The quality of school life of children in residential care: The role of attachment and externalized problems

This research focuses on the Quality of School Life (QOSL) of children living in residential care. Its objective is to determine whether the difficulties these children may encounter in their school life are related to the quality of their attachment representations and to determine to what extent this relationship can be explained by their behavioral problems. The study involved 40 children aged 4 to 10 years old who were placed in residential care. Their QOSL and behavioral problems were assessed by their referring educators using the CBCL (Achenbach 1999) and KINDL-R questionnaires (Ravens-Sieberer & Bullinger 1998), and their attachment representations were explored with the Attachment Story Completion Task (Bretherton, Ridgeway & Cassidy 1990; Miljkovitch & Pierrehumbert 2008). The results highlight the mediating role of externalized problems in the relationship between children’s attachment disorganization and their QOSL. These results provide a better understanding of the QOSL in children placed in residential care and its relationship with attachment and behavior problems. Finally, they make it possible to consider implications for both practice and research.