Residential care for children/youths is heavily debated, and it is often used as a last resort given the disadvantages, including problems with safety, coercion by group workers, deviancy training, lack of placement stability... [ view full abstract ]
Residential care for children/youths is heavily debated, and it is often used as a last resort given the disadvantages, including problems with safety, coercion by group workers, deviancy training, lack of placement stability and attachment problems due to rotating staff (Dozier et al., 2014). Nevertheless it can be argued that this care will continue to be needed in the future for a specific group of children/youths who suffer from severe problems in the family situation and/or pose a risk to themselves or others because of severe emotional or behavioral problems (Baker et al., 2007; Department of Health, 2000; Preyde et al., 2011). There is an urgent call for more research to identify factors that lead to better outcomes in residential group care (Marshall & Burton, 2010). Moreover, research on the youngest age group is relatively limited so far.
A central factor associated with positive outcomes in (youth) care in general is creating and maintaining good therapeutic alliances between practitioners and children during the course of treatment (Bickman et al., 2012; Duppong, Hurley et al., 2013; Holden, 2009; Shirk & Karver, 2003). Studies within residential care settings have shown that the quality of the therapeutic alliance is affected by staff and child characteristics (Bastiaanssen et al., 2012; Tarren-Sweeney, 2007, 2012), but relations between therapeutic alliance and situational/ group climate factors are seldom taken into account. It is important to examine these factors as well, as for example a negative group climate can have bad impact on the stress system of the child (Arden & Linford, 2009), thereby influencing the extent to which children are able to develop secure attachment relationships and alliances again (Bradley et al., 1986; Martins et al., 2013).
As part of the Stronger Together study ‘You matter!’ (presented at EUSARF 2014), two youth care organizations in the Netherlands (Juzt and Stichting Maashorst) have collected data every six months between 2012 and 2015 on how children (age 4-14) view the group climate (Group Climate Instrument for Children, GCIC; Strijbosch et al., 2014) and the therapeutic alliance with their mentor (Children’s Alliance Questionnaire, CAQ; Roest et al., 2014). The teams were provided with their own scores soon after the measurement, so that they could work on improvements together with the children, and six months later they could check on changes in the scores after a new measurement had taken place. Thus, the study resulted in valuable information that could be applied in everyday practice instantly. Besides that, the data provide us with more general knowledge about the correlation between group climate and therapeutic alliance (from the children's points of view) over time. N=152 children have filled out both the GCIC and the CAQ at two subsequent measurement moments.
In this presentation, following a brief introduction of the study design, we will present the first results of a cross lagged panel analysis on the longitudinal data from the 'You Matter!' study. The main research question addressed is: To what extent does the perceived group climate influence the perceived therapeutic alliance between the child and its mentor? To conclude, we invite symposium participants to reflect on implications for future research and practice, regarding the role of group climate in the enhancement of alliances in residential care for children.
