Alumni of foster care are at considerable risk for transitioning to adulthood without supportive parental relationships due to significant disruptions of these relationships and histories of maltreatment. This study investigated key dimensions of parental support (care, dependability and financial support) in relationships with birth parents and parental figures among young adults who received foster care and exited to diverse permanency outcomes. Using Latent Class Analysis, four groups were identified indicating young adults who had (a) connections to both birth parents and parental figures; (b) minimal connections; (c) some connection to parental figure; and (d) some connection to birth parent. Young adults who reported connections with both birth parents and parental figures reported better outcomes, while those who reported minimal connections had least optimal outcomes. An examination of antecedent characteristics indicated a modest role of legal permanence. Results here highlight a need for inclusive child welfare practices that honor the family fluidity that foster youth experience and privilege relationship quality over legal permanence, particularly for older youth in foster care. Greater methodological rigor in the assessment and study of relational permanence and its potential to offset risks among maltreated youth in foster care is called for.

Objectives: After the termination of parental rights (TPR), there is no guarantee that youth will achieve legal permanence through adoption either quickly or at all. This study identifies obstacles in reaching adoption after TPR. Methods: Data are extracted via brief case reviews of 640 children and in-depth case reviews of 145 children to identify potential barriers to adoption. Results: Obstacles in reaching adoption post-TPR include characteristics of youth, foster families, and case practice. Conclusions: Results indicate that improvements in practice such as concurrent planning efforts, continuity of case workers, and addressing foster parent ambivalence about adopting youth with special needs can make a difference for youth in reaching more timely permanence through adoption.

ABSTRACTFor some youth in foster care, the closest family or family‐like relationships are with the foster parents with whom they have lived for extended periods of time. Nonetheless, child welfare agencies often do not explore these relationships and the potential they may hold for youth for legal permanence through adoption or guardianship. Recognizing that social workers often lack resources to help them initiate permanency conversations, Casey Family Services, a direct service child welfare agency in the USA, developed a tool that social workers can use to explore youth's sense of emotional security with their foster parents and foster parents' sense of claiming and attachment with youth in their care. The research literature that suggests that emotional security is a critical component of successful permanence provided the foundation for the development of the Belonging and Emotional Security Tool (BEST). When used with youth and foster parents, the BEST was found to advance meaningful permanency conversations. The authors provide case examples of its use and discuss future directions for using the BEST and broadening its application.

In this 2-year prospective study, psychopathology and competence among drug abusers' offspring were examined in relation to characteristics of their neighborhoods. The sample consisted of 77 children of cocaine and opioid addicts with a mean age of 12.3 years at baseline and 14.2 years at follow-up. Outcomes examined included psychiatric diagnoses, dimensional symptom indices, and aspects of everyday behavioral competence. Links involving neighborhood variables varied by gender, wherein boys reflected greater deterioration than girls when neighborhoods had high crime rates and high proportions of low-income households. Conversely, girls appeared to benefit more than boys from the presence of professional adults in the community. Overall, neighborhood indicators accounted for more variability in changes in child adjustment over time than did indices of maternal psychopathology. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the salience of exosystemic and familial forces, and implications for interventions are outlined.

Objectives of this study were to ascertain risk and protective factors in the adjustment of 78 school-age and teenage offspring of opioid- and cocaine-abusing mothers. Using a multimethod, multiinformant approach, child outcomes were operationalized via lifetime psychiatric diagnoses and everyday social competence (each based on both mother and child reports), and dimensional assessments of symptoms (mother report). Risk/protective factors examined included the child sociodemographic attributes of gender, age, and ethnicity, aspects of maternal psychopathology, and both mother's and children's cognitive functioning. Results revealed that greater child maladjustment was linked with increasing age, Caucasian (as opposed to African American) ethnicity, severity of maternal psychiatric disturbance, higher maternal cognitive abilities (among African Americans) and lower child cognitive abilities (among Caucasians). Limitations of the study are discussed, as are implications of findings for future research.

Using a 2-wave longitudinal design with a 6-month interval, associations were examined between substance use and emotional/behavioral adjustment among 138 inner-city ninth-grade students. Substance use was operationalized in terms of self-reported severity of problems associated with use of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. Adjustment was measured based on various sources including ratings by the self, by peers, and by teachers, as well as school records. Cross-sectional data indicated that drug use showed associations in expected directions with all indices of adjustment with the exception of peer-rated sociability. Longitudinal analyses indicated that high levels of drug use early in the year were related to subsequent increases in behavioral and emotional maladjustment. Early maladjustment, across different domains, conversely, was minimally associated with escalations in drug use. Results are discussed in terms of mechanisms potentially underlying prospective associations, as well as implications for interventions.

Twenty-two methadone maintained opioid addicts with either depression or persistent cocaine use received open label fluoxetine in addition to their methadone. Fluoxetine significantly decreased depressive symptoms from pre-treatment to endpoint in subjects with depression, while its effect on substance use was inconclusive.