The role of social buffering on chronic disruptions in quality of care: evidence from caregiver-based interventions in foster children.

There is growing evidence that social support can buffer the physiological stress response, specifically cortisol reactivity. We use a developmental framework to review the importance of social buffering in early childhood, a period of heightened plasticity for programming of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The social environment, in which parents play the largest role in early life, is a critical agent in the developmental trajectory of the HPA axis. A prevailing model of social buffering primarily focuses on the role of social support in the context of acute stressors and cortisol response. This review expands this model to provide evidence of the mechanism of social buffering, or lack thereof, across periods of chronic stress by applying the social buffer model to children involved in the child welfare system. We also highlight current interventions that capitalize on the mechanism of social buffering to modify HPA axis functioning across childhood. Last, we synthesize our findings using the social buffering framework to inform future targeted interventions.