Mental Health Interventions for Children in Care
Who Benefits from Mental Health Interventions, and Who’s Left Behind?
Care-experienced children are those who have spent time living away from their birth parents in one of several care settings:
Foster care: Living with state-approved caregivers, often known as foster parents.
Kinship care: Being cared for full-time by relatives or close family friends.
Residential care: Living in group homes or institutional settings, cared for by paid staff.
As a group, care-experienced children face significantly higher risks of poor mental health and wellbeing, including a greater risk of suicide. Within this group, outcomes can vary. Some research suggests that children placed in residential care or those experiencing frequent placement disruptions may be at particularly high risk. In contrast, children in kinship care, who remain with familiar adults, may experience relatively better mental health outcomes.
A new research study published in the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal set out to find out whether current mental health and wellbeing interventions are truly benefiting all children and young people in care, or whether some groups are being left behind.
Specifically, the researchers wanted to know: are certain children, based on their care history or personal background, more likely to benefit from these interventions? And could well-intentioned programs be unintentionally widening gaps in outcomes?
The CHIMES project looked at interventions targeting wellbeing, mental health, and suicide risk in care-experienced children. The researchers focused on whether outcomes differed based on factors like a child’s history of trauma, number of placements, ethnicity, or existing mental health problems.
What They Found
Overall, researchers didn’t find clear evidence of widespread inequities, but they did notice patterns, some of which were concerning:
Interventions sometimes worked better for young people who were arguably less in need: those with fewer experiences of maltreatment, more stable placements, and fewer caregiver transitions.