Which factors influence residential care dropouts: How important are limited prosocial emotions?

Abstract

More than 20 % of participants of inpatient youth welfare measures drop out unplanned. In order to conduct effective youth services planning and to avoid breakups of relationships, it is important to identify youths early on who are a particular challenge for the youth welfare system and to better understand the risk factors for termination. Psychological strain, trauma, history of more than one residential care placement, delinquency, and psychopathic traits are assumed to be risk factors for a negative course; therefore, these are specifically examined in this study. In a sample of 497 inhabitants of welfare and juvenile justice institutions in Switzerland aged 6 – 26, two groups of participants–with and without dropouts–are compared. Univariate as well as multivariate analysis methods showed that–besides age–psychopathic traits are the central predictor for a termination of the youth welfare measure. The termination risk is increased two to three times in participants with particularly high values on scales measuring psychopathic traits compared to participants with consistently normal values on scales measuring psychopathic traits. The results suggest that specific pedagogic and psychotherapeutic concepts for youths with limited prosocial abilities should be developed and evaluated. Moreover, the youths should be screened for psychopathic traits in order to take these traits into account during youth services planning.