Mending Broken Bridges: How College Students with Foster Care Backgrounds Transition to a Campus Support Program: The Role of Attachment Styles

Background: College students with experience in foster care (SEFC) are substantially less likely to graduate than their peers (Okpych et al., 2023). One promising intervention are campus support programs (CSPs) designed specifically for SEFC, which exist at hundreds of colleges in the U.S. (Fostering Academic Achievement Nationwide, 2025). While these programs offer an array of financial, advisory, and relational support that could promote persistence, a fundamental challenge involves getting students involved and invested. SEFC with severe trauma backgrounds sometimes display avoidant attachment (AA) styles in young adulthood, making them heavily self-reliant, emotionally guarded, and reluctant to engage with CSP staff and programming (Okpych & Courtney, 2021). This study aimed to understand how SEFC with different levels of AA experience transition to college, engage with CSP programming, and form relationships with CSP staff and peers.

Methods: The sample for this study included first-year SEFC enrolled in a CSP at a midwestern university. SEFC first completed the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (Brennan et al., 1998), one of the most widely used self-report measures to assess adult attachment styles (Ravitz et al., 2010). We purposively sampled 12 SEFC based on their level of AA: four low, four medium, and four high. In-person interviews were conducted in early 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and asked participants about their transition to college, transition to the CSP, and relationships they formed with CSP staff, peers, and other students. Interviews were transcribed and coded, and thematic analysis was used to identify main themes.

Results: Thematic analyses of the 12 interviews reveal several themes. Theme 1 is that although SEFC all were familiar with the concept of “resiliency,” the higher the assessed level of AA, the less specific and more hesitant they were in offering specific details about what it means to be resilient. Theme 2 found that SEFC who were low in AA were able to share examples of role models for resilience in their lives and shared specific ideas about how to be resilient adults. Theme 3 specified that SEFC with low AA reported greater satisfaction at their university and greater satisfaction in their relationships with peers, especially their assigned campus support coach. The final theme pertained to SEFC who were high in attachment avoidance. Theme 4 found that SEFC with higher levels of AA conveyed a need for extreme self-reliance and a reluctance to trust or accept help from others.

Conclusions and Implications: The results suggest that SEFC’s attachment style played an organizing role in how they experience the transition to college the way they seek out and respond to campus support services. When possible, it is recommended that students be assessed for a dominant attachment style. The results could be integrated into teaching students to develop skills to strengthen relational intelligence and form secure relational attachments in their lives. It is also recommended that evidence-based strategies be used to address trauma underlying attachment avoidance, increase engagement, and model secure attachment within student support services offered to SEFC.