| Summary: | The family is a core social institution that performs a number of critical functions, the most enduring and important of which is the responsibility for socializing children. The role of the family, parenting behaviours, and parent-child relations continue to be a focal point for explaining a number of cognitive and behavioural outcomes in children and youth. More recently, the relationship between growing up in out-of-home care, health and well-being, and substance use has been garnering increasing attention. The key purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the existing body of literature by examining the impact of a number of focal and control variables on substance use and mental health among youth in out-of-home care. Although prior research has identified these variables as important factors contributing to substance use and poor mental health among this sample of youth, no study has investigated the direct and indirect effects of each factor, while controlling for the other effects. The current dissertation, divided into three research papers, uses a sample of 1419 youths aged 16-17 from the 2016 Ontario Looking After Children (OnLAC) project data to investigate the risk and predictive factors of substance use and mental health among a sample of youth preparing to emancipate from care. The policy implications associated with these findings, include the strengthening of initial placement decisions, stronger emphasis on the development of strong bonds, reducing the amount of unsupervised living placements, and allocating funding to interventions that target specific problematic behavioural characteristics before these youth reach adolescence. These implications are relevant to service providers and child welfare professionals as programs aimed towards youth successfully transitioning out of care remains a priority. 2022-04-01
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