Resilience among adolescents in foster care

The study compares the levels and predictors of resilience of maltreated adolescents in foster care with those of maltreated adolescents in residential and community care. Resilience was measured by the resilience subscale (RYDM) of the California Healthy Kids Survey, which defines the concept in terms of the existences of internal and external resources that enable healthy development. All three groups of youngsters reported relatively high resilience (2 on a scale ranging from 0 to 3), of all three types: internal, external, and general. The predictors of resilience tested in the study were type of placement, age, gender, acceptance and rejection by mother and father, and autonomy and control by mother and father. Only three variables contributed to the youngsters' resilience, all of them positively: being a girl, being older, and acceptance by the father. The study has two practical implications. One is that the adolescents' sense of themselves as resilient and possessing resources can be used in interventions aimed at helping them to overcome difficulties stemming from their maltreatment. The other is that the key role of parental acceptance, especially paternal acceptance, in the youngsters' resilience can be used in the work with both the biological and foster parents of maltreated youngsters.