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.
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.