Attachment is at the heart of family life and at the heart of foster care and adoption. Attachment theory and research provide a vital developmental framework for making sense of the behaviour and relationship strengths and difficulties that children bring from their complex backgrounds. It also offers a most valuable resource for understanding the kind of caregiving in foster care and adoptive families that can enable children to feel more trusting, confident, competent and secure.
New resources - choose from the three products listed below.
by Gillian Schofield and Mary Beek
Supported by The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Price: £22.50
BAAF, May 2006
ISBN 978-1-903699-96-6
This comprehensive and authoritative book provides an accessible account of attachment concepts. It traces the pathways of secure and insecure patterns from birth to adulthood, exploring the impact of past experiences of abuse, neglect and separation on children’s behaviour in foster and adoptive families. It then explains, from an attachment perspective, the dimensions of parenting that are associated with helping children to feel more secure and to fulfil their potential in the family, with peers, at school and in the community. Finally, it tackles the key role which “keeping attachment in mind” can play in a range of areas of family placement practice, including contact. Vivid case examples are used to make connections with the reality, both the challenges and the rewards, of daily life in foster and adoptive families.
This book will be an indispensable resource for practitioners, foster carers, adoptive parents and all those seeking to ensure that children in need of family care get the very best experience possible and that foster carers and adoptive parents get the support they need and deserve.
DVD/Video
DVD
Price: £58.75 (incl. VAT)
BAAF, June 2006
Video price: £58.75 (incl. VAT)
This DVD/video accompanies the training programme and handbook of the dame name, and has sections that support each module in the training programme, as well as providing a basis for more detailed discussion and learning. It explains core attachment concepts and looks at different dimensions of parenting and their developmental benefits for children. The emphasis is on the positive impact that foster and adoptive parenting can have on even the most troubled children, and on the moment-by-moment interactions of daily family life as a vehicle through which children can be moved towards security.
It includes sequences of parent-child interaction that help to explain attachment formation and attachment concepts. Throughout there is an expert commentary that helps to make connections between attachment theory and the detail of the daily care of children that can promote security and resilience.
The film can also be used flexibly and independently of the training programme, for example, for preparation groups of prospective adoptive parents and foster carers, to support teaching on child development for qualifying or post-qualifying social workers, or with individual foster carers or adopters as a focus for discussion when supporting placements.
Comprehensive guidelines accompany the DVD/video to help explain the material and the significance of each section.
Training programme
Price: £35.00
BAAF, June 2006
ISBN 978-1-903699-98-0
This training programme accompanies the handbook and DVD/video of the same name. It will provide workers and carers with a framework both for understanding the thinking and behaviour of the children in their care and for helping children to settle and flourish in their family placements.
The manual begins with a module explaining core attachment concepts and then provides five further modules, each focusing on different dimensions of parenting and their developmental benefits for children:
Being available – helping children to trust;
Responding sensitively – helping children to manage feelings and behaviour;
Accepting the child – building self-esteem;
Co-operative caregiving – helping children to feel effective;
Promoting family membership – helping children to belong.
The programme is intended for use with foster carers and adopters, and for professionals working alongside them. It will help caregivers to understand attachment and apply this to understanding children’s behaviours and their own parenting styles, as well as to think about ways of further developing their skills and capacities.
Modules within the training programme can also be used separately and flexibly, for discussion with support groups of adoptive parents and foster carers, or to support teaching on child development for qualifying and post-qualifying social workers.
The accompanying CD-ROM contains handouts and background information that may be presented as a PowerPoint presentation or through overhead projection slides.
