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Emotion Regulation and Psychological Availability of Caretakers in Residential Care Children

Wed, April 7, 3:15 to 4:15pm EDT (3:15 to 4:15pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Child Protective Services (CPS) may resort to residential care placement for children with dysfunctional behavioral profiles. A majority of these children have experienced severe and chronic maltreatment (Cyr et al., 2012) and numerous, short-term placement failures that render their life course very unstable (Turcotte, 2008). Multiple placements have been associated with socio-emotional problems in maltreated children (Konijn et al., 2019). In high-risk adolescents, multiple placements have also been found to interfere with their daily interactions with professional caretakers (Leipoldt et al., 2019).
Given that, among other strategies, residential care settings (group homes and residential care units) rely on the child-caretaker relationship to promote child rehabilitation (Bisaillon et al., 2014), it is then crucial to target the risk factors associated with the quality of this relationship. A study has shown that emotion regulation is a predictor of emotional closeness between adolescents in residential care and their caretakers (Costa et al., 2020). However, to date, no studies have evaluated whether emotion regulation, after being in residential care for a few months, can reduce the effects of placement instability on the quality of the child-caretaker’s relationship. It would be expected that those who have benefited from their placement in residential care would show higher levels of emotion regulation. As a result, for those children, there would not be any significant association between child placement instability and the quality of the child-caretaker relationship. Hence, this study examines the moderating role of emotion regulation in the association between placement instability and the quality the child-caretaker relationship.
The final sample includes 89 residential care children (71.0% boys) with a mean age of 9.57 (SD = 1.45) and their residential caretakers who were recruited in group homes and residential care units located in the greater Montreal area, Quebec. As a measure of relationship quality, children completed the Psychological Availability and Reliance on Adult scale (Zegers & Schuengel, 2006), which evaluates the extent with which children feel they may rely on their caretaker as a security base and their perception of their caretaker’s psychological availability. The number of placements was documented on the basis of children’s CPS files. Caretakers completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1995).
A regression analysis on the caretaker’s psychological availability shows two significant main effects (F(3.85)=12.37, p=0.001, 26% of the variance). Specifically, children with higher emotion regulation (b=0.08, SE=0.02) and a lower number of placements (b=-0.09, SE=0.02) perceived their caretakers as more available. Additionally, a moderating effect showed that for children with the lowest levels of emotion regulation, higher placement instability was significantly associated with children’s perception of the caretaker as less available (coeff.=0.02, SE=0.01, p=0.03, 4% of variance). These results underscore the role of emotion regulation as a negative consequence and risk factor for children who have experienced placement instability and are living in residential care. Emotion regulation as a treatment target for children in residential care appears to be a promising avenue for intervention strategies that aim the promotion of meaningful relationships between the residential care children and their caretaker.

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