Iran Journal of Nursing

  Background & Aim: Nowadays, one of main and critical subject is preparation of a healthy and fair environment for children who are biggest national sources in every society, because, factors that disturb children living environment can affect children’s health. Some problems such as families’ bad function, abuse, poverty, divorce and parental substance abuse are the reasons usually lead to place children in foster care centers. On the other hand, entry to these foster care centers and living in these centers face children with lot of social and health problems.

  Material & Method: In regard to this issue for assessing social health status of 7-11 years children living in foster care centre in Tehran, we performed a cross sectional study with 105 children (57 boy, 48 girl). In this research, sampling was of census type and information about children social health was obtained through Vienland Adoptive Behavior Scale by guardians who recognized these children and their behavior.

  Result: Results showed that 45.7% of participants in this research were considered as moderate regarding social health, and 19.1% were considered as poor. Chi-square test also showed that between social health and sex (p=0.053) was a statistically significant relationship, but there was no significant relationship between social health and age (p=0.462) and social health with duration of stay in these centers.

  Conclusion: While children in foster care centers are one of the high risk groups in societies related to their social health status, based on findings of current study and results of researches in other countries, full attention should be directed towards social health of children and conducting more studies is recommended to survey factors that affect their social health .