Alumni

"Youth-caseworker relationships and academic resilience of youth in foster care." The current studies used a resilience framework to examine secondary data from two of the largest randomized control trials to date involving youth in foster care. These studies sampled youth across three developmental periods (i.e. preadolescence, adolescence, and the transition to adulthood). Both took place in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area and explored academic outcomes and used similar measures. The current studies aimed to describe several characteristics of youth-caseworker relationships as perceived by youth (knowledge of caseworker, contact, relationship quality, emotional support, instrumental support and stability) across preadolescence, adolescence, and the transition to adulthood. A second aim was to examine the association of youth-caseworker relationships with positive academic outcomes (i.e. school engagement and high school completion). Finally, the studies examined the differential impact of youth-caseworker relationships on youth academic outcomes by level of youth risk (i.e. high posttraumatic symptoms and special education).