In a short-term longitudinal design we investigated maternal sensitivity, child responsiveness, attachment, and indiscriminate friendliness in families with children internationally adopted from institutions or foster care in China. Ninety-two families with 50 postinstitutionalized and 42 formerly fostered girls, aged 11-16 months on arrival, were studied 2 and 6 months after adoption. Maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness were observed with the Emotional Availability Scales, attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation procedure, and mothers reported on children's indiscriminate friendliness. The postinstitutionalized children showed less secure attachment, whereas the former foster children did not differ from the normative distribution of attachment security. However, at both assessments the two groups of adopted children showed more disorganized attachments compared to normative data. Adoptive mothers of postinstitutionalized and former foster children were equally sensitive and their sensitivity did not change over time. Postinstitutionalized and former foster children did not differ on indiscriminate friendliness, but children with more sensitive adoptive mothers showed less indiscriminate friendliness. The former foster children showed a larger increase in responsiveness over time than the postinstitutionalized children, suggesting that children's responsiveness is more sensitive to change than attachment, and that preadoption foster care is more beneficial for the development of children's responsiveness after adoptive placement than preadoption institutional care.
The influence of pre-adoption foster versus institutional rearing seems more pronounced for cognitive and motor development than for physical development and hormonal stress regulation. Our outcomes suggest that pre-adoption foster care is less detrimental to children's cognitive and motor development than institutional rearing.
International dissemination of evidence-based interventions calls for rigorous evaluation. As part of an evaluation of critical time intervention (CTI) for homeless people and abused women leaving Dutch shelters, this study assessed fidelity in two service delivery systems and explored factors influencing model adherence. Data collection entailed chart review (n = 70) and two focus groups with CTI workers (n = 11). The intervention obtained an overall score of three out of five (fairly implemented) for compliance fidelity and chart quality combined. Fidelity did not differ significantly between service systems, supporting its suitability for a range of populations. The eight themes that emerged from the focus groups as affecting model adherence provide guidance for future implementation efforts.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10488-015-0699-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
What is known about this topic• Tenant evictions are a significant cause of homelessness and are often caused by a complex combination of financial, social, relational and health factors.• Little reliable data are available regarding the (cost-)effectiveness of interventions to prevent tenant evictions.
What this paper adds• This first systematic literature search brings together all existing knowledge on preventive interventions regarding tenant evictions in the international literature.• Very few interventions have been described and published and there is no compelling evidence for the effectiveness of preventive interventions.
AbstractTenant evictions are a significant cause of homelessness. As evictions are a traumatic experience for those being evicted and involve high costs, preventing evictions is vital and should be part of local and national policy. In order to develop and implement preventive practices and policies, it is essential to know which interventions are effective in preventing evictions. However, little is known about these interventions. Therefore, a systematic search of the international literature, providing an overview of interventions to prevent evictions published in scientific journals and reporting on their (cost-)effectiveness, was conducted. Nine electronic databases and Google Scholar were searched for peer-reviewed and non-reviewed publications describing research into interventions to prevent tenant evictions published in English between January 1985 and May 2012. Two researchers reviewed titles, abstracts and full-text articles and eventually seven publications describing eight interventions to prevent tenant evictions were analysed. The eight interventions vary widely in terms of their target population, focus, type of support and duration, which makes comparison of results difficult. Only three effect studies on preventive interventions regarding tenant evictions were found; two researchers assessed their quality. One of these studies was of insufficient quality to assess the effectiveness of the intervention described. Legal assistance and debt advice are promising interventions that seem to be effective in decreasing the risk of eviction. The effectiveness of the other five interventions cannot be determined. More methodologically sound research into the prevention of tenant evictions is needed and future research will have to clarify what works for whom, in which context.
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