Mental health of children in foster care – comparative study
Mental health of children in foster care – comparative study

Summary/Abstract: Children caught by the social welfare system and placed in foster families (FF) often bring to such families traumatic experiences and chronic feeling of unsatisfied needs. Objective of the paper is to determine mental vulnerability of children in foster homes,compare a group of children with disability and those without disability, and compare thefindings with intact children in selected European countries. Furthermore, the purposeof this paper is to contribute with research findings to the arguments for increasing the number of expert employees specialised in the work with children exposed to traumaticevents. The research sample consisted of 119 children (61 girls and 63 boys) from fosterhomes. The children were 13.7 (13.8 for girls and 13.6 for boys) years old on average andaverage length of their stay in foster care was 6.8 years for girls and 5.7 years for boys. 49 children were diagnosed with some type of disability, 67 children did not have any disabilitydiagnosed. Using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ-Svk), children wereassessed for the components of Emotional Symptoms, Conduct Problems, Hyperactivity/Impulsivity, Peer Relationship Problems, Prosocial Behaviour, and total scores. The overall assessment of mental health problems showed that boys are more vulnerable compared to girls nearly in all areas, except for the Emotional Symptoms where both groups scored similarly. As regards the prognosis of possible deterioration of mental health, girls without disabilities show the lowest risk of mental disorders, boys with a disability show the greatestrisk. Research confirmed increased occurrence of symptoms which may classify childrenfrom foster homes into categories of children with higher risk in the area of mental healthand development of mental disorders.

• Details
• Contents