Does Kinship vs. Foster Care Better Promote Connectedness? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Internationally, there is an increasing trend toward placing children in kinship vs. foster care. Prior research suggests that children in kinship care fare better compared to children in foster care; however, the reasons for this remain unclear. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the hypothesis that kinship care better preserves children’s connectedness to caregiver, birth family, culture, and community; which, in turn, is associated with more optimal child outcomes. Thirty-one studies were reviewed that compared children aged 0–18 years in kinship care vs. foster care on levels of connectedness, three of which had outcomes that permitted meta-analysis. Findings indicated that children in kinship vs. foster care were more likely to feel connected to family in general; however, there was not a clear advantage for kinship vs. foster care for caregiver, birth parent, cultural, and community connectedness. While levels of connectedness were generally associated with more adaptive child outcomes for children in both kinship and foster care, no reviewed studies examined the hypothesis that children’s connectedness may mediate the relationship between placement type and child well-being and placement outcomes. Results are discussed with respect to limitations and policy implications of the current evidence-base and the need for more rigorous research to help identify how to improve child well-being in home-based care

Probation, policy change and personality disorder

The “house of psychopath” is constructed on a foundation of no attachment, underarousal, and minimal anxiety. These appear to be necessary, related, but insufficient characteristics that provide certain biological predispositions for the development of the psychopathic character. In psychopathy, incorporative failures predict subsequent problems with two kinds of internalizations: identifications and introjections. Central to psychopathy is a variation of the grandiose self‐structure which has three condensed components: a real self, an ideal self, and an ideal object. The only vestiges of conscience in the psychopathic character were best described by Jacobson as sadistic superego precursors, which she defined as projected aspects of early persecutory objects, attributed to others to deny aggression in the midst of frustration. Psychopathic individuals do not struggle with tensions of ego‐dystonic aggression, because the impulse to aggress is either immediately acted out, or remains a source of aggressive fueling of the grandiose self‐structure without conflict or ambivalence