We stick together! COVID-19 and psychological adjustment in youth residential care

The COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact also on residential care institutions. These contexts were forced to introduce many adaptations to their regular functioning in order to serve children and families throughout such unpredictable times. According to the literature adolescents in residential care have an increased risk of developing psychological, behavioral and social problems compared with general population rearing with their biological families. Our purpose was to examine the effects of cohesion on adolescents’ psychological adjustment over the COVID pandemic. We tested whether adolescents` perception of cohesion in residential care mitigates the emergency of adolescents` psychological adjustment during the current pandemic situation on previous association. Participants were 243 adolescents 12 to 18 aged, living in 21 different residential care institutions. The results suggested a moderating role of cohesion on the stability of adolescents’ emotional distress across time. Lower levels of cohesion were related with higher emotional distress stability across time. On the contrary, as cohesion increased, the association between adolescents’ emotional distress at T0 and T1 decreased. Results are discussed considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological adjustment of adolescents living in residential care.Communication presented at XVI European Scientific Association on Residential & Family Care for Children and Adolescents Conference (EUSARF). This work was funded by Portuguese National funds FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P (PTDC/PSI-ESP/28653/2017)