The role of social buffering on chronic disruptions in quality of care: evidence from caregiver-based interventions in foster children

ABSTRACT

There is growing evidence that social support can buffer the physiological stress response, specifically cortisol reactivity. We use a developmental framework to review the importance of social buffering in early childhood, a period of heightened plasticity for programming of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The social environment, in which parents play the largest role in early life, is a critical agent in the developmental trajectory of the HPA axis. A prevailing model of social buffering primarily focuses on the role of social support in the context of acute stressors and cortisol response. This review expands this model to provide evidence of the mechanism of social buffering, or lack thereof, across periods of chronic stress by applying the social buffer model to children involved in the child welfare system. We also highlight current interventions that capitalize on the mechanism of social buffering to modify HPA axis functioning across childhood. Last, we synthesize our findings using the social buffering framework to inform future targeted interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Neglect
• social support
• development
• cortisol
• intervention

Acknowledgments

The conference that occasioned this special issue was supported by National Science Foundation under grant BCS-1439258. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Graduate Research Fellowship 2015172132 to Jessica Flannery; the National Institute on Drug Abuse, under Grant DA035763 to Philip Fisher; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, under Grant HD075716 to Philip Fisher.

Disclosure statement

Dr. Fisher is the developer of the MTFC-P intervention described herein, and a co-owner of Treatment Foster Care Consultants, Inc., which provides consultation on the implementation of MTFC-P.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Graduate Research Fellowship 2015172132 to Jessica Flannery; the National Institute on Drug Abuse, under Grant DA035763 to Philip Fisher; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, under Grant HD075716 to Philip Fisher.