Research On Well-being Of Foster Children And Its Influential Factors

The aim of this research was to investigate the status of well-being among foster children and its influential factors. The subjects included 312 normal children from the regular schools in Shanghai, 30 children lived in foster family and 36 children lived in Shanghai Children's Home. The research employed various education science research approaches such as literature, questionnaire to collect the data and descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, regression Analysis and structural equation model to analyse the data. The questionnaires designed by the researcher was used to investigate the status of the foster children's Well-being in their families and also to explore the relations between well-being and the objective and subjective influential factors such as family adaptability and cohesion, life events and social support, coping styles and self-concepts. And the comparative study indicated foster care had positive effect to foster children's well-being. The results showed as follows:1) Well-being Questionnaire for Children: The research designed an integrated Well-being Questionnaire for Children through integrating the conceptual models and indices of measurement of Psychological Well-Being and Subjective Bell-Being. With factory analysis and structural equation model, it was proved that children's Well-being contains Subjective Well-being (SWB), Psychological Well-being (PWB) and Interpersonal Well-being (IWB). According to the result, Interaction Model of Subjective-Psychological-Interpersonal Well-being (SPI Interactive Model) was constructed. The well-being questionnaire contained 14 components of three dimensions. Taking the normal children as subjects, the exploratory analysis and tests of reliability and validity had been carried out on them.2) Generally, foster children's well-being was above the middle level and there was no age and sex difference among them.3) Comparison indicated that the quality of life was guaranteed in foster care so that foster children's well-being had been improved and foster children's interpersonal ability was developed. Difference in Well-being was found among the different children groups.4) Influential factors such as family cohesion, the stress from life events, negative copying style and friendship support were validated to be significant predictor to foster children's Well-being.This research provided a general status of foster children's well-being and revealed the relations between well-being and objective or subjective influential factors. This study enriched the theoretical research on foster children's well-being and was constructive to improve life quality of foster children. The results of this research had a certain direction meaning in measuring the life quality of foster families and for the government enacting relative regulations.