Youth-Identified Strategies to Enhance Support Networks in Foster Care

Background and Purpose:There is consensus that multidimensional social support is a fundamental resource that is often lacking for older foster youth, yet the field has not fully addressed how to assess and enhance the social support available in these youth networks, especially given real-world constraints within child welfare service systems. The current study identifies supportive practices from the young person’s perspective to inform the development of a network enhancement intervention.

Methods:Support network mapping and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 youth in foster care aged 16-20 (mean=17.8) in regions across Oregon (55% female, 55% White, 50% urban) to explore the role of service providers in networks and to identify practice strategies for increasing support. Mixed-method network analysis (Bellotti, 2015) was used to characterize network structure and directed content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) was used to identify supportive strategies.

Results: About half of the participants identified “core” networks of long-term, interconnected ties, with caregiver(s) and caseworkers in parental roles providing multi-dimensional support (emotional, informational, and/or concrete). Coding of the networks confirmed the presence of strong bonds to a family-based core, plus ties to peers and to informational supports (e.g., teachers). Youth with these networks were more likely to live in rural areas and were satisfied with the support they received (“I don't need or want any more help. I’m perfect where I'm at”). In comparison, most youth in urban settings identified smaller networks with no cohesive clusters (“I really struggled trying to come up with some people to put on here”), and reported placement instability and provider turnover. These youth identified concrete and/or informational resources, but reported needing stable, emotionally-invested relationships (“you just don't have the opportunity to make lasting connections with anybody”). Many want help resolving family conflict and developing peer ties, more voice and choice in placement, and more frequent caseworker support (“he needs to step it up a little bit, because I need help”), and many named programs/agencies as primary supports in the absence of family-based ties (“the consistency is mostly in the paid people”). Lastly, many said network assessment provided perspective on the support they get (“There's a lot more than I thought there would be. I have strong connections between friends, family, and community, and I have a lot of emotional support”) or need (“I wish my older brother was a strong line. I wish I had nothing but strong lines, and I wish I had more names”).

Conclusions and Implications: This identification of support-enhancing strategies varied based on the presence of a “family home base” and long-term caseworkers, where those with smaller networks lived in group settings or on their own, lacked strong supportive bonds, and relied more heavily on weak ties to providers. Importantly, network assessment itself presents a potential approach providers and youth can use to guide generate strategies for enhancement based on assessment. Ongoing intervention development will situate network assessment within a theory-guided model that links youth network characteristics to practice strategies and/or programming to enhance youth support.