This book offers an analysis and summery of the use and limitations of child attachment theory as the basis for decision-making and planning in contemporary child welfare practice. This book explores controversies related to increasing diagnoses of ‘attachment disorder’ in child welfare assessments and arguments both for and against the use of attachment specific therapies for children in care. The author calls for a new pedagogy of relational child welfare and considers the relevance of attachment theory to transnational and migrant families, refugees fleeing conflict, adoptive and surrogate children in diverse families and the increased number of families that are in poverty after the global financial crisis.

This book offers an analysis and summery of the use and limitations of child attachment theory as the basis for decision-making and planning in contemporary child welfare practice. This book explores controversies related to increasing diagnoses of ‘attachment disorder’ in child welfare assessments and arguments both for and against the use of attachment specific therapies for children in care. The author calls for a new pedagogy of relational child welfare and considers the relevance of attachment theory to transnational and migrant families, refugees fleeing conflict, adoptive and surrogate children in diverse families and the increased number of families that are in poverty after the global financial crisis.

Four scholars of social work at the University of East Anglia summarize the recent developments in understanding children's social development, especially in terms of development attachment theory, and how they can be used by professionals working in child welfare, maltreatment, family support, adoption, and residential and foster care.

There's no hotter area of science, at least as far as the general media and laypeople are concerned, than neuroscience--every day we hear of dramatic, surprising discoveries that seem to have the potential to utterly change our understanding of how the mind works. This book offers the first thorough review of such claims and the new biological science behind them. It examines the actual and potential applications of neuroscience within social policy and the impact of neuroscientific discoveries on long-standing moral debates and professional practices throughout social work, mental health practice, and criminal justice.

Attachment Theory -- Child Welfare.

This clinician-friendly guide presents a model for engaging the most challenging children and families who are served by the child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, and special educations systems. These children are among the most troubled clients that treatment providers will ever encounter. They have been failed by every adult, every treatment modality, and every system of care that they have encountered. Unconditional Care, a breakthrough guide from the founder and clinical director of California's Seneca Center for Children and Families, offers both a theoretical model and practical guidelines for working with this most difficult group of children. The approach weaves together attachment theory and learning theory into a coherent relationship-based intervention strategy built around a no-fail policy: a child can never be discharged from a program for exhibiting the behaviors that resulted in the placement. Professionals working with these families instead focus on re-building relationships that teach children to secure safe and supportive relationships with caregivers using new behaviors and skills to replace the destructive ones that have, until now, organized their worldview. The concept of unconditional care allows, for the first time, a safe space for youth to reconstruct their perceptions of themselves and those who care for them. Rich case examples, quick-reference bullets and boxes, and sample assessment and planning worksheets make this a handy clinical reference and training tool for mental health and child welfare professionals.

Assessing Disorganized Attachment Behaviour in Children lays out an evidence-based model for working with and assessing children with disorganized attachment and their adult carers: families whose extreme, erratic and disturbing behaviour can make them perplexing and frustrating to work with. The model is designed to identify key indicators and explanatory mechanisms of child maltreatment: disorganized attachment in the child, a parent's unresolved loss or trauma, disconnected and extremely insensitive parenting, and low parental mentalisation. The book also outlines ways of assessing children for disorganized attachment and carer capacity, and proposes interventions. Accessible and practical, this book is essential reading for child protection professionals.

This book provides an essential one-stop introduction to the key concepts, issues, policies and practices affecting child welfare, with particular emphasis on the changing nature of the relationship between child welfare and social policy. No other book brings together such a wide selection of material to form an attractive and indispensable teaching and learning resource. Child welfare and social policy provides readers with an historical overview of child welfare in England and Wales; high quality contributions from leading authorities in the field; discursive introductions to each section that set individual chapters in the broader context of childhood studies and case study material to bring discussions to life. Key topics covered include morality and child welfare; relations between law, medicine, social work, social theory and child welfare; children's rights and democratic citizenship and children as raw material for 'social investment'. Child welfare and social policy is invaluable reading for students and academics in social policy, sociology, education and social work. It is also a useful resource for health and social work professionals wishing to follow current debates in theory and practice.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Clinical Psychology Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Attachment theory is among the most popular theories of human socioemotional development, with a global research community and widespread interest from clinicians, child welfare professionals, educationalists and parents. It has been considered "one of the most generative contemporary ideas" about family life in modern society. It is one of the last of the grand theories of human development that still retains an active research tradition. Attachment theory and research speak to fundamental questions about human emotions, relationships and development. They do so in terms that feel experience-near, with a remarkable combination of intuitive ideas and counter-intuitive assessments and conclusions. Over time, attachment theory seems to have become more, rather than less, appealing and popular, in part perhaps due to alignment with current concern with the lifetime implications of early brain development Cornerstones of Attachment Research re-examines the work of key laboratories that have contributed to the study of attachment. In doing so, the book traces the development in a single scientific paradigm through parallel but separate lines of inquiry. Chapters address the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main and Hesse, Sroufe and Egeland, and Shaver and Mikulincer. Cornerstones of Attachment Research utilises attention to these five research groups as a lens on wider themes and challenges faced by attachment research over the decades. The chapters draw on a complete analysis of published scholarly and popular works by each research group, as well as much unpublished material.