Fostering Well-Being: Designing Technology to Improve the Psychological Well-being of Foster-Involved Youth

Abstract

Over 600,000 youth in the United States experience abuse or neglect each year. Youth who are deemed to be at risk of significant harm in their homes are often removed and placed in a temporary housing situation known as foster care. Despite this system’s goal of supporting youth, research suggests that foster care can negatively impact youths’ ability to heal and develop the skills they need to reach their goals and avoid future traumatic situations. Given that very little has been done to explore how technology might be able to help youth heal and learn coping skills, this project aimed to explore if and how internet-connected technologies (such as smartphones and computers) might be able to support the psychological well-being of youth in and transitioning out of the foster care system. We approached these questions in three phases. In Phase 1, we conducted broad, semi-structured interviews with 16 current and former foster-involved youth to understand their experience and explore if and how technology could promote psychological well-being for foster-involved youth. Through this phase, we learned that young people are especially concerned about the lack of social support youth have in foster care and see opportunities for peer-to-peer technology to fill this need. In Phase 2, we built off these findings by prototyping and testing multiple peer-to-peer support app designs with 24 current and former foster-involved youth. Through this iterative process, we identified that a community-based, reflective check-in system might allow youth to give and receive most types of social support in a safe and comfortable environment. Finally, in Phase 3, we tested this system through a two-week mixed-methods pilot study with 15 current and former foster-involved youth, collecting data to suggest that this type of interface can provide youth with multiple types of social support and thereby improve their psychological well-being.