The study’s methodological approach is as important as its findings. Mpofu and Moyo conducted in-depth interviews with 20 children aged between 10 and 18 years, alongside 10 grandparent caregivers, using a phenomenological design that seeks to understand how people interpret and make meaning of their own everyday experiences. Rather than measuring outcomes through standardized instruments, the researchers asked children to describe their daily lives, their relationships, their worries, and their sources of joy in their own words. The analytical framework was Ecological Systems Theory, the influential model developed by developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, which holds that a child’s development unfolds across nested layers of context, from the immediate microsystem of family and household, through the mesosystem of connections between those settings, to the exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem of institutions, cultural values, and historical change.

What emerged from the interviews is a strikingly paradoxical picture of childhood. On one side of the paradox lies profound emotional security. Children consistently described their relationships with their grandparents as sources of care, warmth, and belonging, describing bonds of attachment and trust that anchored their sense of identity and worth. Grandparents, for their part, spoke of deep commitment to the children in their charge, framing their caregiving as both a moral duty and an expression of love. In a research literature that has often emphasized the burdens carried by elderly caregivers, this finding is a corrective: the grandchild-grandparent relationship, in these households, functions as a genuine emotional resource for both generations, a relational microsystem that buffers children against the losses and disruptions that brought them into their grandparents’ care in the first place.

The other side of the paradox is structural vulnerability, and it is severe. Children reported chronic poverty and food insecurity as defining features of their daily lives, with hunger shaping everything from their concentration at school to their energy for household tasks. Schooling was frequently disrupted, whether through inability to pay fees, the need to work, or the simple exhaustion of children stretched beyond their years. Many described assuming adult responsibilities early, taking on caregiving, agricultural labor, and income-generating work that would ordinarily fall to parents. The study also documents heightened gendered risks, particularly in mining communities, where girls face elevated exposure to exploitation and danger. These are not incidental hardships; the researchers show how they are co-produced by the wider systems surrounding the household, from national economic collapse to local labor markets, exactly as Ecological Systems Theory would predict.

The gendered dimension of vulnerability deserves particular attention. In communities where artisanal and small-scale mining activity draws migrants and money, the study found that children, and especially girls, navigate risks that their grandparents are often too old, too distant, or too constrained to monitor or mitigate. This finding connects the intimate microsystem of the grandparent-headed home directly to the exosystem of economic activity that children do not control but must nevertheless survive. It also illustrates why the researchers argue that resilience and vulnerability are co-constructed across relational, institutional, and structural contexts: the same child can be deeply loved and protected at home while remaining acutely exposed beyond it, and no single level of intervention can address both realities at once.

Yet the story the children and grandparents tell is not one of passive suffering. The study documents a repertoire of resilience strategies operating at multiple ecological levels. Within households, grandparents and children developed livelihood strategies to stretch scarce resources, combining subsistence farming, petty trading, and piecework. Kinship ties beyond the household provided crucial support, with extended family members stepping in with food, school fees, or labor when the core household could not cope. At the community level, neighbors and local institutions offered forms of mutual aid, while non-governmental organizations supplied material assistance and programs that reached skipped-generation families directly. These findings map neatly onto the mesosystem and exosystem layers of Bronfenbrenner’s model, demonstrating empirically how support flows, or fails to flow, across the boundaries between family, community, and institution.

The theoretical contribution of the study lies in this multi-level demonstration. Much of the existing scholarship on grandparent caregiving in sub-Saharan Africa, the authors note, has centered on the burdens faced by elderly caregivers: their health problems, their poverty, their grief. By foregrounding children’s voices, Mpofu and Moyo shift the analytical lens and reveal that children are not merely recipients of care or victims of circumstance but active interpreters and navigators of their worlds. Children in the study described how they made sense of their parents’ absence, how they weighed pride in their grandparents against embarrassment about their poverty, and how they strategized to keep themselves in school. This agency-centered perspective aligns with contemporary developmental science, which increasingly treats children as competent social actors whose subjective experience is essential data rather than background noise.

The policy implications are concrete. The authors argue for child-centred social protection that goes beyond generic household transfers to address the specific needs of skipped-generation families: support that recognizes that caregivers are elderly and often infirm, that children shoulder adult burdens, and that educational costs are the mechanism through which poverty most directly converts into lifelong disadvantage. They call for interventions that strengthen both material support and psychosocial well-being, pairing school-fee assistance and food security programs with counseling and mentorship that address the emotional complexities of parental absence. The gendered risks identified in mining communities suggest the need for targeted protective measures rather than one-size-fits-all programming. Because the study is grounded in Ecological Systems Theory, its recommendations are deliberately multi-level, targeting the relational, institutional, and structural contexts simultaneously rather than expecting grandparents alone to solve problems that originate far beyond the household.

For a global audience, the Nkayi findings resonate far beyond Zimbabwe. Grandparent-headed households are rising across much of sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and continuing labor migration, and similar skipped-generation arrangements are increasingly common in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and among migrant communities in high-income countries, where parents leave children with grandparents while seeking work abroad. The Zimbabwean study offers a template for how to study these families: listen to the children, situate the household within its nested contexts, and resist the temptation to reduce complex lives to either tragedy or triumph. The paradox the researchers document, of emotional richness coexisting with material deprivation, is likely the defining feature of skipped-generation childhood wherever it occurs, and policies that address only one side of that paradox will fail the children they are meant to serve.

The study, which received ethical approval from the Zimbabwe Open University Research Ethics Committee and obtained informed consent from guardians and assent from all child participants, was published open access, making the full account of these children’s experiences freely available to researchers, policymakers, and communities. Its publication comes at a moment when social protection systems across the region are being rethought in the wake of successive economic shocks. If the voices of Nkayi’s children are heeded, the lesson is clear: grandparental love is a powerful foundation for a child’s development, but love alone cannot pay school fees, fill an empty plate, or make a mining town safe for a twelve-year-old girl. Building childhoods that are both emotionally secure and materially protected requires strengthening every ring of the ecological system that surrounds them.

Subject of Research: The lived experiences of children raised in grandparent-headed households in rural Zimbabwe

Article Title: Exploring the lived experiences of children raised by grandparents in Nkayi District, Zimbabwe

Article References: Mpofu, P., & Moyo, M. (2026). Exploring the lived experiences of children raised by grandparents in Nkayi District, Zimbabwe. Discover Social Science and Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-026-00446-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44155-026-00446-y

Keywords: grandparent-headed households, child welfare, kinship caregiving, Ecological Systems Theory, rural Zimbabwe, orphaned and vulnerable children, intergenerational support, food insecurity, qualitative phenomenology, socio-emotional development, social protection, Nkayi District

The researchers set out to answer a deceptively simple question: which leadership components act as barriers or facilitators when evidence-based interventions are rolled out in services for children and adolescents? The distinction between efficacy and effectiveness sits at the heart of this question. An intervention may be efficacious, meaning it produces the intended outcomes under controlled research conditions, yet fail to be effective, meaning those outcomes are not achieved when frontline staff deliver it in routine services with real-world resource constraints and competing demands. Implementation science exists precisely to close that gap, and more than 60 frameworks have been developed to guide the process. Most converge on a small set of recurring domains, including intervention characteristics, the outer system context, the inner organisational context, individual provider characteristics, and the implementation process itself. Where frameworks diverge is in how they treat leadership: some position it as one factor among many within the organisational context, while others treat it as a cross-cutting mechanism that shapes multiple domains simultaneously.

Implementation leadership theory proposes that first-level leaders, the supervisors and managers with direct day-to-day oversight of frontline staff, shape what researchers call the implementation climate: the shared staff perceptions of what is expected, supported, and rewarded in relation to evidence-based practice. That climate, in turn, drives clinicians’ actual use of the intervention. Because first-level leaders sit closest to service delivery, they have been identified as key levers for improving the adoption, utilisation, and sustainment of evidence-based practice. Yet previous systematic reviews had concentrated almost exclusively on social care settings, leaving open whether the same leadership processes operate across the full range of contexts in which children receive interventions, from schools and community mental health clinics to residential units and child welfare agencies.

Child and adolescent services are structurally more complex than many adult-facing services in ways that plausibly change what leadership must do. Delivery typically involves multiple family members alongside the young person, meaning leaders must sustain buy-in across a wider and less stable set of stakeholders. Young people are frequently supported across several services simultaneously, including health, education, social care, and the justice system, requiring leaders to coordinate communication across organisational boundaries with different priorities, funding structures, and accountabilities. These services also often operate under statutory time limits, safeguarding obligations, and policy scrutiny that constrain the pace and manner in which change can be introduced.

To capture this complexity, Rose and Harvey conducted a systematic review in accordance with Cochrane guidelines and the PRISMA reporting standards, with the protocol registered on PROSPERO. They searched Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science, complemented by hand-searching reference lists and grey literature, with no restrictions on publication date or geographic origin. Eligible studies had to be empirical, peer-reviewed, qualitative in design, and had to explicitly name the implemented intervention, which had to focus on mental health. Studies also had to investigate leadership directly or identify it as a major or subtheme. From 4,098 initial citations, 24 studies met the full criteria, published between 2014 and 2023 and encompassing 575 participants ranging from frontline practitioners and supervisors to organisational leaders and stakeholders. Seventeen studies were conducted in the United States, with the remainder from the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Australia, and Belgium, and settings spanned social care, education, community mental health, and inpatient and residential care.

The interventions under study were diverse, including SafeCare, the Strengthening Families Program, Parent Management Training Oregon Model, The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Programme, Multisystemic Therapy, Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, the Positive Parenting Program, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, and mindfulness-based approaches, among others. Methodological quality was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist, with all but one study rated as high or moderate quality, and interrater reliability reaching almost perfect agreement during screening. The synthesis itself followed Thomas and Harden’s three-step thematic synthesis: line-by-line coding, developing descriptive themes, and developing analytic themes.

The analysis produced one overarching theme, two themes, and six subthemes. The overarching theme, power imbalances, cut across everything else. A top-down approach, characterised by decisions made without consulting frontline staff, led to relationship breakdowns, inadequate implementation preparation, reduced engagement, and an absence of collaboration. The dynamic was compounded where oversight mechanisms intended to support fidelity instead reinforced a sense of surveillance and diminished autonomy. One caseworker described feeling unable to raise concerns about an intervention because doing so would be reported to senior leadership, admitting that ultimately, in their words, you do not want that because you want to keep your job. Power imbalances were thus sustained not only through exclusion from decision-making but through frontline staff’s fear of consequences for voicing disagreement. Conversely, involving individuals at all implementation levels fostered a sense of ownership and demonstrated the value of their contributions.

The first of the two main themes, developing a core purpose, captured the leadership tasks salient during the early adoption phase. It comprised creating a shared vision, obtaining staff buy-in, and demonstrating commitment to the intervention. Leaders who brought together staff from multiple levels and agencies, aligning the intervention’s vision with staff values and motivations, promoted engagement and commitment to change. Buy-in proved to be a recurring rather than one-off task: staff turnover meant leaders had to continuously re-engage successive cohorts, which in turn necessitated strategic recruitment practices such as screening for implementation willingness. Leaders who genuinely believed in an intervention’s effectiveness and appropriateness were more inclined to allocate resources and address staff needs, while disinterest and ambivalence at the top hindered support. Notably, in twelve studies, leaders’ physical presence, attending meetings, sending reminders, observing staff, and participating in training, reinforced commitment and priority, with staff describing leaders who were not just sitting in their offices but experiencing the work first-hand.

The second theme, maintaining implementation, reflected leadership tasks sustained throughout delivery and comprised effective communication, a collaborative approach, and holistic support. Clear communication structures prevented challenges from escalating, while their absence left staff feeling out of the loop and contributed to relationship breakdowns. Employing multiple communication methods, enabling staff to ask questions, sharing successes and concerns, and recognising staff efforts all enhanced engagement. Collaboration within leadership teams and with external agencies provided resources, knowledge, and expertise, and supported implementation even amid high staff turnover, with one participant noting that the show did not stop because one person did not show up. Yet collaboration was also described as complex, complicated by differing values and objectives between private and public services. Holistic support encompassed both instrumental support, such as supervision, training, and manageable workloads, and emotional support, including empathy and responsiveness to feedback, which together fostered motivation and reduced conflict.

The authors situate these findings within transformational leadership theory, mapping the identified components onto its classic dimensions: idealised influence through leaders’ commitment to the intervention, inspirational motivation through creating a shared vision, intellectual stimulation through vision-building, and individualised consideration through holistic support and communication. They also introduce resilience as an interpretive lens, suggesting that evidence-informed frameworks such as the Organizational Resiliency Model, developed in physical health and child protection contexts, could be applied in educational and mental health settings. The review is not without limitations: all included studies originated from high-income countries, restricting generalisability, and the breadth of sectors covered means setting-specific leadership components may have been obscured. The authors also note a striking absence of research on the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of leadership, particularly how interpersonal dynamics within collaboration shape implementation. Their conclusion is a call to action: organisations should not expect leadership skills to develop naturally but must actively upskill leaders through implementation models, ongoing training, and policy adjustments, because when leadership works, the ultimate beneficiaries are children, adolescents, and their families.

Subject of Research: The role of leadership in implementing evidence-based interventions in child and adolescent services

Article Title: Leadership in the Implementation of Evidence-Based Interventions in Child and Adolescent Services: A Systematic Review

Article References: Rose, C., & Harvey, J. (2026). Leadership in the Implementation of Evidence-Based Interventions in Child and Adolescent Services: A Systematic Review. Journal of Child and Family Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-026-03378-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10826-026-03378-y

Keywords: leadership, implementation science, evidence-based interventions, child and adolescent mental health, systematic review, power imbalances, transformational leadership, staff buy-in, organisational climate, collaboration, qualitative synthesis, child welfare

The scale of the underlying problem is striking. Roughly one in ten young people in the United States experiences homelessness in any given year, and a 2018 national survey found that 44 percent of young women aged 18 to 25 experiencing homelessness were pregnant or parenting at least one child, suggesting that around 1.1 million American children had a parent in this age group who was homeless within the previous year. Prior research has documented elevated rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and substance misuse among young adults experiencing homelessness, and among homeless young mothers in particular. In one study of 222 homeless young women aged 16 to 19, nearly half of the mothers with custody met diagnostic criteria for depression, PTSD, or alcohol use disorder. These vulnerabilities matter not only for parents; untreated maternal mental illness is associated with increased risks of developmental delays, aggression, anxiety, and depression in children, partly because depression can foster harsher parenting styles, especially in mothers with personal histories of maltreatment.

Against this backdrop, the new study asked how young parents themselves understand the relationship between their mental health and their parenting, and what it is actually like to be separated from a child while homeless. Participants were recruited from an urban homeless shelter serving young families in the Southern United States, with additional referrals from an existing cohort enrolled in a nurse-led HIV prevention trial. Eligibility required that participants be between 18 and 26, have experienced homelessness or unstable housing, have at least one child, and speak English. Interviews, lasting roughly 45 minutes to an hour, were conducted by a PhD-level investigator with nursing experience in a private room at the shelter or by phone. All nineteen completers were mothers, with a mean age of 22; fourteen identified as African American, three as Hispanic, one as White, and one as mixed race. Sixty-three percent reported at least one mental health diagnosis, including anxiety, major depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, schizophrenia, and oppositional defiant disorder, and 89 percent spontaneously described mental health struggles during their interviews. Seven participants, 37 percent, described postpartum depression.

The thematic analysis surfaced three interconnected themes on parenting and mental health. The first, parenting under the weight of mental health struggles, captured how mothers saw their emotional lives and their caregiving as deeply intertwined. One participant described being perpetually triggered by small things, her patience eroded by accumulated trauma, while another explained that her children could sense her distress, adopting her gloom like a contagion. Several mothers admitted that when overwhelmed, they directed their frustration at their children. Yet the mothers uniformly rejected the idea that mental illness made them incompetent parents. One woman with major depression and anxiety insisted it had never hindered her ability to care for her children, and others expressed pride in their mothering, with one declaring herself, in her children’s eyes, probably the world’s best mom. Maternal identity emerged as a powerful organizing force: several participants credited their children with motivating them to stop using substances, seek housing, and pursue employment, and one said the only reason she was still alive was her son.

The second theme, desire for healing amid barriers to mental health support, revealed a painful paradox. Mothers wanted to heal so they could be better parents, but they feared that confronting past trauma would destabilize them emotionally and leave them unable to function for their children. Without reliable childcare or social support, the prospect of doing therapeutic work felt inaccessible. Many coped through compartmentalization and emotional detachment, strategies they recognized as unhealthy but saw as the only viable option. Trust posed another barrier: of all the participants, only two described finding a therapist with whom they felt comfortable speaking openly, with one dismissing a provider as merely getting paid to care. Most strikingly, two participants described time in jail as a rare opportunity for self-reflection, because incarceration removed childcare duties and provided the time and space to begin processing childhood wounds. Fear of child protective services compounded everything; one mother avoided telling her doctor about postpartum depression because she believed disclosure could cost her the baby.

The third theme, survival priorities overshadow mental health needs, echoed the logic of Maslow’s hierarchy. When asked about their goals, mothers spoke of jobs, housing, transportation, and money for diapers and food, not therapy. Securing stable housing was repeatedly identified as the greatest source of stress and, once achieved, the foundation for everything else. Mothers separated from their children likewise saw material stability, not emotional wellness, as the key to reunification. The lack of affordable childcare emerged as a structural barrier that undermined employment, education, and mental health simultaneously, with single mothers describing the exhaustion of never having anyone to watch the child for even an hour. The authors note that service systems often reinforce this hierarchy by requiring education and employment participation before addressing mental health, leaving little room for the therapeutic work parents say they would pursue if given time, space, and support.

On the question of separation itself, 63 percent of participants had experienced past or current separation from at least one child, for periods ranging from two weeks to six years. The researchers distinguished voluntary separations, in which mothers left children with trusted relatives to escape homelessness, domestic violence, or unsafe environments, from involuntary separations triggered by child protective services involvement following abuse or neglect concerns, parental drug use, incarceration, or psychiatric hospitalization. Voluntary separations, though agonizing, preserved a sense of agency; mothers could frame them as temporary sacrifices made for the child’s benefit and could imagine reunification once their lives stabilized. Involuntary removals, by contrast, were described as traumatic betrayals. One mother who voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric facility during severe postpartum depression recalled child protective services taking her daughter forcefully, saying she had asked for help and been betrayed. Rather than embracing mandated services as opportunities for growth, mothers separated by the system reported simply going through the motions, completing anger management, parenting classes, and counseling without genuine engagement.

Impressions of child protective services were overwhelmingly negative. Mothers described the agency as cold, manipulative, judgmental, and traumatizing, with one participant who had grown up in foster care asserting that the system does more mental damage than anything and that she went in a normal kid and came out traumatized. Crucially, the mandatory therapy tied to reunification was distrusted precisely because it was connected to the institution judging them; mothers feared that honest disclosure of their struggles would be used against them to justify keeping their children. The mental health consequences of separation, regardless of circumstances, were severe: worsening depression, insomnia, grief over missed milestones and lost daily moments, fears of losing their maternal identity, and, for several, suicidal ideation in the immediate aftermath. One mother described seeing her nursery full of belongings with no baby in it and spiraling toward thoughts of ending her life. Others grieved hearing their children call other caregivers mama or watching their authority erode with each temporary visit.

The authors argue that these findings point toward concrete reforms. Establishing a genuine therapeutic alliance between child welfare systems and parents, involving mothers in shaping their own reunification plans, decoupling mental health treatment from custody decisions, and reimagining caseworkers as facilitators of voluntary placements could transform an antagonistic dynamic into a partnership oriented toward family preservation. Because mothers consistently prioritized basic needs, the researchers recommend providing stable housing first, then integrating mental health services into housing and childcare programs, deliberately separated from child protective services. Expanding trusted childcare, respite care, and mentorship networks may buffer the stress of parenting while homeless and reduce the likelihood of separation in the first place. The study has limitations, including its single geographic site, English-only sample, and the absence of fathers and LGBTQ+ parents, but its central message is clear: when young mothers are given stability, support, and the freedom to heal without fear of losing their children, family preservation becomes not just a policy aspiration but a lived possibility.

Subject of Research: Parent-child separation experiences and mental health needs among young adult parents experiencing homelessness

Article Title: The Lived Experiences of Parent-Child Separation and Mental Health Needs Among Young Adults Experiencing Homelessness

Article References: Bergh, R., Narendorf, S. C., Rozmus, C., & Maria, D. S. (2026). The Lived Experiences of Parent-Child Separation and Mental Health Needs Among Young Adults Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Child and Family Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-026-03374-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10826-026-03374-2

Keywords: youth homelessness, parenting, mental health, parent-child separation, child protective services, qualitative research, young mothers, maternal depression, family preservation, social support, child welfare, housing stability

The scale of the population involved is striking. In 2024 alone, nearly three million children in the United States were the subject of a CPS investigation, which can be triggered by suspicions of abuse, neglect, parental substance abuse, or domestic violence. Cumulatively, the researchers note, more than one third of American children will have some contact with CPS before their eighteenth birthday. For Black children, that figure rises above half. Despite these numbers, Ansari observed that the absenteeism literature has almost entirely overlooked this group, a gap he described as surprising given how extensively school absence has been studied in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To close that gap, the team drew on the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal project that has followed 3,334 adolescents across twenty large American cities from birth through age fifteen. The researchers compared families’ reports of school attendance for adolescents who had experienced CPS contact by age fifteen against those who had not, and they paired these attendance records with students’ own reports of how connected they felt to their schools. This dual focus mattered because school connectedness, the sense of being safe, valued, and relationally embedded in a school community, has emerged in prior work as one of the few malleable levers schools can pull to combat absence.

The findings were unambiguous. Students with CPS contact were more likely to be absent from school than their classmates, whether those absences were excused or unexcused, indicating that the disparity is not simply a matter of families failing to prioritize attendance. The differences extended beyond raw absence counts. These students were fourteen percentage points more likely to have teachers reach out to their families about attendance problems, a signal that educators perceive and flag the issue even when its structural roots lie outside the classroom. They also reported feeling measurably less connected to their schools than their peers, a psychological distance that the authors argue both reflects and reinforces the attendance gap.

Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing at least ten percent of instructional time, has long been a concern in American education. In the 2018-19 academic year, fifteen percent of K-12 students were chronically absent. The pandemic then drove national rates to twenty-eight percent in 2021-22, and although they have since declined, they still stood at twenty-four percent in 2024. Against that backdrop, identifying subgroups of students at especially elevated risk has become a central task for researchers and district leaders alike, and the new study suggests that CPS-involved youth belong near the top of that list.

Ansari is careful to frame CPS contact itself as a source of adversity rather than a neutral administrative event. An investigation, even one that does not confirm maltreatment, places a family under heightened surveillance and can strain the very routines, including regular school attendance, that support a child’s development. He describes two common parental responses to that surveillance. Some families disengage, pulling further away from institutions and keeping children home more often to avoid scrutiny. Others react by becoming more diligent, ensuring their children attend school every day. The net effect across the population, however, is a clear elevation in absence risk for CPS-involved youth.

The study also probes whether school connectedness can narrow the attendance gap, and the answer is nuanced. Greater connectedness did explain part of the difference in absences between students with and without CPS contact, confirming that relational factors matter. Yet on its own, school connectedness did not effectively close the gap, because the benefits of feeling connected accrue broadly rather than disproportionately. Interventions that build connectedness, such as fostering positive teacher-student relationships, cultivating inclusive school climates, and expanding access to extracurricular activities, help all children roughly equally. That is valuable, Ansari argues, but it means connectedness programs cannot be expected to single-handedly compensate for the adversity CPS-involved children carry with them through the school door.

Instead, he positions school connectedness as one piece of a larger toolkit that must also address the material conditions shaping attendance. Housing and income instability, food insecurity, and mental and physical health disparities all weigh heavily on the families in the study’s sample. Ansari points to concrete examples: families cutting meals so that children arrive at school hungry and disengaged, or students without bus service who must walk routes their parents consider unsafe because of traffic or crime. These barriers, he notes, are largely driven by poverty, and no school-based relational intervention can fully counteract them. For children dealing with potential abuse or neglect at home, school can serve as a resource and a getaway, a pathway toward higher education and greater opportunity, but it cannot, in his words, counteract all the historical and ongoing forces operating at the same time.

The practical implications cut in two directions. For schools, the message is that attendance strategies should not treat CPS-involved students as simply unmotivated or their families as indifferent, since the absences often track adversity and surveillance dynamics beyond the school’s control. For child welfare systems, the findings suggest that educational continuity deserves explicit attention during and after investigations, given how consequential regular attendance is for grades, test scores, future educational plans, career opportunities, and economic mobility. Ansari also emphasizes the social-relational dimension of schooling, arguing that relationships among students, teachers, and peers are essential to any strategy for tackling absenteeism, and that educators should keep this in mind as they design engagement efforts. The study was co-authored by Kierra M.P. Sattler of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and together the authors call for attendance research and policy to finally account for the millions of children whose lives intersect with the child welfare system.

Subject of Research: The relationship between child protective services contact and school absenteeism and school connectedness among United States adolescents.

Article Title: Kids involved with child protective services miss much more school than their peers

Article References: Kids involved with child protective services miss much more school than their peers. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: child protective services, chronic absenteeism, school connectedness, child welfare, educational inequality, school attendance, adolescent development, child maltreatment, poverty and education, student engagement, Ohio State University, Children and Youth Services Review