Characteristics of out-of-home caregiving environments provided under child welfare services.
A national probability sample of children who have been in child welfare supervised placements for about one year identifies the characteristics (e.g., age, training, education, health, and home) of the foster parents, kinship foster parents, and group home caregivers. Caregiving respondents provided information about their backgrounds. Interviewers also used the HOME-SF to assess the caregiving environments of foster care and kinship care. Comparisons are made to other nationally representative samples, including the U.S. Census and the National Survey of America's Families. Kinship care, foster care, and group care providers are significantly different from each other--and the general population--in age and education. Findings on the numbers of children cared for, understimulating environments, use of punitive punishment, and low educational levels of caregivers generate suggestions for practice with foster families.
Barth
Richard P
RP
School of Social Work, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. rbarth@ssw.umaryland.edu
Green
Rebecca
R
Webb
Mary Bruce
MB
Wall
Ariana
A
Gibbons
Claire
C
Craig
Carlton
C
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017028:Caregivers; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005581:Foster Home Care; D016352:Group Homes; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011678:Punishment; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012931:Social Environment; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States