Strengths Associated with Positive Youth Development after Child Maltreatment: Applying the Resilience Portfolio Model to Youth In the Child Welfare System

Background and Purpose: Understanding how strengths (i.e., protective factors) operate to promote positive youth development is critical for supporting youth who have experienced childhood maltreatment. The Resilience Portfolio Model (RPM) framework and the dosage-based approaches (e.g., poly-strengths indices) have documented resilience portfolios and the cumulative protective effects of strengths among youth in the general population, yet these approaches have not been widely applied to youth in the U.S. child welfare system, a population exposed to high levels of adversity. To advance the current social work knowledge base, this study sought to examine how the configuration (i.e., strengths portfolios) and cumulative presence (i.e., number of strengths) of multi-level strengths predict prosocial behaviors and academic achievement among adolescents involved in the U.S. child welfare system.

Methods: Data were drawn from the second cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW-II) and included 357 adolescents (M_age = 13.21 years; 40.34% boys). To determine portfolios of strengths, we examined eight strength indicators: religious beliefs, future expectations, emotion regulation, behavioral regulation, teacher relationships, peer relationships, caregiver-child relationships, and community safety. The poly-strengths index was calculated as the total count of strengths endorsed across the eight strength indicators. Prosocial skills were assessed using caregiver reports on the Social Skills Rating System, and academic achievement was measured using the Applied Problems and Letter-Word Identification sub-scales from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify distinct patterns of strengths, and Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis was used to examine the cumulative effects of poly-strengths.

Results: Latent class analysis identified three strengths portfolios: (1) The Multi-domain resilience portfolios class (60.3%); (2) Future-oriented but low in aggression control class (16.9%); and (3) the Well-regulated but limited meaning-making and connection class (22.8%). Adolescents in the Multi-domain resilience portfolios group consistently demonstrated the best prosocial and academic outcomes. For both academic outcomes (i.e., applied problems, letter-word identification), the Future-oriented but low in aggression control class and the Multi-domain resilience portfolios class had significantly higher scores compared to the Well-regulated but limited meaning-making and connection class. Results of the regression analyses examining the associations between the poly-strengths index and child outcomes showed that a higher level of poly-strengths was significantly associated with greater prosocial skills but was not significantly associated with academic achievement.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings provide empirical support for resilience models that account for both the configurational and cumulative nature of strengths in youth development following maltreatment. The three distinct strengths portfolios identified in this study suggest that individualized, tailored approaches may be well-suited to address the multifaceted needs of this population. For instance, given the central importance of meaning-making and interpersonal connections for academic success, it seems essential to support youth with maltreatment histories in cultivating a belief in their capabilities, a future-oriented mindset, and positive peer and teacher relationships in this population. Findings related to the poly-strengths index further suggest that social work practice should prioritize strengthening multiple, co-occurring assets and resources to support children’s prosocial development.