the effects of biological family visitation on foster care exits and the longitudinal mental health outcomes of youth in foster care. Knowledge about foster care exits, mental health patterns, and trajectories is necessary for informing meaningful evidence-based shifts in child welfare policy and practice.
There are approximately 500,000 children in foster care annually and mental health concerns contribute substantially to the estimated cost of $5.9 billion paid each year by Medicaid for services for youth in foster care. As such, the mental health of youth in foster care is a significant public health concern. This proposed study has the potential to inform foster care policy and practice nationwide by determining the effects of biological parent visitation on mental health outcomes of youth in foster care.
