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The L.Y.G.H.T. Program: An Evaluation of a Peer Grief Support Intervention for Youth in Foster Care

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Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Youth in foster care experience high rates of social, emotional, and behavioral challenges that are complicated by trauma and grief. To address these concerns, the current intervention study examines the efficacy of a newly developed peer grief support program, the L.Y.G.H.T. program, for youth in foster care, using an embedded sequential mixed methods design. Forty-two youth residing in three separate foster care group homes (“community sites”) in a southeastern state participated in this study. Youth were randomly assigned to either the treatment program or a waitlist control group. Baseline and post-intervention (after 6 weeks) assessments of the Children’s Hope Scale, the Inventory of Social Support, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire-Self Report were administered. After each weekly group, participants completed a survey to assess trauma-informed program environment and facilitators completed a survey to assess fidelity to the intervention. Focus groups (n = 3) were conducted at each of the community sites after the post-intervention assessments were completed. To examine program impact, we evaluated whether increases in well-being (i.e., social support, hopefulness, and self-worth) and decreases in total problem behaviors would be found for participants in the treatment group. Social support, hopefulness, and self-worth increased and total problems remained the same for youth in the treatment program. Large effects were found for program helpfulness, a trauma-informed program environment, and reduction in perceived problems. Focus group feedback explained why youth were initially interested in the program, perceived program benefits, program dislikes, barriers to program participation, recommendation of the program, and additional feedback. The findings suggest that the L.Y.G.H.T. program is an efficacious intervention which addresses loss and grief and enhances the well-being of youth in foster care who are grieving.

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Data Availability

Data are not publicly available.

Code Availability

Information about the statistical analysis is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

Our deepest gratitude to the youth participants, the program facilitators, the community sites, our funder, The Duke Endowment, and the article reviewers.

Funding

The study was generously funded by The Duke Endowment. The funder did not influence any interpretations or force the research team to produce biased results. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the policies of the funder.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children and Families, P.O. Box 86852, Portland, OR, 97286, USA

    Monique B. Mitchell, Donna L. Schuurman & Juliette Martinez

  2. Institute for Families in Society, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

    Cheri J. Shapiro & Carl Sorensen

  3. Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Sebastian Sattler

  4. Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Sebastian Sattler

  5. Pragmatic Health Ethics Research Unit, Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Sebastian Sattler

Authors
  1. Monique B. Mitchell

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  2. Donna L. Schuurman

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  3. Cheri J. Shapiro

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  4. Sebastian Sattler

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  5. Carl Sorensen

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  6. Juliette Martinez

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Contributions

MBM: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis (qualitative), investigation, resources, writing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. DLS: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, resources, writing, supervision, funding acquisition. CS: conceptualization, methodology, writing. SS: methodology, resources, formal analysis (quantitative), visualization, writing. CS: formal analysis (quantitative), visualization, writing. JM: project administration, investigation, writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence toMonique B. Mitchell.

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Conflict of interest

The authors do not have any conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Solutions IRB.

Consent to Participate

Freely-given, informed consent was provided by the state child welfare agency and the legal guardians of the youth who participated in the study. Assent was also provided by all youth who participated in this study.

Consent for Publication

Consent was provided by the state child welfare agency and the legal guardians of the youth and assent was provided by all participants to publish the results of this study.

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Mitchell, M.B., Schuurman, D.L., Shapiro, C.J.et al. The L.Y.G.H.T. Program: An Evaluation of a Peer Grief Support Intervention for Youth in Foster Care.Child Adolesc Soc Work J41, 15–32 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-022-00843-7

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