Team Parenting – A partnership approach to building healthy attachments with vulnerable children

Who Cares? Young People in foster care are vulnerable and experience a combination of life events, usually traumatic and abusive that leads to the need for out of home placement. Most research into foster care recommends more support should be made available to foster carers and foster children (Triseliotis et al 2000).

Partnership Working In order to care for young people with complex needs, foster carers need to share the task with fostering services and work as part of a fostering care team. This idea of ‘partnership’, (like ‘support’) is based on a range of on-going behaviours rather than on single actions.

Partnership working from a Carer perspective means:- being involved in joint planning and decision making, being consulted and involved in the process of matching young people with caregivers, sharing and being included in the information exchange on all aspects of the child’s care.

Carers repeatedly comment on how the lack of background information on the young people hindered their care of them equate failure to pass on information as an example of not being considered full members of the team.

Where carers are not provided with information, they had increased difficulty connecting with the young person, particularly in relation to histories of sexual abuse or serious behaviour problems Consider the emotional impact this information may have on carers What forms of support may be required?

Carers are more able to endure difficult behaviours if they do not perceive the behaviour to be an attack on themselves and if they have the skills and support to enable them to define behaviour differently. The team parenting approach helps all involved notice and respond to spirals of negative interaction. Within these interactions carers react negatively to young people’s negative behaviour, which consequently grows worse in response to the negative reaction from carers.

Attachment Needs Kate Cairns (2002) - Four approaches to living (and working) with young people with unmet attachment needs. Commitment – ‘each young person needs us to commit ourselves to sharing a journey with them, a journey that will change us forever. It is impossible to provide an authentic and trustworthy relationship without accepting that level of vulnerability’

Personal Support – establish and maintain close, confiding and intimate relationships. This is a vital resource to sustain resilience. Professional Supervision- essential for carers who are carrying out the work in their own life space. ‘We cannot see the ocean when we are swimming in it’ -Maintain an overview of the system, tracking movement and progress -Alert to risks -Propose systemic solutions

Working with others to build an environment which promotes secure attachment. You can’t do this alone. Caring for insecurely attached young people is often counter – intuitive to carers own models of parenting Carers have to learn how to approach young people who are unable to regulate stress and impulse Insightful interventions are needed at every level of the social system

Team Parenting The main focus is on enabling carers to become central to the process of supporting change for young people It is relationship focussed Involves – Regular facilitated planning meetings Therapeutic consultation Family meetings/hui Training

This Means working together with purpose to try and view the world through the eyes and experience of each particular child Spending time with and actively listening to children Engaging in children and young people’s lives and building relationships

Recognising that foster care means more than case management Modelling high expectations for children in care Demonstrating a willingness and readiness to share decision-making powers Sharing personal and professional responsibility for children’s futures Wrapping collective efforts around children and young people and maintaining a clear focus

A Team Parenting approach to foster care:- Reduces placement disruptions Ensures the child’s holistic needs are being met Increases placement safety and resilience Improves school attendance and learning outcomes Includes children and young people in social activities and forums Reduces reliance on residential care Creates a supportive network for all involved Is strengths based and builds resilience for both carers and children

An outcomes focussed recording tool Carers complete a weekly recording tool based on their daily interactions with the young person The recording tool focuses on the interactions, relationships and actions that develop between the young person and significant others involved in their care

Recording Tool based on 20 key developmental assets Growth and development in these 20 areas builds resilience 12 external assets - what adults do to develop resilience in children and young people

External Assets - Examples Safety – the child is safe at home and in the community Positive Communication – child and carers listen and talk to each other, seeking advice, guidance and support as appropriate Family/Whanau relationships – child receives and accepts from their birth family/whanau and other significant adults and demonstrates a sense of belonging

Internal Assets 8 internal assets - qualities that adults nurture in children and young people Planning and decision making- child makes positive choices from options, attempts to solve problems Peaceful conflict resolution – child seeks to resolve conflicts through compromise, without physical aggression, harmful action or language

Produces individual profiles for children and young people grouped into 5 core domains - All about you -Your foster family -Your learning -Your future -Your life journal

Studies consistently show that the more assets young people have, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors and the more likely they are to thrive and achieve.

Resilient Carers who understand, value and consistently deliver the external assets and nurture the development of the internal assets, hour by hour, day by day.

CONTACT Wayne Ferguson Acting Director Mobile: Telephone: (09) Free phone: 0800 KA KIDS

References Cairns, K. (2002) Attachment, trauma and resilience Therapeutic caring for children. London: British Association for Adoption and Fostering Fulcher, L. C. & Garafat, T (2008) Quality care in a family setting: A practical guide for foster carers. Cape Town: PreText Publishers. Ironside, L. (2004) ‘Living a provisional existence – thinking about foster carers and the emotional containment of children placed in their care’, Adoption and Fostering 28:4, pp Sinclair, I. Gibbs, I. and Wilson, K. (2005) Foster Placements Why They Succeed and Why They Fail, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Triseliotis, J. Borland, M. and Hill, M. (2000) Delivering Foster Care, London: British Association for Adoption and Fostering.