Description
Many children entering the welfare care system have experienced some form of trauma, including various forms of abuse, separation from parents, and multiple placement changes. It is not surprising that over 21% of youth in foster care display symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). To date, there is a paucity of research on the predictors and behavioral correlates of PTSD symptoms among children in foster care. Recently, items from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), have been identified to create a PTSD syndrome-subscale. The CBCL is often used as a screening assessment in child welfare settings. Thus, theM PTSD syndrome-subscale possesses utility for understanding and predicting high-risk status of PTSD development among children in foster care. The goal of this study was to examine the contextual and situational factors (representing childhood adversity) as predictors of PTSD symptoms among children in foster care and further, to identify behavioral correlates of PTSD symptoms among this population. Correlation and ANOVA were used to examine bivariate relations among the predictor variables and the measure of PTSD symptoms. Regression analyses revealed that prior removals for abuse and current placement with non-kin caregivers were significantly related to PTSD symptoms. Separate regression analyses revealed that PTSD symptoms were also related to a range of other types of behavior problems, including externalizing, attention, thought, and somatic problems, all assessed via the CBCL. The findings from this study revealed important contextual predictors as well as behavioral correlates of PTSD symptoms of children in foster care, and further support the utility of the PTSP-CBCL scale as a screening tool for those children within child welfare systems of care.
