Representative samples of 260 Oregon foster care residents and 179 cognitively intact nursing home residents were queried retrospectively about the nature and circumstances surrounding their decision to move to a foster care or nursing home, including the alternatives they considered, the circumstances leading to the move, their perception of the decision-making process and who influenced it, t...

Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) is a common test of relational reasoning involving matching cards based on the relations “same” and “different”. Children below the age of five fail RMTS, even with corrective feedback. Given that success on RMTS depends on the ability to represent and compare ”same” and ”different”, such failure has been interpreted as indicative of the absence of these abilit...

BACKGROUND It is well documented that a disproportionate number of homeless adults have childhood histories of foster care placement(s). This study examines the relationship between foster care placement as a predictor of adult substance use disorders (including frequency, severity and type), mental illness, vocational functioning, service use and duration of homelessness among a sample of home...

Children and adolescents who enter foster care often do so with complicated and serious medical, mental health, developmental, oral health, and psychosocial problems rooted in their history of childhood trauma. Ideally, health care for this population is provided in a pediatric medical home by physicians who are familiar with the sequelae of childhood trauma and adversity. As youth with special...

It is essential that research be conducted regarding both the needs of and the outcomes for children placed outside of their biological homes. According to AFCARS (Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System Report), approximately 408,425 children in the United States were in foster care in 2010 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], 2011a). In addition to the large nu...

Although practice guidelines support the placement of siblings in the same foster home whenever possible, sibling groups are frequently separated. Little empirical knowledge is available to understand why siblings are separated or how different sibling placement patterns are related to children’s placement adaptation and permanency outcomes. These questions were investigated using data from a s...

BACKGROUND Chronic school absenteeism and frequent school changes, particularly among younger children, may be antecedents for the high rates of school failure and subsequent dropout among youth in foster care. However, the relationship of foster care experience to absenteeism and school change has not been well studied. OBJECTIVE This study examined the association of placement experience wi...