The development of children in foster care

In the Netherlands, more than 20.000 children at a given moment during a year
are experiencing foster care (Van Oijen, 2010). Although foster care has been
found a better alternative than residential care (Roy, Rutter, & Pickles,
2000), it places a heavy strain on both foster parents and foster children.
Many foster children experience internalizing or externalizing problems and do
not improve their problematic behavior during their stay in the foster family
(Chamberlain et al., 2006). However, the actual development of foster children
need not necessarily be bad, but is likely dependent on several factors
associated with the foster child, the (foster) parent(s) and the environment.
Since it is not precisely known which factors influence the development of
foster children, clarification of these factors will be the aim of this study.
With this resulting knowledge, we can better predict which foster children will
develop positively and which foster children need extra help. Furthermore,
outcomes of this study will help foster care institutions to find a better
match between the foster child and foster parents.

The study concerns the development of foster children. We aim to study why some
foster care trajectories are more successful in terms of children*s development
and breakdown than others.

longitudinal study

To study the development of children in foster care, it is our intention to
follow children for twelve months throughout their stay with their foster
parents. During these twelve months, we will establish one baseline
measurement, and two subsequent measurements separated by five or six months.
During the baseline and the following two measurements, the same instruments
will be administered to assess reciprocal processes as required by the
transactional model (Sameroff, 2009). The Home Observation for Measurement of
the Environment inventory (HOME) will be administered, as well as the Child
Behavior Checklist (CBCL), the *Nijmeegse Ouderlijke Stress Index -
Verkort* (NOSI-K) and Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ). Furthermore,
children will be asked to complete the *Competentie Belevingsschaal voor
Kinderen* (CBSK) and do the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III-NL).
Teachers will also be contacted and asked to complete the Teacher Report Form
(TRF) and provide information about the school functioning of the foster child.
Foster parent-child interaction will be videotaped for analyzing State Space
Grids (SSGs). The collection of buccal swabs for determining differential
educational susceptibility will be collected only once. This information has to
be newly collected, because no systematic data collection focusing on similar
information has been accomplished earlier and are available for the intended
analyses.
This study concerns the development of foster children; however, we have
attempted to gather as much of the data on the development of the children from
other sources (mostly foster parents and teachers). We will however, film ten
minutes of interaction between foster parent and foster child, as it is argued
that flexible, adaptive interaction patterns are important to the positive
development of children (Granic & Patterson, 2006). Furthermore, we test the
child*s vocabulary using the PPVT-III-NL (Dunn, Dunn, Williams, Wang, &
Booklets, 1997; Schlichting, 2005), because no standardized and validated
instrument exists to indirectly test a child*s vocabulary, for instance, by
asking another person. Finally, we wish to use buccal swaps to test which
variant of the DRD4 repeat allele the child has: this information will be used
to test the theory of differential susceptibility (Belsky,
Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Van IJzendoorn, 2007; Caspi & Moffitt, 2006), which can
only be known by analyzing which variant of the DRD4 repeat allele the child
has. The direct involvement and participation of foster children is required
for tests of interaction, differential susceptibility and intelligence testing.
All tests are safe and negative consequences of their use were not reported,
provided available validated protocols were correctly applied.
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