Comparison of children involved in foster care with children involved in parental care
Emotional regulation is a phenomenon that appears to differ among children depending on the way of life and how the child was raised. The study conducted by Labella et al. mainly focused on testing and proving facts on the connection between foster care protection and the emotional skills among children in supporting the dysregulation of emotions. The researchers primarily used control trials. The control trials were dual and were conducted in a random formula where one of the trials involved a foster versus birth parent while the other participant was a home-visiting parent. The use of the two random trials was aimed at establishing the emotional regulations for the kids. During the research, the overall participants were 211, where 120 participants were birth parents while the other 91 were composed of foster mothers (Labella et al., 2020). The caregivers involved in the research received an administration of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (ABC), several sessions aimed to ensure that the nurturing process was done as per the requirements and regulations. However, the caregiver was expected to conduct some moderation on the effects of ABC, which was likely to occur among the kids within the age of two to three years due to anger. On the other hand, the kids who had their parents and had received ABC proved to have low levels of anger dysregulation compared to kids whose caregivers had received (Labella et al., 2020). Additionally, the children who had been placed under foster care proved to have lower anger dysregulation than kids under the care of their biological parents. Nevertheless, adaptive regulation proved not to have any direct links with the parenting interventions being tested.
Participants of the research
The use of randomized control trials (RCTs) was conducted consecutively to ensure that the participants had the proper location. The use of RCT participants was aimed at establishing attachment-based parenting intervention. Among the two RCTs conducted, one of the RCTs aimed to establish the efficacy of the intervention process. 290 children were lucky to be enrolled for the research, and after the research, 96 children were retained with the main objective of testing post-intervention (Labella et al., 2020). The second RCT was to collect data from the birth parents and test the hypothesis on them. The second RCT ensured that 210 families were enrolled, and after the research, some 183 were retained to ensure that the post-intervention follow-up was conducted (Labella et al., 2020).
Procedures applied
The research applied for approval over their research at the University of Delaware, and the Institutional Review Board granted them the approval. The families identified during the RCT were invited for their active participation in the research, and they had to sign some consent form which was proof of their readiness to participate voluntarily with the inclusion of their children who were not aware of what was being tested due to their tender age (Labella et al., 2020). The participants were then administered some ABC and Motor Development, where the entire process was supposed to be done in equal measures among the two groups established during the RCT. Additionally, some 10 hours of training was also conducted by experienced coaches (Labella et al., 2020). The coaches were perceived to be skilled due to the weekly assessment, which was based on the videos recorded during the 10 hours of training (Labella et al., 2020). It is worth noting that the use of ABC was done in sessions 1 and 2, where the main focus was caregiving and nurturing the children, sessions 3 and 4, where there was much emphasis on sensitivity, session 5 and 6 frightening behaviors, sessions 7 and 8 focused on the identification of caregiver aspects, and the last session 9 and 10 ensured that there was the consolidation of gains and establishing the required changes based on the weekly assessments (Labella et al., 2020).
Results and conclusion
The study’s overall objective was to establish the effects of caregivers’ type and the emotional regulation skills among the toddlers due to the rising need in the society over maltreatment, which has consistently affected the stability of the children physically and psychologically. The researchers had earlier conducted a pilot study and analyzed the findings of other researchers to identify the research gap that prompted their thinking and establishment of the problem statement (Labella et al., 2020). Based on the research conducted earlier, foster care and attachment-based parenting intervention proved some direct association with emotional regulation. The analysis from the previous researches that had been conducted appeared to support the hypothesis at some points (Labella et al., 2020). ANCOVAs were used to envisage anger dysregulation and how it had some direct link to children based on its effect on the expression.
Children who were involved in the research and participated in establishing the differences during the comparison were the children who had received the ABC. The results gathered after the ABC analysis prove the likelihood of developing personal regulations for emotions after receiving the care and support from the parents.
Anger dysregulation among children receiving care from their foster parents appeared to be low, and this proved that placing the kids away from the home environment can be very useful in shaping their character and behaviors. The levels of anger also implied that pattern of dampened emotional expression is much practical and visible among children who have been mistreated and directly proves that the children who have been mistreated can develop adaptation mechanisms by lowering their levels of anger to fit in the society (Labella et al., 2020). Additionally, wear and tear on the physiological system has a high chance of occurring in situations where behavioral outcomes are associated with overcontrol. However, other researchers argue that foster care associated with normative regulation serves a key role in regulating the levels of anger among children.
The research appeared to partially support the adaptive regulation where the caregiver type was used to make projections over the adaptive behaviors of Tool Task. The predictions on the caregiver assessment proved that there was the occurrence of adaptive regulation behaviors among the children raised in absentia of their parents due to the urgent need to cope with the changes.
The intervention or the Caregiver intervention proved beyond reasonable doubt that there is some direct relationship with the adaptive regulations based on the surrounding environment and society. Therefore, the null hypothesis of the authors proved that the ABC serves a key role in ensuring that the personality of the kids is changed and have their negative liability is eliminated instead of fostering regulatory behaviors (Labella et al., 2020). However, the research appeared to ignore children’s co-regulatory processes, which affected the research by failing to recognize the adaptive self-regulation that is adoptable due to the environment. Additionally, people have some expectations that there should be an increase in adaptive behavior in situations where the ABC interventions are established. The conclusion on the association of the ABC proves that an increase in emotional liability directly links the maltreatment experienced by the children.
Families receiving the comparison intervention appeared to show that adaptive regulation could only be applicable with the family set up where they were entitled to the disbursement of interventions. Additionally, the non-significant caregiver gave some preliminary evidence that ABC is likely to establish barriers in situations where the children were being left at home for care and support by their parents (Labella et al., 2020). However, assessment placement and intervention appear to be less effective based on the assessment’s great impacts on the child because self-regulations are based on the sequential stages of growth and development.
The process of establishing and analyzing the relationship between foster care corresponds with self-regulatory advantages linked with the use of SES. Nevertheless, the initiative of creating a social connection between foster care placement and better adaptive regulation has proved to be non-significant based on the fact that some merits on the caregivers who utilized the Tool Task appear to be ignored.
Overall results
Foster care placement is associated with enhanced emotional regulation among the children due to emerging impacts of maltreatment. Additionally, ABC interventions appear to establish a barrier towards developing emotional regulations associated with receiving care from the parents (Labella et al., 2020). Therefore, the overall objective proven by the findings indicates that the child welfare services solemnly rely on the surrounding environment where the physical intervention during the stages of growth and development where self-regulation is utilized.
Conclusion
The authors of the research were able to maximize their strengths and minimize the occurrence of their weaknesses. The use of randomization during the establishment of the RTS was the main strength of the researchers and served a critical role in establishing the study population and what they expected would be useful in analyzing the research (Labella et al., 2020). The use of RTS allowed the researchers to test their hypothesis and attain the overall objective of the research based on the target population. Additionally, the use of observation as a tool of collecting and analyzing data during the estimation of the levels of anger in the two study groups was very useful in ensuring that the authors were able to establish how the young children could be affected by maltreatment (Labella et al., 2020). However, the researchers were affected by the lack of a low-risk comparison group, which affected the process of establishing normative judgment on the research.
Recommendations
Future researchers in this field should have some analysis on the specific parenting behaviors which are mainly influenced by the intervention or the foster care. Through the establishment of the parenting behaviors, more analysis on the skills will be useful in realizing the avenues through which dysregulation and adaptive regulation are shaped in children. Moreover, emotional regulations should be used to establish to assess the long-term impact that is associated with the establishment of interventions.
Reference
Labella, M. H., Lind, T., Sellers, T., Roben, C. K., & Dozier, M. (2020). Emotion regulation among children in foster care versus birth parent care: Differential effects of an early home-visiting intervention. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 48(8), 995-1006.
