Navigating Protective Factors That Improve Parenting Competence Among Caregivers of Youth in Foster Care

Background: In Fiscal Year 2022, 186,602 children and youth entered foster care in the states (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2023). Given that the caregivers of children and youth in foster care play a crucial role in providing these children and youth with supportive care, it is important to provide the caregivers with more effective services and trainings that improve their competence in parenting and providing appropriate care according to the stages of development of children and youth. While caregivers’ needs for trainings influencing foster parenting have been identified, there is a dearth of research investigating multi-level factors that are associated with caregivers’ parenting competence. To understand needs of caregivers more comprehensively, the current study investigated caregivers’ perspectives and incorporate their voices into research.

Methods: Utilizing a convenience sampling method, the research team collected survey data and cleaned the data, resulting in a final sample of 84 foster parent participants in the state of Florida. The foster parents provided responses to the questions about training needs of new and experienced foster parents, supports for the development of independent living skills among youth transitioning to adulthood, the impacts of COVID-19, and the helpfulness of comfort calls. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed to capture diverse perspectives of foster parents on the needs for trainings and services, as well as parenting competence.

Results: The majority of the survey respondents (84.5%) were traditional foster parents and female (86.8%). Approximately, 78.7% of the respondents were white, and 21.3% were Black. About two-thirds (66.7%) of the respondents were married, and 13.6% were never married. Only a third of the respondents (33.3%) reported they were currently having older youth ages 13 or older at the time of the survey and more than a third of them (35.7%) did not receive independent living skills services before. The foster parents’ flourishing and mindfulness were positively correlated (r= .44, p<.001), and mindfulness was positively associated with parenting competence (r= .33, p<.05). However, flourishing and parenting competence were not significantly related. In addition, foster parents discussed the necessity for additional training on managing challenging child behaviors, more advanced trauma training, medical care, and a deeper understanding of child welfare and court systems. Foster parents also reported that while more peer mentoring or support systems from caseworkers would help new foster parents, support for self-care and respite care would be more useful for experienced foster parents.

Conclusions and Implications: The study’s findings provide some critical practice and policy implications. Specifically, considering the different needs between new and experienced foster parents, more support for self-care and respite care should be provided to experienced foster parents, whereas more peer mentoring or support systems from caseworkers are needed for new foster parents. In addition, given the positive relationship between mindfulness and parenting competence, it is important to develop or incorporate the mindfulness practices into pre-service or in-service trainings for foster parents. Future researchers should conduct more studies navigating more protective factors and testing their effectiveness on enhancing parenting competence.