Foster Care and Attachment

What is attachment?

When we speak about attachment in children, it refers to the bond between someone who needs care and their caregiver. If a child or young person is distressed or in danger, they will look to that attachment figure for help and comfort. 

In babies, attachment bonds are formed with the caregiver, no matter how good, bad, or indifferent they are at meeting the needs of the infant. How a child experiences relationships and forms bonds in these early stages of life plays an important role in the child’s development and affects their ability to manage stress and emotions. 

Whilst attachment forms easily in babies and young children, the prescribed role of child and caregiver does not always mean that an attachment bond will form. Just because someone needs care, they may not always form an attachment with the person who provides it. 

Why is it important for foster care? 

Childcare professionals can study how a child ‘attaches’ to their parents or carers as a way of gaining a deeper understanding of how this process is affected by their early experiences. This is especially important for children who have experienced trauma or neglect in their early years. As many children who enter the care system have experienced some form of negative life experiences varying from abuse to abandonment, attachment theory is extremely useful in gaining insight on how a child’s past experiences have affected their development. 

Our approach

Family Fostering Partners is an independent fostering agency with a strong focus on attachment. We believe that positive, meaningful, and nurturing relationships are crucial for improving the health and wellbeing of the looked after children in our care. 

Carers have the amazing opportunity to provide a child with a secure environment and a safe grounding for them to begin to come to terms with and accept their trauma. Therapeutic care that focuses on attachment relationships can repair some of the harm caused to a child during their early stages of development, and set them up for a happier and healthier future. A sensitive and responsive approach like this is the type of therapeutic care that all of our professionals at Family Fostering Partners aim to provide.

Training for foster parents 

Our core goal is to help foster families build strong, safe, and stable relationships with their foster children to ensure that foster care is successful for everyone involved and delivers positive outcomes. To achieve this, our training ethos is devoted to attachment and the principles of therapeutic care.

All carers will undertake an extensive training programme, supported by our team of professional link workers and child care specialists. Training is provided to all and will cover important topics such as attachment and managing behaviour, relationships, safeguarding, development, health, and humanities. 

All training is delivered locally in the areas where our foster carers live and we do our best to accommodate and support everyone by running our courses only in the school term, and from 10am to 2pm. There are also catch up sessions available for those who have missed a specific course, as well as supplementary E-Learning programmes for those who wish to continue to add to their knowledge. 

Join the family 

Foster care is a fantastic career choice for those who want to make a huge difference in their local community. If you’re thinking about fostering, please get in touch. You can contact us by calling 03300 948816 or filling out our contact form.