The impacts of counselling service on children's behavior problems, coping strategies and resilience in residential care home

Abstract

<p><strong>Background</strong><strong>:</strong> Counselling services in local residential care homes, addressing residents’ in-depth emotional issues, are usually in high demand but scarce. To fill the service gap, a project introducing a counsellor post to four local homes was launched in May 2016. This study examined the efficacy of adding a counsellor post for children residents in enhancing children’s wellbeing, and also the coping strategies and resilience of the children during Covid-19 pandemic.</p><p><strong>Research Design</strong><strong>:</strong> A quasi-experimental design, counselling group and control group with repeated measurements was adopted. A total of 484 child residents were recruited from the 4 residential care homes. Children’s behavior problems were rated 6 times by house parents since June 2019 and every 6 months until December 2021. A subsample of 141, 137, and 105 children also completed a self-report questionnaire on coping strategies and resilience in July 2021, November 2021, and February 2022 respectively. Latent growth modelling was used to analyze the growth trajectories in children’s behavior problems across the study period. The effects of the counselling service were examined via regression analysis. Changes in coping strategies and resilience were analyzed via the Time x Counselling group effect using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Result showed that counselling had a direct effect on internalizing behavior problems (<em>p</em> = 0.032), catastrophizing strategy (<em>F</em> = 4.02, <em>p </em>= 0.048) and resilience (<em>F</em> = 4.42, <em>p</em> = 0.14) of the child residents when compared with children in control group. The effects of counselling services on improving internalizing behavior problems were consistent across the children with and without SEN (<em>F</em> = 12.54, <em>p </em>< 0.01), in which the latter reported a greater extent of declines (<em>F</em> = 5.78 – 16.47, <em>p </em>< 0.05).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The findings indicated the urgent need of an effective and long-term counselling service for children living in the residential homes as it helps enhance children’s wellbeing, coping strategies and resilience. A structured and regular counselling service should be provided to all residents by staff who is properly trained and experienced in counselling.</p>