Children mental health follow-up in youth communities of the SOS-Children’s Village

1. Childrenmental health follow-up in youth communities of the SOS-Children’s Village LindaRajhvajn Bulat & Vanja Branica Department of social work, Faculty of law Zagreb, Croatia

2. INTRODUCTION • Life of a child in public care is burdened with: • a history of traumatic and stress events in the primary family • temporary or permanent loss of one’s parents • the experience of additional trauma of being isolated from familiar surrounding • adjustment to new living conditions. • Everyday life in public care (residential or foster) requires additional adjustment to new and unknown social situations. • Mental health of children is influenced by the social environment and subject to different stresses that are more intensive in children who are growing up in some form of public care.

3. Public care for children in Croatia The social care of children deprived of parental care is organized through two types of placement: • Residential placement (group homes) – 16 state child group homes or in family homes funded by NGO-s (SOS – Children’s Village, Nuevo Futuro) • Foster placement into families (mostly continental, rural parts of Croatia)

4. METHODOLOGY • This research is part of a bigger 5 year longitudinal study “Possibilities to improve public child care” • The aim of the study was to develop empirically based indicators for improvement of public child care and development of criteria for evaluation of interventions. • The goal of the conducted study was to determine psychosocial needs of children in public care.

5. The goal and research problems The aim of this research is to examine mental health of children in SOS – Children's Villages in period of 5 years, specifically we are trying to examine: • How stabile is children’s mental health • How reliable and concordant are children’s and child care workers’ appraisals of children’s mental health

6. The sample and procedure • 57 children and youth examinees from the youth communities of the SOS–Children'sVillage Croatia • At the first measurement (2003) – 13.2 years old in average (10-19 years, SD=2.07) • At the follow-up study (2008) – 18.3 years old in average (16-24 years, SD=1.96) • 40.4% of boys (23) and 59.6% girls (34) • Questionnaire was administrated by children and child care workers

7. Instruments • The Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991) • The Child Behavior Check-List(Achenbach, 1991) Withdrawal Somatic complaints Anxiety and depression Social problems Thought problems Attention problems Delinquent behaviors Aggressive behaviors

8. Instruments • The Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991) • The Child Behavior Check-List(Achenbach, 1991) • Questionnaire of Daily Stress (Ajduković and Sladović, 1999) • The Scale of Perceived Social Support (Živčić-Bećirević, 1996)

9. RESULTS Table 1. Boys’ mental health in 5 year period – appraisal

10. RESULTS Table 2. Girls’ mental health in 5 year period – selfappraisal

11. RESULTS Table 3. Girls’ mental health in 5 year period – appraisal

12. RESULTS Table 4. Children’s mental health in 5 year period – selfappraisal

13. RESULTS Table 5. Children’s mental health in 5 year period – appraisal

14. RESULTS Table 5. Children’s mental health in 5 year period – appraisal

15. RESULTS Table 6. Correlations between appraisals and self-appraisals of children’s mental health

16. CONCLUSION • The results have shown that the test-retest correlations on most sub-scales of children’s mental health are statistically relevant, but this relevance ranges from low to middle • Child care workers evaluate that mental health of boys at the retest point has improved • In self-evaluation girls give evidence of their increasing externalization of problems

17. CONCLUSION • The appraisals of children and child care workers are not so concordant it is necessarily to take information from different sources • Maybe the largest restriction of this study is high level of drop out (more than 50%) • It is question whether it is appropriate to use same questionnaires on children and youth/young adults

18. Thank you for your attention!