Attachment for foster care and adoption DVD

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 DVD accompanies the handbook and training programme of the same name, and supports each module in the training programme. The programme 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 emphasis throughout 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. The DVD includes sequences of parent-child interaction that help to explain attachment formation, and includes accounts by foster carers and adopters of their experiences of helping children.

This DVD is intended for use with the training programme of the same name. It 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.