Research on the Heterogeneity of Social Services for the Mental Health of Left-behind Children and Migrant Children

With the acceleration of China􀆳s social development and urbanization process, population mobility has become frequent, giving rise to the groups of left-behind children and migrant children.Their mental health faces numerous challenges and has attracted widespread social attention.This study, spanning from 2005 to 2024, retrieved relevant literature from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)and Web of Science databases using specific keywords, and conducted research using CiteSpace bibliometric analysis and the literature review method.In terms of social service models, migrant children have models such as educational support, community services, psychological counseling, and family tutoring.Left-behind children have models including community space creation, after-school services, the surrogate parent system, social donations and care activities, and professional social work services.In terms of influencing factors, migrant children need to integrate into the city.The service providers are diverse, but the resources are affected by mobility, and the services emphasize interaction.Left-behind children are eager for emotional support.The service providers are mainly teachers and volunteers, with scarce resources and traditional service methods.In terms of effectiveness, migrant children have shown improvements in psychology, behavior, family relationships, and social interactions.Left-behind children also have positive changes but are limited by the continuity and depth of services.The study found that there are many problems in the current services for these two types of children.For example, the distribution of resources is extremely uneven, with large gaps in service resources between cities and rural areas and among different regions.The coordination mechanism is imperfect.The main bodies such as the government, schools, and social organizations lack effective communication and cooperation, resulting in service duplication or gaps and reducing efficiency and effectiveness.In the future, service practices should be optimized.For migrant children, the inflow and outflow areas should cooperate in depth to establish an information sharing platform.For left-behind children, more resources should be invested in rural areas to build professional facilities and use technology to build a parent-child interaction platform.Through these measures, the existing problems can be solved, the overall level of mental health social services for these two types of children can be improved, their mental health rights and interests can be effectively protected, and their all-round growth and social integration can be facilitated