Profiles of Resilience from Early to Middle Childhood among Children Known to Child Protection Services

ABSTRACT

Objective

The processes facilitating resilience are likely to be influenced by individual, familial and contextual factors that are dynamic across the life-course. These factors have been less studied in relation to resilience profiles evident in the developmental period between early to middle childhood, relative to later periods of adolescence or adulthood.

Method

This study examined factors associated with resilience in a cohort of 4,716 children known to child protection services by age 13 years, in the Australian State of New South Wales. Latent profile and transition analyses were used to identify multi-dimensional profiles of resilience as evident in social, emotional and cognitive functioning when assessed in early childhood (time 1 [T1], age 5–6 years) and middle childhood (time 2 [T2], age 10–11 years). Logistic regression models were used to investigate factors associated with two types of resilience identified: a transition profile of stress-resistance (i.e., represented by a typically developing profile at both T1 and T2) delineated in the largest subgroup (54%) of children, and a smaller subgroup (13%) with a profile of emergent resilience (i.e., typically developing at T2 following a vulnerable profile at T1).

Results

Factors associated with resilience profiles included being female, and personality characteristics of openness and extraversion; other factors associated with stress-resistance, specifically, included higher socioeconomic status, non-Indigenous background, higher perceived port at home and at school, and not having a parent with a history of criminal offending.

Conclusions

Resilience processes appear to involve a complex interplay between individual, family, and community characteristics requiring interagency support.

Acknowledgments

This research used population data owned by the NSW Department of Education; Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA), managed by the NSW Education Standards Authority; NSW Department of Communities and Justice; NSW Ministry of Health; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; the Australian Coordinating Registry (on behalf of Australian Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Australian Coroners and the National Coronial Information System); the Australian Bureau of Statistics; the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and; NSW Police. This paper used data from the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC); the AEDC is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. The findings and views reported are those of the author and should not be attributed to these Departments or the NSW and Australian Government. The record linkage was conducted by the Centre for Health and Record Linkage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2021.1969652

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted by the University of New South Wales with financial support from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project (LP110100150, with the NSW Ministry of Health, NSW Department of Education, and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice representing the Linkage Project Partners), ARC Discovery Project (DP170101403) and ARC Future Fellowship awarded to KRL (FT170100294; the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC Project Grants APP1058652 and APP1148055 and NHMRC Partnership Project 1133833), and the Australian Rotary Health (Mental Health of Young Australians Research Grants 104090 and 162302).