Parental Availability of Support and Frequency of Contact: The Reports of Youth in Residential Care

The symposium presents the findings of a large-scale study mapping the perceived social support of youth in Israeli educational residential care settings (youth villages) from their nuclear and extended family, peers and residential care setting staff and their overall level of perceived social network sufficiency. Self-report questionnaires were completed by more than 1400 adolescents in grades 8 to 12, residing in sixteen educational residential care settings for youth from underprivileged backgrounds. Each of the presentations in this symposium will focus on a different aspect of social support reported by the youth. The study was supported and conducted in collaboration with the Israeli Public Forum for Youth Villages and Boarding Schools for Children at-Risk and with the Education Ministry`s Administration for Rural Education and Youth Immigration.

Paper 1 in the Symposium

Presenter: Shalhevet Attar-Schwartz

Abstract: Social work policies emphasize the importance of encouraging parent-child contact to enhance the well-being of children in care. However, there is little research on the frequency and quality of contact between adolescents in residential care settings (RCSs) and their mothers and fathers. Research based on the self-reports of youth in RCSs is also limited. This study examined the self-reports of youth in RCSs on the perceived support from their parents and their in-person and phone contact with them. A range of correlates and the moderating role of marital status in the link between gender and contact were examined. The study was based on a random cluster sample of 1,409 youth, in grades 8 to 12, in Israeli educational RCSs for youth from underprivileged backgrounds. Adolescents completed a structured questionnaire. The findings show that, overall, adolescents reported more perceived support and more frequent contact with mothers, though fathers were perceived to be involved fairly highly in their lives. Adolescents from divorced-parent families and those whose parents lived farther away from the RCS reported less frequent and supportive contact. Overall, immigrant adolescents reported less frequent contact. Among youth from divorced-parent families, boys reported significantly higher levels of support and phone contact with fathers, but among adolescents from intact families, the gender gap was insignificant. Identifying groups of youth at risk for poorer contact with parents has implications for pre-placement decisions and for designing interventions to enhance child-parent contact while in care.