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Children in family foster care have greater health risks and less involvement in Child Health Services
Author(s) -
Köhler M,
Emmelin M,
Hjern A,
Rosvall M
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
acta paediatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/apa.12901
Subject(s) - medicine , breastfeeding , foster home care , health care , family medicine , foster care , descriptive statistics , nursing , environmental health , pediatrics , poison control , suicide prevention , statistics , mathematics , economic growth , economics
Aim This study investigated the impact of being in family foster care on selected health determinants and participation in Child Health Services (CHS). Methods Two groups of 100 children, born between 1992 and 2008, were studied using data from Swedish Child Health Services for the preschool period up to the age of six. The first group had been in family foster care, and the controls, matched for age, sex and geographic location, had not. Descriptive statistics were used to describe differences in health determinants and participation in Child Health Services between the two groups. Results The foster care group had higher health risks, with lower rates of breastfeeding and higher levels of parental smoking. They were less likely to have received immunisations and attended key nurse or physician visits and speech and vision screening. Missing data for the phenylketonuria test were more common in children in family foster care. Conclusion Children in family foster care were exposed to more health risks than the control children and had lower participation in the universal child health programme during the preschool period. These results call for secure access to high‐quality preventive health care for this particularly vulnerable group of children.