SIRCC

1

• SIRCC
• WHY ATTACHMENT MATTERS
• When Accommodated, away from
• home or away from family
• The Glasgow Marriot Hotel
• Friday 11th September 2009

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Attachment Matters

• TO EVERY HUMAN BEING
• WHEN
• AWAY FROM HOME
• AT HOME
• WITH FAMILY
• OR
• AWAY FROM FAMILY

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Square 1- To Survive/Thrive We Know

• Families need support
• Sometimes children need removed
• Traditionally alternatives were residential,
  fostering, adoption
• Carers need understanding, skills, training and
  SUPPORT
• The 4 Rs are vital

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Looked after children in Scotland

• 13,000 children young looked after
• 1 of children in Scotland
• 55 boys
• 13 residential care settings
• Estimates - between 20 and 50 young homeless
  have been in care
• 75 leave school with no qualifications

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Needs

• Many children and young people who enter care
  will display various behavioural and emotional
  problems as a consequence of previous traumatic
  experiences that may include sexual, physical and
  emotional abuse, neglect and family breakdown
  (Macmillan and Munn 2001)

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ATTACHMENT

• Relationships
• Attunement
• Anxiety-Proximity-Security
• Communication
• Physical availability
• Psychological availability

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Key Concepts-Purchasers and Providers and their
Supports

• Professional Development
• Understanding attachment/trauma issues for
  children and young people
• Understanding the stress/coping strategies of the
  above children
• Understand the stress and coping strategies of
  all carers
• Help children and young people to learn to adapt
  to new situations through stress reduction

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KEY CONCEPTS (continued)

• Provision for the particular care needs of
  children and young people with attachment/trauma
  issues
• Assessment of these care needs
• Planning realistic provision
• Providing appropriate options

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Historically The Residential Setting

• Is a group living experience
• Is complex
• Is socially demanding
• Is stressful
• Is under resourced
• Is not designed to cater for emotional toddlers

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Attachment Informed Provision

• Attachment offers a framework which can help
  young people make sense of their negative
  experiences
• Schofield argues that there is a conceptual
  overlap between resilience and attachment
  theory, thus building for the future (Howe,
  1995Schofield, 2001)

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The Good Bits

• For many young people the care experience has
  helped them to compensate for their early
  experiences
• For them there was a degree of stability and
  security in the care experience
• By chance, some attachment to one or more of
  their carers may have occurred

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Good Bits (continued)

• They were removed from a damaging family
  situation
• They were provided with relationships,
  opportunities, options, education, transitions.
• They were provided with the opportunity to
  accumulate resilience promoting factors( Numan
  and Blackburn, 2002)

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Not so good bits

• However, for too many young people, their
  experience of care, far from helping them
  overcome the damaging emotional legacy of family
  problems, had rendered them unable to form the
  very relationships they needed so much (Stein and
  Carey, 1986 Downes 1992) in Stein, 2005.

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Changing Lives (2006)

• Asked for a positive, research informed approach
• Recognised the need for a therapeutic approach
• Asked for Quality Assessment
• Recognised that everyone is different
• Recognised that most carers do their best but
  need training, supervision, help and support

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BUT

• 
  
  FOR THE CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE WITH ATTACHMENT
  AND/OR TRAUMA ISSUES WE NEED TO DO BETTER
• GIVEN OUR KNOWLEDGE!

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The Care Experience QUESTIONS

• 
  Do the children
  or young people that you look after and have
  attachment issues and experience life in an
  environment that

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The care experience (continued)

• Considers negative behaviour to be the outcome of
  unmet needs
• Considers that the solutions lie in developing
  relationships with significant others
• Helps them in the process of resolving their fear
  of making and breaking contact, loving and being
  loved

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The care experience (continued)

• Has attachment, relationships and resilience at
  its core
• Considers each child to be unique (genetics,
  parenting and early care experience)
• Strives to be an emotionally regulated, stable
  and secure environment
• Has emotionally regulated staff

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Staff Aims

• Constant proximity
• Fully accept child regardless of behaviour
• Understand that challenging behaviour is
  underpinned by distress
• Be available, emotionally, psychologically and
  physically
• Be nurturing and playful

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Staff Aims (continued)

• Be empathetic and curious about a childs
  understanding of their world
• Deal with the present
• Not seek to fix or rescue
• Share joy and pride in childs successes
• Work at a relational depth which can be
  emotionally and physically challenging

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The four step plan - Kate Cairns

• Commitment-level three learning (Gregory
  Bateson 2000)
• Personal support through developing close,
  confiding intimate relationships
• Professional supervision
• Work together on all levels
  (2002)

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THE SCOTTISH SCENE

• Alan Sinclair-The work Foundation
• Harry Burns-Chief Medical Officer
• John Carnochan- Violence Reduction
• Bill Marshall- Offending/Prisons
• SIRCC-Accommodated Young People
• Scottish Attachment in Action

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Working together

• Providers, Purchasers, Carers, Families,
  Managers, Planners
• Social Workers, Teachers, Doctors, Psychiatrists,
  Psychologists, Therapists in all forms
• National Government
• Local Government

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Square 1- ConsiderEffectiveCare
POSITIVE FUTURES

• Understand the link between relationships,
  attachment, trauma and resilience
• Reflect-Rethink-Repair-Reinforce
• The younger the child the better
• SUPPORT carers more effectively
• Behaviour is communication
• Challenging behaviour is stress related
• 4 Rs Remember Relationships Rule