Most Pressing Concerns of Foster Families During COVID-19

• In Event: Insights about Parenting from Social Media and Other Online Platforms

Abstract

Introduction: The child welfare system was overburdened before COVID-19. Many foster children were already exposed to adverse childhood experiences and trauma. In the wake of COVID-19, foster children are more vulnerable than ever before. The current study leveraged data mining techniques combined with qualitative coding methodology to collect and analyze textual data from online discussion forums for foster families. This innovative procedure provides insight into child and family wellbeing during COVID-19, a time when social distancing and lockdown measures have made it difficult for child protective workers to stay in touch with foster families. Primary research questions asked (1) what topics were most commonly discussed online among foster families? and (2) how did such topics change both quantitatively and qualitatively before and after COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic?

Hypotheses: It was hypothesized that topics concerning children’s behavioral and health along with academic interruptions would be most common among foster families and that rates of these discussions would increase after COVID-19 occurred.

Study population: The study focused on current foster parents and former foster youth present on Reddit, a pseudonymous online discussion forum, and its sub-discussion forums (known as subreddits) created specifically for foster families.

Methods: Three largest foster care subreddits were used as the main databases: r/fosterit, r/fosterparents, and r/fostercare. The Pushshift Reddit Application Programming Interface was used to obtain a total of 11,830 Reddit comments from foster families between January 1, 2020 to May 23, 2020. Natural language processing, specifically Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), was used to model topics most commonly discussed amongst foster families in the collected text data. We examined changes in the LDA topics’ frequencies before and after COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization. Qualitative coding was applied for in-depth understanding of the topics, including contexts in which each topic occurred and how the topics changed qualitatively in content before and after COVID-19.

Results: The LDA model generated a total of 14 topics. Of these, seven topics showed general increases in frequency before and after COVID-19: (1) specific needs of foster children; (2) becoming a new foster parent; (3) challenges related to caring for foster children; (4) biological parents; (5) activities for foster children; (6) racism and discrimination; and (7) money. Qualitative coding (Cohen’s κ = 0.85) showed that discussions around meeting the high medical and physical health needs of foster children before COVID-19 changed to lacking the psychological and financial resources to adequately meet such needs during the pandemic. Additional changes involved increased levels of child behavior problems compounded by stay-at-home orders; anxieties related to lack of communication with the child welfare system; status of COVID-19 stimulus checks; and questions related to activities children can do indoors during lockdowns. These initial results suggest that there has been important shifts in topics most concerning to foster families during the pandemic. Foster parents and children likely need the most support around alleviating additional childcare burdens, exacerbated child behavior problems, and financial conditions during COVID-19.

Authors

• Joyce Yea-Eun Lee, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Olivia Dae Chang, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tawfiq Ammari, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author