Stability and Change in Adolescents' Sense of Agency: Contributions of Sex, Multiple Risk, Pandemic Stress, and Attachment to Parents.

Although literature states that individual, relational, and contextual factors contribute to adolescents' sense of agency, more research is needed to clarify and understand how adolescents develop this belief over time. The current study examined the stability/change trajectories of the sense of agency during adolescence, specifically across high school, analyzing whether attachment to parents over time, adolescents' sex, cumulative risk in baseline, and pandemic-related stress explained these trajectories. The sample included 467 Portuguese adolescents (40.7% were males; Mage = 15.58 years, SD = 0.80), evaluated three times across 18 months. This work yielded three significant findings. First, adolescents' sense of agency significantly increased over time, with significant between-subject variance at the initial levels but not at the growth rate. Second, attachment to parents consistently links to adolescents' sense of agency across time, despite the differential contributions from attachment to mothers and fathers. Third, boys reported greater growth in the sense of agency than girls. Adolescents' cumulative risk at T1 predicted lower initial levels of sense of agency, whereas higher pandemic-related stress predicted less growth of the sense of agency. These findings emphasize the contributions of individual and family characteristics and the role of the broader social context in shaping the development of adolescents' sense of agency. The findings underline the need to consider further the differential influences of adolescents' relationships with mothers and fathers to understand changes in adolescents' sense of agency.

Adolescents' attachment, quality of relationships with residential caregivers, and emotion regulation.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents in residential care are more likely to report insecure and especially disorganized attachments, which lead to difficulties in emotion regulation and compromise the quality of their interpersonal relationships. In residential care, it is expected that sensitive and responsive caregivers are able to help adolescents regulate their feelings of distress, enabling them to experience a sense of emotional security. The present study sought to analyze the effects of the quality of attachment on emotion regulation and to test the moderating effect of quality of relationship (from adolescents' and caregivers' perspectives) on this association. METHODS: The sample involved 306 adolescents, 12-18 years of age, living in residential care and 70 caregivers. RESULTS: The findings underscored the importance of the quality of the relationship with residential caregivers on adolescents' emotion regulation competencies over time. The results also showed that the quality of relationship (emotional closeness) as perceived by the caregivers moderated the association between adolescents' attachment avoidance levels and their emotion regulation strategies. CONCLUSIONS: The results are discussed according to attachment theory, and underscore the role the relationship with caregivers plays in the affective reorganization of adolescents living in residential care.

From Chaos to Normalization and Deconfinement: What did the Pandemic Unveil in Youth Residential Care.

The conditions imposed by the Covid-19 outbreaks forced residential care (RC) facilities to experience new challenges and to adopt new practices. The aim of the current study is to analyze how RC facilities have experienced and managed confinement during the 1st wave of the pandemic. A thematic analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals responsible for managing crisis in RC facilities. The main implications of the confinement measures on RC dynamics and relations were organized in three major themes: Chaos, novelty and organization; reinventing normalization and deconfinement. The pandemic exposes the structural weaknesses of RC, namely mobility of human resources, scarcity of supportive networks, and fragilities in providing comprehensive and integrative care. These factors need to be considered when addressing risk/vulnerability and discussing best practices and policies on child/youth welfare domain. Future studies should explore representations of important key actors as youth, families and other professionals from youth care.