Child maltreatment increases the risk of poor developmental outcomes. However, some children display resilience, meaning they are high-functioning despite their adverse experiences. To date, few research studies have examined protective factors among very young maltreated children. Yet, domains of resilience, and the protective factors that promote resilience among maltreated children, are likely to differ by developmental stage. Drawing on ecological systems theory and life course theory, we examined how protective factors at multiple ecological levels across early childhood were related to social and cognitive resilience among very young children involved with child protective services. The results demonstrated that the buffering effects of protective factors varied by social or cognitive resilience and the cumulative effects of protective factors were more consistently related to later resilience than protective factors at specific time points. In addition, the influence of specific protective factors on resilience slightly varied by initial in-home or out-of-home placement. These findings have important policy and research implications for promoting optimal development among children involved in child protective services.

Establishing causal links when experiments are not feasible is an important challenge for psychology researchers. The question of whether parents’ spanking causes children’s externalizing behavior problems poses such a challenge because randomized experiments of spanking are unethical and correlational studies cannot rule out potential selection factors. This study used propensity score matching based on the lifetime prevalence and recent incidence of spanking in a large and nationally representative sample (N=12,112) as well as lagged dependent variables to get as close to causal estimates outside an experiment as possible. Whether children were spanked at age 5 predicted increases in externalizing behavior problems by ages 6 and 8, even after the groups based on spanking prevalence or incidence were matched on a range of sociodemographic, family, and cultural characteristics and children’s initial behavior problems These statistically rigorous methods afford a conclusion that spanking predicts a deterioration of children’s externalizing behavior over time.

Reuniting children with their families is the preferred outcome of foster care, yet many children reunited with their families reenter foster care. This study examined how parental substance abuse and mental health problems, and the time allotted for reunification, are associated with reentry risk. We used a complete cohort of children who entered the Texas foster care system in fiscal years 2008-2009 to identify the risk of foster care reentry within five years of reunification using selection-adjusted multi-level survival analysis. Approximately 16% of reunified children reentered care within 5 years. Substance abuse and mental health problems predicted higher rates of reentry. Reunification after 12 months was associated with increased reentry risk overall, but not among children commonly exempted from federal permanency timelines. Permanency guidelines that restrict the length of time to achieve reunification may have the unintended consequence of pushing reunification before maltreatment risks have been resolved.

Growing up in poverty increases the likelihood of maladaptive development. Yet, some children are able to overcome the adversity of poverty and demonstrate resilience. Currently, there is limited agreement among researchers about how to operationalize resilience, both in terms of who should be the comparison group against whom at-risk children are compared and in terms of what developmental domains of resilience are most predictive of later positive development. The present study investigated how different thresholds and domains of resilience at school entry were associated with within-domain and cross-domain academic achievement across elementary school. Using a nationally representative and longitudinal sample, the results demonstrated that children who reached a high threshold of resilience at entry to kindergarten had similar mathematics and literacy achievement throughout elementary school as academically competent children not in poverty. Additionally, cross-domain associations were found for both mathematics and literacy resilience predicting later achievement. These findings have important research and intervention implications for promoting positive academic development among children in poverty.

Placement instability places foster children at an increased risk of negative developmental outcomes. Previous research has yielded inconsistent results on risk factors for placement instability. Therefore, we investigated two research questions: (1) Which child attributes and case histories are associated with placement disruptions (moves indicative of child, agency or caregiver dissatisfaction with the existing placement)?; and (2) How do associations of child attributes and case histories with placement disruptions vary by developmental stage --early childhood (0-5 years), middle childhood (6-12 years), and adolescence (13 years or older)? Using a complete entry cohort of 23,765 foster children in Texas, our results demonstrated that the effects of different risk factors varied by placement end reason and across developmental stages. Of note, kinship placement, compared to non-relative foster care, and placement with all siblings were each associated with an increased risk of substandard care disruptions. Placements with females or Hispanic children were at an increased risk of child-initiated disruption, whereas placements with Black children were more likely to end due to placement mismatch or substandard care reasons. Finally, the adolescence age group was always associated with the greatest increase in risk regardless of disruption reason. These findings provide researchers, caseworkers, and policymakers important information on the risk factors for placement instability among children in foster care.