1. Sexual Health and Communication Between Foster Youth and Their Caregivers.
- Author
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Ahrens K, Udell W, Albertson K, Coatney A, Golub SA, and Lowry SJ
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Humans, Female, Caregivers psychology, Sexual Behavior psychology, Communication, Sexual Health, Child, Foster
- Abstract
Purpose: Foster youth are at increased risk for negative sexual health outcomes and rarely receive the information or social/familial support needed to reduce risks. Foster and kinship caregivers report lacking the information and skills needed to effectively talk to youth in their care about sexual health. In a sample of caregivers from 2 large urban jurisdictions, our goals were to: 1) describe caregiver sexual health variables including communication and monitoring characteristics; and 2) assess associations between self-reported emotion regulation and caregiver-youth conflict and these variables., Methods: We administered surveys to foster and kinship caregivers in New York, New York and Los Angeles, California. Surveys assessed caregiver emotion regulation, caregiver-youth conflict, sexual/reproductive health knowledge, communication expectations and behaviors, and caregiver monitoring/youth disclosure. We generated descriptive statistics for all variables (aim 1) then performed multivariate regression analyses for aim 2., Results: Our sample included 127 foster and kinship caregivers who were primarily female (92%) and African American (55%). Most reported having >4 years of caregiving experience with foster youth (66%). On average, caregivers answered sexual health knowledge questions correctly 68% of the time. Caregiver-youth conflict was the only variable significantly associated with assessed sexual health variables; it was inversely associated with percent correct on the knowledge scale, outcomes expectations, number of topics discussed, and monitoring/disclosure., Conclusion: Our study suggests that caregiver-youth conflict behaviors are related to sexual health knowledge, communication, and monitoring variables. Further prospective and longitudinal investigation is warranted to better characterize the complex relationship between these variables., (Copyright © 2022 Academic Pediatric Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2023
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