Project Summary/Abstract
Family Relationships and Mental Health Trajectories of Youth in Foster Care
The goals of this project are to determine (a) if biological family visitation is associated with
swifter exits from foster care; (b) how biological family visitation predicts changes in levels and
patterns of mental health symptoms over time; and (c) the unique, additive, and interactive
effects of relationships with biological parents, siblings, and foster parents on changes in the
levels and patterns of mental health symptom trajectories. This proposed project will use data
from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, a nationally representative,
longitudinal study of youth involved with the child welfare system. Using all 3 waves of the
NSCAW II data, we will apply tenets of attachment and ambiguous loss theories to test the
potential beneficial effects of biological family visitation on foster care exits, and youth
internalizing and externalizing symptoms of youth ages 11-18 over a 3-year period (n = 375,
Wave 1). This study will employ innovative multiple-informant multivariate analyses, survival
analysis, longitudinal latent growth curve, and person-centered growth mixture modeling to
overcome limitations of previous research. By using a nationally representative sample, the
proposed study will yield important findings regarding the effects of biological family visitation on
foster care exits and the longitudinal mental health outcomes of youth in foster care. Knowledge
about foster care exits, mental health patterns, and trajectories is necessary for informing
meaningful evidence-based shifts in child welfare policy and practice.