150-01: We Can Do This! The Impact of Fostering Salience on Parenting Practices and Behaviors

Foster parents are faced with several challenges caring for the children placed in their homes. Despite these challenges, foster parents who view fostering as a satisfying and rewarding experience may be more likely to show increased parenting responsibility and an increased co-parenting relationship which is associated with positive outcomes for children in their care. Parents who take responsibility for their own parenting and exhibit positive co-parenting quality may be more likely to engage in school achievement, discipline prevention, and increasing communication skills with children in their care.

Objectives

- To evaluate the role of salience in parenting and couple roles.
- To demonstrate the importance of parenting salience for individuals and the co-parenting relationship.
- To explore how relationship eduction programs can contribute to strenghtening role salience.

Keywords: Actor–partner Interdependence Model (APIM), fostercare, education

150-02: Too Stressed to Change: Foster Parenting Stress as a Moderator of Change in Coparenting Following Relationship Education

Foster caregivers report many challenges related to fostering that may increase their overall parenting stress. Parenting stress in the general population has been demonstrated to be negatively associated with interparental relationship quality. In the current study, we use data from 133 foster caregiver couples who participated in a couple relationship education (CRE) program to examine the associations between baseline parenting stress and coparenting relationship quality and to examine change in coparenting relationship quality following participation in CRE. We also examine baseline parenting stress as a moderator of the change in coparenting relationship quality. Results suggest that parenting stress does, in fact, moderate the change in coparenting relationship quality for foster fathers. Further results and implications for our findings will be presented.

Objectives

- To evaluate the effectiveness of Elevate for Foster Parents on coparenting relationship quality.
- To examine the direct associations between foster parenting stress and coparenting relationship quality.
- To examine foster parenting stress as a moderator of change in coparenting relationship quality.

Keywords: fostercare, relationship education, coparenting

150-03: One Step Forward, Three Steps Back: Understanding Foster Parents’ Challenges and Parenting Self-Efficacy

Foster parenting presents unique challenges, many of which are not fully understood by researchers.  Because of these challenges, it is important for foster parents to feel efficacious in their role.  Therefore, purpose of this study is to better understand (a) the association between parenting self-efficacy (PSE) and the challenges reported by foster parents and (b) whether the occurrence of specific types of challenges are correlated. We proposed a mixed-methods approach to answer these questions. Results indicate that challenges associated with foster parenting may be largely outside of what is typically considered “parenting” (e.g., navigating the system and learning how to let go), and PSE was not associated with these challenges.

Objectives

- To understand some of the common challenges experienced by foster parents.
- To explore whether parenting self-efficacy predicts six common challenge categories in foster parenting.
- To explore if there are patterns among the six foster parenting challenge categories.

Keywords: fostercare, caregiving, education