Predictors of potential for child abuse and academic performance among foster students in the Okai Koi North metropolis in the Greater Accra region

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore or find out the challenges foster students encounter in a bid to achieve satisfactory basic education.The descriptive cross sectional design was used. The target populationfor the study was 689 foster students and 2,689 non foster students. A sample of 210 respondents was selected from foster and non - foster students using the simple random sampling technique. Questionnaires were used to gather the data on the variables selected for the study: Foster Parental Stress, Child Abuse, Teacher Support, Foster Parent Support, Coping Strategies, Permissive, Authoritarian, Authoritative, and Academic Concept. The reliability of the instruments was all above 0.60. The methodological inquiry was a cross sectional and descriptive design using quantitative research approach. A multivariate hypothetical model and Independent sample t-test, were employed to test hypotheses formulated for the study. Findings indicated that non foster students perform better than the foster students. It was also found that foster parents supportwas the better predictor of students’ academic performance than the teacher support and also foster parental stress was the only variable found which contributed significant incremental variance to foster parental strategies for child abuse.Again, parenting style was found to be an important predictor of foster students’ academic performance. There is therefore the need for parents to exhibit permissive parenting styles to relate positive academic performance. Based on these findings it was recommended that governmental and nongovernmental organizations and counselors should conduct seminars, workshops, that aim at acquainting parents with the different harmful nature of experiencing parental stress and its associated outcomes.