Active travel to school public programmes underperform because implementation is viewed as a technical task rather than a social process. This working paper examines the gap using Bogotá’s Ciempiés Caminos Seguros (CCS) as a case study. CCS involves escorted walks of up to 50 students near schools, monitored by two adults. Interviews reveal that monitors' daily practices, such as negotiation, adaptation, resistance, reinterpretation, and accountability, shape programme outcomes. Accountability often occurs outside formal systems, reflecting improvisation and age-based power dynamics in which children’s concerns are less addressed. Monitors do more than accompany; they provide emotional and relational care and assist children’s participation despite household constraints. CCS shifts mobility caregiving from women to the state but relies on informal, emotional labour, creating role tensions for monitors. Key lessons include viewing escorted walks as a mobility-and-care policy, supporting frontline care work, establishing accountability, including children’s voices, and co-producing the programme with monitors to sustain effectiveness.